CNN activist White House correspondent ‘reporter’ Kaitlin Collins is facing calls for her firing after she posted a link to the defense fund of Luigi Mangione, the guy charged with shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson.
Collins posted the link to X on Friday but then deleted it shortly after following swift backlash.
Mangione has been lauded by extremist leftists and also held up as a kind of sick sex symbol by deranged liberal women.
CNN host Anderson Cooper let his emotions get the better of him when discussing the findings of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficency (DOGE).
The primetime anchor hosted a discussion with former New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu and several other panellists following Donald Trump’s decision to hold a joint presser with Elon Musk in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
Here went the exchange:
SUNUNU: I know what you’re not showing here but Musk gave seven specific examples off the top of his head of where the corruption and fraud were.
He was talking about a contractor that had a three-month contract. He was paid for 20 years.
He was talking about welfare benefits that were being paid to someone that was technically 150 years old.”
COOPER: But we didn’t see any of that. He doesn’t present any actual evidence.
SUNUNU: He’s standing there in the Oval Office. Do you expect him to come in with 10,000 pages?
And I have to be clear. To complain about this administration, about transparency when this president takes open questions on a daily basis, yet Joe Biden didn’t show up for a press conference in six months is insane.
These guys are being extremely transparent. They don’t have to sit there and take the questions, but they do. It’s all on the website. It’s all out there.
Later on, the two men got in a heated discussion about FEMA spending millions of dollars on luxury hotels for migrants.
As the debate escalated, Cooper accused Sununu over putting words in his mouth.
“Don’t be a dick,” he remarked.
Cooper eventually apologized for his outburst.
“Before we go, I wanna apologize,” he said. “I was mean, I was rude to you.”
“Are you kidding?” Sununu responded. “I grew up with seven brothers and sisters, and I’m a Sununu.”
Throughout Chris Cillizza’s long career as a “journalist” and “political commentator,” he has shown himself repeatedly to be a dutiful propagandist for the left, never daring to get even close to an independent thought and instead faithfully reflecting whatever the political and media elites wanted him to think. And that is still largely the case, but these are unusual times, and even Cillizza has demonstrated a shocking level of independence for a leftist journo, even daring to say that Donald Trump, the veritable focus of evil in the modern world, may have been right about something. Et tu, Cillizza? Yes: for the left, it has come even to this.
Cillizza wrote on X Monday: “I screwed up. Back in May 2020, I wrote how Anthony Fauci had ‘crushed’ Donald Trump’s lab-leak theory for how Covid-19 originated The CIA said over the weekend that they now believed the virus leaked from a lab.”
To get an idea of how big this admission is, consider that Cillizza’s Substack bears a heading that boasts about Trump’s disdain for him: “So What: Donald Trump once called me ‘one of the dumber and least respected of the political pundits.’ So I got that going for me. I write about politics — mostly — with humor, transparency, and authenticity. 2-3 posts a day.” Well, he writes about politics, anyway, and actually approached some transparency and authenticity in his Monday thread on X.
Cillizza noted a recent assessment from the CIA — and they wouldn’t lie to us, now, would they? “Here’s a CIA spokesperson: ‘CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting.’” Since this so sharply differs from what the CIA and the entire political and media establishment were telling us at the time, it is worth crediting, even though it does come from the CIA. And Cillizza was man enough to recognize its implications for his previous “reporting.”
CNN analyst Harry Enten detailed how President Trump’s popularity among Americans is skyrocketing as he continues to get things done and bring America back from the brink, but his CNN colleague couldn’t cope with it.
Enten pointed to a Reuters Ipsos poll that found Trump has a higher approval rating than ever.
“This is a very different Donald Trump,” Enten noted, adding “He’s leading a very different administration in the way he’s attacking things, and the American public is very much more in line with him than they were at any point during his entire first term.”
Anchor Kate Bolduan refused to accept the reality, whinging “One, I would say correction, this is not a very different Donald Trump,” she blathered.
Looking visibly angered, she whined in a high pitched shriek “I have a really hard time believing this,” as Enten explained that Trump is the only President in history to have a higher approval rating in his second term than in his first.
On Friday, a Florida jury found CNN guilty of defamation in a case brought forth by US Navy veteran Zachary Young against Jake Tapper and the network. Young alleged that Tapper had defamed him on his show. The verdict came after eight hours of deliberation.
