CNN Refuses To Run Trump Re-Election Ad That Hammers Biden on Ukraine Situation
Conservatives disgusted by the daily doses of propaganda from American mainstream media outlets might sometimes think the networks wouldn’t tell the truth if you paid them to.
When it comes to CNN, as it turns out, that’s literally true.
The liberal network is refusing to air an advertisement from President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign because it describes the kind of coercion Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden used on the government of Ukraine while he was vice president.
And it describes CNN personalities such as Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo as “lapdogs” to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Oddly enough, the network is claiming there’s something about the spot that isn’t true.
From a factual viewpoint, there’s not much to argue with here.
As anyone who’s been following the current controversy over Trump’s dealings with Ukraine knows by now, Biden actually bragged to an audience on camera that in 2016, while he was vice president in the Barack Obama administration, he linked $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine getting rid of a prosecutor who was investigating a Ukraine energy company that had Biden’s son Hunter on its payroll at an obscene salary of $50,000 a month.
Also, in the now-infamous July 25 telephone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump sought his counterpart’s help in looking into potential corruption, both involving Ukraine officials and the events surrounding the 2016 presidential election that swept Trump into office.
(It’s true the word “corruption” doesn’t appear in the transcript of the phone call released by the White House, but it’s hard to argue that “corruption” doesn’t cover what Trump is describing.)
And as the world knows by now, of course, the Democrats are, in fact, trying to impeach Trump.
Still, CNN is declining to run the ad.
“CNN is rejecting the ad, as it does not meet our advertising standards,” a CNN representative said, according to The Daily Beast. “Specifically, in addition to disparaging CNN and its journalists, the ad makes assertions that have been proven demonstrably false by various news outlets, including CNN.”
Well, there are no assertions that have been “proven demonstrably false” by CNN or anyone else.
So what CNN likely is objecting to is its employees being referred to as Democrats’ “media lapdogs.” The ad features video of CNN’s Jim Acosta, Cuomo and Lemon as well as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. (Fox News’ Shepard Smith somehow didn’t make the cut.)
Simply put, if the network didn’t wish its biggest names to be referred to as “lapdogs” of the nation’s opposition party, it would behoove its executives not to allow their biggest names to behave like Democratic lapdogs.
Tim Murtaugh, the Trump 2020 communications director, fired back at CNN in a statement, according to The Daily Beast.
“CNN spends all day protecting Joe Biden in their programming, so it’s not surprising that they’re shielding him from truthful advertising too, and then talking to other media outlets about it,” Murtaugh said.
“Our ad is entirely accurate and was reviewed by counsel, and CNN wouldn’t even describe to us what they found objectionable,” he said. “This isn’t a cable news channel anymore, it’s a Democrat public relations firm.”
As The Daily Beast noted, it’s not the first time CNN has rejected an ad from the Trump White House. In May 2017, it turned down another spot celebrating Trump’s first 100 days in office, because it called mainstream media outlets “fake news.”
So, it’s happened before, and it’s likely to happen again.
In fact, Deadline reported Thursday afternoon that CNN had rejected a second Trump campaign ad.
“The spot, ‘Coup,’ attacked the whistleblower process as a ‘coup,'” the report said. “It features a clip of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Fox News claiming that the complaint is based on a hearsay and that it is a ‘set up.’ ‘It’s nothing short of a coup and it must be stopped,’ a narrator says.”
Hard as it might be to believe, there’s still more than a year to go before the 2020 election, but the marker CNN put down with this decision is tough to miss.
It is willing to forgo money from Trump’s re-election team. And it’s shameless enough to cite utterly spurious grounds to justify keeping the president’s messages from getting out in situations where it has the power to do so.
In the end, though, CNN is just proving what conservatives have long suspected.
The network wouldn’t tell the truth if you paid it.
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