CNN once again displayed its open bias against President Trump and disdain for its own viewers when the network decided which few portions of the White House coronavirus press briefing should air.

While MSNBC also chose to cut out of Wednesday’s coronavirus task force at points, CNN aired only 43 minutes of the 103-minute briefing, according to Media Research Center‘s calculations, and took the airtime to bash the president and criticized the announcement on U.S. efforts against drug trafficking.



(Source: CNN via MRC)

Even as CNN and the liberal media have spent the last few days whining about not even airing the daily briefings, the network decided Wednesday that the president and his team were not giving enough information and were trying to “change the focus,” essentially lying to viewers that the news conference had turned into a report on Central and South American drug trafficking.

CNN repeatedly cut in and out of Wednesday’s White House briefing, blatantly deciding for viewers what they should see and essentially dismissing remarks by the President of the United States during a national crisis as unimportant.

CNN jumped into the WH Coronavirus task force briefing on Tuesday once President Trump completed opening remarks. Tonight has a briefing including Gen. Mark Milley- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs – currently briefing reporters. CNN continues to stick with a panel discussion. — Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) April 1, 2020

While Fox News Channel and MSNBC joined the event right from the start late Wednesday, CNN’s “Situation Room” allowed its panel to finish their discussion before jumping in three minutes into the briefing. After a few minutes, host Wolf Blitzer interrupted and declared that they would “continue to monitor” the briefing, contending that the opening announcement was “not directly related, clearly” to COVID-19.

“We’re going to continue to monitor this briefing and see if they get back to the issue of the coronavirus. That’s what we’re primarily interested in right now given the horrible numbers that we’ve been told over the past couple of days,” he said.

CNN’s Acosta doing a report in front of the White House just an outfielder throw away from the briefing room – as said briefing is occurring but not airing on his network. pic.twitter.com/SCmERk2P3X — Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) April 1, 2020

Meanwhile, the topic of the administration’s launch of a “counter-narcotics operation” was directly related to the global pandemic as Trump declared: “We must not let the drug cartels exploit the pandemic to threaten American lives,” announcing that Navy destroyers and Air Force surveillance planes had been deployed.

Trump targets drug cartels exploiting virus pandemic, deploys Navy and Air Force assets https://t.co/uIQql6GRE6 pic.twitter.com/qDMSIACubV — Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) April 2, 2020

Blitzer turned to CNN anchor John King who continued the narrative.

“It is remarkable, Wolf, and some would say shameless. This is a coronavirus task force briefing. The country is in the middle of a pandemic. Americans are afraid, they are turning into these briefings to try to get information from the White House,” he said.

King accused Trump of “trying to have a bit of a political statement here,” applauding the success in the anti-drug war but arguing that that’s “not what this briefing was scheduled for.”

According to Media Research Center:

The Trump-bashing picked back up and, after a commercial break, they returned at 5:51 p.m. Eastern. Despite the fact that questions from reporters consisted of both drug trafficking and the virus, CNN ducked out at 6:04 p.m., further subjecting their audience to additional anti-Trump benders. Instead of listening to questions about the growing number of U.S. sailors contracting the coronavirus aboard the U.S.S. Roosevelt (as well as precautions taken by the whole military), CNN chose to lie and claim that the briefing had morphed to exclusively highlight the fight against the flow of drugs from Central and South America.

Reporters asked questions about Iran underreporting its number of coronavirus cases, the distribution of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) and how U.S. soldiers and their families were dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. But CNN went to commercial and then focused on Blitzer and his panel’s criticisms of Trump.

“Why are they doing that at the White House at a time when the American public is bracing for perhaps 100,000 Americans are going to die in the coming few weeks and months as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,” the CNN host said.

“This should not be a time for politics,” King chimed in, lacking any self-awareness. But the president knows what the coverage has been the last 24 hours…So what was the president looking for? A, change the subject, B, get some praise.”

CNN suddenly cut in to the White House coronavirus briefing after running pundits talking and a commercial break or two instead of it for at least the first half hour… What the hell are they doing? — Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) April 1, 2020

Over at MSNBC, host Chuck Todd also excused the network’s refusal to air the full briefing by telling viewers they would return once “we get an update on the pandemic itself.”

“It’s certainly an interesting decision by the president to lead the task force with this,” Todd said. “If the president had important coronavirus news to tell us, I don’t know — I would assume it must not trump this in his mind.”

This came one day after Todd had announced they would “break off” the coverage when they deemed any of the information being given to the American public was not “informative or relevant.”

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd prior to briefing: “[They] have a tendency to veer in a lot of different directions, not all of them informative or relevant … If it veers too much off, we will break off.” pic.twitter.com/JFxRhGeECd — Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) March 31, 2020

The networks were slammed for their smug condescension and obvious bias by angry Twitter users.

What could possibly be more important than carrying a briefing during a national emergency? I’m talking to you @CNN & @MSNBC. — Madison Gesiotto (@madisongesiotto) April 1, 2020

And @CNN is an expert on ‘shameless’ — Paul Foster (@pfoster19) April 1, 2020

They are not covering anything, just yammering — Mariane Matera (@MarianeMatera) April 1, 2020