Young was working to evacuate Afghans during the Biden administration’s chaotic military withdrawal from that nation in August 2021. Tapper misrepresented Young and his work and Young stated that he hasn’t been able to work since.
CNN was ordered to pay compensatory damages, with jurors still needing to decide how much the outlet will pay in punitive damages. The damages will be at least $5 million, Law & Crime said. “In sum,” they write, “jurors awarded Young $4 million for lost employment and $1 million for pain and suffering, and said that CNN should also be subject to punitive damages.”
According to the Free Beacon, Young alleged that a segment which aired in November 2021 on The Lead with Jake Tapper singled him out and portrayed him as an “illegal profiteer” who operated in a “black market.” Young, who said the segment irreparably destroyed his business, Nemex Enterprises, and reputation, worked to evacuate Afghans during the Biden-Harris administration’s deadly and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. He testified that since the segment ran. he hasn’t worked or made money.
During closing arguments, CNN attorney David Axelrod claimed that the story was “accurate” and “tough but fair” and that Young should have gone out of his way to convince journalists with the outlet that he wasn’t “shady.”
“Mr. Young put himself in the story, not CNN. He inserted himself into it to make a buck,” Axelrod told the jury. He added, “Use your common sense. Do you see a conspiracy or do you see people just doing their best?”
Devin Freedman, Young’s lead attorney, told jurors, “This is supposed to be the most trusted name in news. CNN is so arrogant, they are so used to getting whatever they want.”
“But they stand up here and they talk down to us with bold-faced lies about what the segment’s gist really is, and they expect you to believe it,” he continued. “I mean, do they think we’re all stupid?”
During opening statements, Freedman said that they were able to confirm that 1.6 million people viewed the broadcast, with high-range estimates hitting 2.7 million. “The correction was seen by 942,000 people. But let’s be honest, the correction didn’t do anything. Doesn’t matter. The man can’t get hired. It doesn’t matter how many people saw it. They issued a correction because they were trying to get out of a lawsuit.”
Comedian Whitney Cummings joined CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast Tuesday and marked the end of 2024 by reciting a list of controversial topics the corporate media has suppressed.
At one point during the event, Cummings launched into a rant, declaring, “Since I only have a minute left live on establishment media, why don’t we just say a bunch of things that we know that they’ll never cover?”
She proceeded to highlight several news items the mainstream media has largely ignored – with CNN surprisingly allowing her to stay on air to share them.
“Trump’s shooter didn’t have any silverware in his house, no one thought that was weird?” Cummings asked quickly, referring to reports shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks’ home was “clean like a medical lab” when searched.
“Are we still rolling?” Cummings asked, going on to note, “The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia put money into Disney — so just know there won’t be any girl characters in the next ‘Cars’ movie.”
“Okay, are we still rolling? This is wild,” Cummings remarked, before asking, “Okay, Why so many presidents’ chef’s died? Weird.”
Over the past decade, two White House chefs – Walter Scheib, who worked under ex-Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, and Tafari Campbell, who served the Obama family – both died by drowning.
A shocking image of the Syrian ‘prisoner’ who was discovered locked up Damascus prison by journalists proves that he was actually one of former dictator Bashar al-Assad’s henchmen who ruthlessly killed and tortured inmates.
The feigned inmate was found by CNN‘s chief international correspondent Clarrisa Ward and her team while they toured an abandoned detention site last Wednesday.
He was found under a blanket trembling and exclaiming ‘Oh God! There is light!’, in a video that went viral.
But earlier this week Syrian fact-checking organization Verify-Sy reported that the man in the clip was in fact a first first lieutenant in the Syrian Air Force Intelligence, which served former President Assad.
CNN launched an investigation into the man’s identity and confirmed that he was not a ‘civilian father’ named Adel Gharba, but rather Salama Mohammad Salama.
Citing local sources, CNN said in a statement Monday that Salama ‘was known for running the Air Force Intelligence Directorate’s checkpoints in the city’ and was accused of ‘having a reputation for extortion and harassment’.
Now, an image, that was shared with CNN by locals and Verify-Sy, shows Salama wearing a sly smirk behind a desk that appears to be inside a government office.
He is dressed in military uniform, further proving his links to the Assad regime.
The long and colorful history of major media promotion of false, government-serving narratives has a new chapter.
