CNN’s “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter continues to prove why he’s one of the least-watched cable news hosts in the industry.
On his little-seen Sunday show, the ‘chief media correspondent’ did what he always does — remained hyper-focused on Fox News, a network that millions of Americans actually do watch, claiming that Fox broadcast an allegedly “incendiary” phrase he said his own network would “never” allow on the air.
But of course, according to The Daily Wire, “Anderson Cooper had used that exact terminology last Thursday, and a review of network transcripts shows that CNN hosts have repeated it at least half a dozen times in precisely the way Stelter called unacceptable.”
The outlet continued:
Stelter dedicated part of the January 23 episode of “Reliable Sources” to reading banners Fox News had posted on the screen during the past week, including one that read, “The Biden administration is a clown car driving off a cliff.” An outraged Stelter said, “That’s the great example of the incendiary rhetoric that you would have never seen, let’s say from another channel during the Trump years or now during the Biden years.” Such language illustrates “the imagined drama that Fox presents every day” in the “Fox-uverse,” he added.
CNN senior media reporter @oliverdarcy compares the way Fox reports crime in the US to an Instagram filter, saying the final product is distorted and "no longer reflects reality." pic.twitter.com/S9QcwZvLD2
— Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) January 23, 2022
But in fact, Stelter’s network colleagues have used the exact same phrase, and several worse phrases, about former President Donald Trump and his administration officials, as well as Republican leaders as recently as three days prior:
Anderson Cooper (“Anderson Cooper 360” on January 20, 2022): Anderson Cooper, who replaced fired Chris Cuomo as CNN’s top-rated host (which isn’t saying much), compared a report about the 2020 Trump campaign to a clown car just on Thursday.
“It’s like a clown car on fire,” Cooper said in disgust, followed by a giggling Pamala Brown, CNN’s senior Washington correspondent, who responded with: ‘Yeah.” She then apologized for not being able to respond to Cooper’s next question. “Sorry, I was thinking about the clown car on fire analogy,” she quipped.
I bet the DOJ, the FBI and the CIA are still investigating DID TRUMP KNOW? 😂😂😂 Like a clown car on fire’: Cooper reacts to Giuliani’s fake electors plot https://t.co/AC7hPwu0qD via @YouTube
— Kiki Melendez (@kikimelendez) January 21, 2022
John King (“Inside Politics” on December 16, 2021): King used the analogy to make the claim that the first year of the Trump administration was worse than Joe Biden’s first year in office.
King reported that Republicans, who then controlled both chambers of Congress, failed on their “central promise” to “repeal and replace Obamacare” in 2017, while Biden failed to pass the “Build Back Better” act in 2021. However, at least over the past year, King claimed, “we have not had the clown car routine that that was that debate” over Obamacare. He did go on to say Biden’s inability to pass his signature legislation was “a major failure.”
“The GOP is just a circus right now. That’s just the honest truth. It’s a clown show,” host Don Lemon declared last November. “The GOP is just loading up the clown car of their never-ending circus.”
Cooper again: “I mean, we knew it was, you know, a clown car going on and possibly going off the cliff,” he said Sept. 16, citing anti-Trump biographies such as “Peril” by Bob Woodward. “But I mean, it’s extraordinary to see this reporting … Woodward and Costa also report on the former President’s mental faculties.”
Van Jones, President Obama’s ‘Green Jobs’ czar, declared on his show in November 2018: “We had an insane clown car of a presidential press conference, after which Trump just up and fired Jeff Sessions. Now, that’s a decision that could derail Bob Mueller’s Russia investigation, which could lead to a full-blown constitutional crisis.”
In July 2017, Brianna Keilar, guest-hosting for Wolfe Blitzer, asked network colleague Dana Bash about the alleged ‘Trump-Russia collusion’ narrative: Dana, when you look at Republicans on Capitol Hill, how are they reacting to what – it’s almost like a clown car, right?”
