Seeing as how CNN’s existence can be boiled down to gaslighting Americans by deeming most everything President Trump and those not in the Resistance utter as conspiracy theories, perhaps CNN should look themselves in the mirror.

On Monday afternoon’s CNN Newsroom, host Brooke Baldwin entertained a wild conspiracy theory about not holding a Senate impeachment trial. She began by eagerly telling University of Texas professor Jeffrey Tulis:

Jeffrey, let me start with you because I know that you recently wrote that Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, in your words, in literal violation of the oath he will have to take at the start of the Senate trial, can you tell me why?

Tulis replied that the Senate temporarily ceases to exist under its normal rules during trials and thus attempting to, in his book, game the system early shows that the declarations by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “rank among the most contemptible by Senators in American political history.”

Again, without any serious pushback, Tulis added moments later that perhaps Senators should sequester themselves like those “in the past” who were “so much more honorable than the ones you’ve just played” to the point that Chief Justice John Roberts should condemn them.

This unserious segment by an unserious “journalist” continued with CNN darling, crazy John Dean, who suggested (as the farcical Bulwark did hours earlier) that because the Senate was unlikely to convict Trump, the House could refuse to allow Articles of Impeachment to be handed to the Senate (click “expand”):

BALDWIN: Mmm. Mmm. If we wait to see if that potentially happens come January. John Dean, you say the House shouldn't even send these articles to the Senate, that they should continue to investigate, because to quote you, the Senate is rigged. Can you explain that? DEAN: We just heard it explained by the majority leader and the chairman of the House — or Senate Judiciary Committee. As the professor mentioned, there is a oath [sic] these men have to take, and women in the Senate and it's to be impartial and do justice. That isn't the high standard. That is to not prejudge until you hear the evidence. This is exactly the opposite of what is happening here. They're prejudging and they're going to say this President is not going to be impeached or he's not going to be re — found guilty and be removed....What happens is, after they vote on the articles of impeachment, then they — there are more articles they — or resolutions they vote on to send managers over to the Senate. Well, at that point, in digging through the rules, I can find nothing that would prohibit or stop Nancy Pelosi from saying, I'm not sending these Articles of Impeachment officer to a kangaroo court. I want a fair trial for the House and the American people....[I]t’s something I've been talking about for a couple weeks now, and I hear from more and more people, Lawrence Tribe, for example, last night tweeted, that if Schumer's very, very minimal conditions are not accepted, then the articles should not be sent over, so I think other people are realizing there is no reason they have to be sent over, and it only will be done in a fair forum, that's better. But if not, they're just going to make fools out of the House. They’re going to make fools out of the American people. The Senate may want to put a resolution out of exoneration and give him a prize for breaking the rules of his oath of office and violating the Constitution. (....) TULIS: The other solution is what's being called a constitutional caucus. It only takes three upstanding, responsible GOP senators to join with like-minded Democrats to actually structure a fair trial, whatever McConnell and others think. This is a new ballgame and it only takes 51 to set the rules.

Of course, Baldwin didn’t interrupt or suggest this was lunacy. Instead, she merely wondered if this would be “unrealistic.”

Hours earlier, New Day dropped their latest installment of “Reality Check,” which was a fact-checking segment masquerading as a CNN editorial and lecture from the disturbingly obnoxious and smug John Avlon.

Fill-in co-host Erica Hill teed Avlon up by opining that “there's a disturbing number at this point of senators talking about shrugging that responsibility off” of being unbiased jurors.

Avlon and Hill both conveniently left out the pre-determined biases of Democrats, particularly the 2020 candidates, because they have a boss like Jeffrey Zucker and a liberal audience to please (though colleague Jim Sciutto would footnote it in the 9:00 a.m. Eastern hour).

After a clip of the Senate trial oath, the pompous prick boasted: “So that's the special oath administered to Senators in an impeachment trial — impartial justice. What a concept. But leading Republican Senators are already admitting they intend to violate that oath.”

Avlon played the tired game of flashing GOP clips from the Clinton impeachment to argue they’re raging hypocrites (and, again, leaving out Democrats) and then went for the jugular (click “expand”):

AVLON: So, this time around, Republicans seem to have decided to dodge, weave, and evade the truth by taking the line the President did nothing wrong at all, which disregards testimony from Trump officials. Even if you think it's not impeachable, but just as facts should matter, oaths should mean something as well, and when Republican elected officials ignore them for partisan purposes, they define deviancy down in our democracy. Listen to what Senator Lindsey Graham told CNN’s Becky Anderson over the weekend. GRAHAM: This will come to the senate and it will die quickly. And I will do everything I can to make it die quickly. [SCREEN WIPE] I am trying to give a clear signal I've made up my mind. [SCREEN WIPE] I'm not trying to pretend a fair juror here. AVLON: You get that? “I’m not trending to pretend to be a fair juror” is, of course, the opposite of an oath to ensure impartial justice. It's also the opposite of what Congress Lindsey Graham said in 1998. GRAHAM [on 11/20/98]: Members of the senate said I understand everything there is about the case and I won't vote to impeach the president. Please allow the facts to do the talking. [SCREEN WIPE] People have made up their mind in a political fashion that will hurt this country long term. AVLON: Wise words. He should take his own advice. The divides today are not simply partisan though. They are along the lines of who wants to deal with the facts and don't buy the line that impeachment shouldn't be pursued because the country is divided with 50 percent supporting impeachment and removal because when Republicans pursued Clinton's impeachment, only 35 percent supported it and one month before Nixon resigned, only 46 percent said he should be impeached and removed. More than polls, principles and precedent do matter and the core question for Congress right now is this: Should presidents ask foreign powers to investigate their domestic political rivals? And somehow I doubt that if a Democratic president did that to a Republican, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham would be cool with it. Now, they'd be scheming bloody murder and they'd be right.

The self-righteousness! It burns!

Avlon may have written a book called Wingnuts and previously led the group No Labels, but in actuality, Avlon’s proven to be a wingnut of the liberal variety.

To see the relevant CNN transcripts from December 16, click “expand.”