Last week, CNN aired a melodramatic report from reporter Clarissa Ward that was supposed to show a CNN crew amazingly rescuing a victim of the Assad regime from the bowels of a Damascus dungeon. After days of mounting skepticism and pointed questions ricocheting across social media, alternative new sites and here at ZeroHedge, CNN now says the “rescued” man was actually a regime intelligence officer, and there are reports that he himself perpetrated crimes against civilians
The man identified himself as Adel Ghurbai, and said he lived in the central Syrian city of Homs. However, over the weekend, the self-described Syrian fact-checking site Verify-Sy said he was actually Salama Mohammad Salama, aka “Abu Hamza”, an infamous and cruel first lieutenant in Syrian Air Force Intelligence:
Abu Hamza reportedly managed several security checkpoints in Homs and was involved in theft, extortion, and coercing residents into becoming informants. According to locals, his recent incarceration—lasting less than a month—was due to a dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer. This led to his detention in one of Damascus’s cells, as per neighborhood sources.
…
Despite his seemingly innocent and composed demeanor in the CNN report, Salama has a grim history. He participated in military operations on several fronts in Homs in 2014, killed civilians, and was responsible for detaining and torturing numerous young men in the city without cause or on fabricated charges. Many were targeted simply for refusing to pay bribes, rejecting cooperation, or even for arbitrary reasons like their appearance. These details were corroborated by families of victims and former detainees who spoke with Verify-Sy.
On Monday, CNN posted a report — written by Tim Lister and Eyad Kourdi but not Ward — revealing the network had been duped. Unsurprisingly, the rolling ratings disaster that is CNN stopped short of taking responsibility for its failure. CNN did credit Verify-Sy for first reporting the man’s apparent real identity, which CNN corroborated with its own canvassing of residents in the Bayada neighborhood of Homs. Considering the crimes Salama is accused of, the CNN follow-up article ends on a darkly amusing note: “Salama’s current whereabouts are unknown.” Yes, Ward yearned to bask in the glory of saving a regime victim, only to be exposed as aiding and abetting the escape of an apparent regime criminal.
The prisoner CNN helped free from a secret facility in Syria was actually a notorious member of Bashar al-Assad’s forces known to torture those who refused to pay him off, according to a shocking local fact check.
The network went viral last week with footage of the startled prisoner being led from the prison by journalist Clarissa Ward, who called it “one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed” in her 20 years of reporting.
But “independent and unbiased” fact-checkers Verify-Sy published a detailed report Sunday saying that the seemingly innocent prisoner was actually Salama Mohammad Salama — a first lieutenant in Syrian air force intelligence with a long history of alleged war crimes.
“We have subsequently been investigating his background and are aware that he may have given a false identity,” CNN acknowledged to The Post. “We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story.”
The CNN story last week showed Ward and a camera crew, escorted by a rebel fighter, visiting a former Syrian air force intelligence headquarters in Damascus and freeing the man who was found under a blanket locked in a windowless cell.
He gave his name as Adel Ghurbal and claimed to have been arrested by government authorities three months earlier — and said he had no idea the Assad regime had collapsed.
Verify-Sy noted, however, that he appeared “well-groomed, and physically healthy, with no visible injuries or signs of torture — an incongruous portrayal of someone allegedly held in solitary confinement in the dark for 90 days.”
He also “did not flinch or blink even when gazing up at the sky” despite having said he had not seen sunlight for three months.
Jeff Zeleny, Chief National Affairs Correspondent from CNN, said the quiet part out loud on Sunday night after news broke that Joe Biden had granted Hunter Biden a blanket pardon for any criminal acts he partook in from 2014 to present including, trading influence for cash, trafficking prostitutes, and taking on the role of the Biden Family bagman.
Jeff Zeleny: We were told that this came to a head this weekend, and this is why President Biden decided now to do this. But as Isaac was just saying, that really is a sense of the conversation that has been going on really inside the family.
I’m told this has been very much a family discussion and something that has been not widely shared or discussed as a policy matter inside the West Wing.
But there was a worry of future prosecutions or future the potential of what the incoming Trump Justice Department could do.
So that, of course, is fretted in all of this as well.
But for now, this moment, this certainly is a decision that President Biden, I’m guessing, did not come too easily. But as you played that statement before, so much has changed since June when he told David Muir of ABC News that he would not do that.
Of course, his station in life has changed. Did not complete his campaign. So that is why, leading up to this, that’s why I’m told a decision was reached finally this weekend after spending time together in Nantucket.
Hellbound and Down 
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