Clearly, Inside Politics host John King is someone who prefers sober discussions of the news and not, as many of his CNN colleagues have been complicit in doing, giving attention to folks like Michael Avenatti. After Michael Cohen’s sentencing, King slammed Avenatti on Wednesday for craving “attention” “like a moth to light” and expressed dismay that CNN made him interrupt his panel to air Avenatti’s babbling.

Before Avenatti, King was wondering “how does the President react” to the sentencing and whether Wednesday’s developments will move the needle in Washington since the perception of the Cohen story has thus far played out along party lines.

It was in the midst of this that King was interrupted in his earpiece and he became a tad perturbed: “Ah, let’s go. Here we go. Michael Avenatti, I’m told, is speaking now. What he has to do with this, I'm not quite so sure, but there he is.”

King gave Avenatti just under a minute before he pulled back and his mood hadn’t changed, stating with resignation:

All right, you’re listening to Michael Avenatti, who is the attorney for Stormy Daniels, of course, one of the allegations, one of the guilty — one of the things Michael Cohen has now been convicted of is the Southern District of New York says, in the payments to Stormy Daniels and in the payments to Karen McDougal, Stormy Daniels being the adult film actress, Karen McDougal the Playboy centerfold, the Southern District of New York alleges Michael Cohen and then candidate Donald Trump named Individual #1 in the documents violated campaign finance laws. That is alleged.

He then stated that this was presumably “why Michael Avenatti — like a moth to light, I guess, is in the courthouse here” seeing as how “[h]e’s someone who likes attention.”

Still unhappy about having to give Avenatti airtime, he told the Associated Press D.C. bureau chief Julie Pace that he “was trying to have a conversation about things that actually matter, sorry, Michael Avenatti to here in Washington in the sense that we don’t know how the President is going to react to this.”

As NewsBusters has previously reported, Avenatti appeared on CNN 82 times between March 7 and June 15 with seemingly countless others across the other broadcast and cable networks.

So if King is tired of Avenatti, not only is it a little too late to complain about that, perhaps he should channel his annoyance with Avenatti toward boss Jeffrey Zucker and his other CNN colleagues for making him such a star in the Resistance.

To see the relevant transcript from CNN’s Inside Politics on December 12, click “expand.”