Scott Jennings Creates a Chart to Help CNN Leftists Understand the Truth About Daniel Penny and the CEO Murder Suspect
CNN’s conservative commentator Scott Jennings had to spell it out.
In a discussion that combined the big Monday news stories of Daniel Penny’s acquittal in New York City and the arrest of a suspect in the assassination of a health insurance executive, Jennings created a small chart to illustrate a tragic truth:
“People on the left can’t seem to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys,” he said.
Check out the discussion here:
Penny is the Marine veteran who was found innocent by a jury Monday in the May 2023 death of Jordan Neely, a mentally disturbed man who was threatening subway riders aboard a moving train until Penny subdued him in what turned out to be a fatal encounter.
Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested by police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in the cold-blooded murder on Wednesday of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
On “CNN Newsnight with Abby Phillip” on Monday, guest host Audi Cornish couldn’t seem to understand the difference between the two men.
“I want to bring in the politics of this because when I hear lawmakers hailing Penny as a hero, as a good Samaritan, really being promoted, can you help me understand the thinking?” she said, according to a CNN transcript.
“We started at the top of the show talking about the killer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO being hailed in similar terms.”
Jennings was more than happy to oblige.
In a chart, clearly hastily scribbled, he wrote the words “good guy” and “bad guy.” Beneath “good guy,” he wrote the name “Daniel Penny.” Beneath “bad guy,” he wrote “Luigi Mangione.”
“If you’re on the American left tonight, here’s my chart,” he said. “The good guy’s today: Daniel Penny. The bad guy, Luigi Mangione.”
That clearly triggered his fellow guests. And Cornish, a leftist who has tangled with Jennings before (and lost), tried to interject that Jennings should make a chart for the “victim.”
“It’s my chart. You can make your own chart,” Jenning said.
The conversation after that is muddled, and, frankly, not worth following. (Hint: “Race” plays a big role).
But Jennings had made the point.
The country’s dominant news stories of Monday, and the way they could be charted on the American political spectrum of the moment, said everything there is to say about the cultural divide between left and right.
To conservatives, Daniel Penny was a hero, a man who stood up for women and children and faced down a threat even at the risk of his own life and — thanks to leftist Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg — his freedom.
To the left, like Bragg and pretty much all CNN panelists not named “Scott Jennings,” Penny is a villain who should be put in jail.
To too many on the left, on the other hand, the killing of Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street — an ambush clearly planned in advance — was a cause célèbre.
The repulsive Taylor Lorenz was just one of the most high-profile examples. The Washington Post reported Monday that merchandise was being hawked online commemorating the killing with words found etched on the killer’s ammunition.
The reliably liberal WaPo described the phenomenon in words that would never be used if the assassination victim had been favored by the left:
“While it’s unclear how much of the ‘Deny, Defend, Depose’ merchandise was purchased, its spread across online storefronts echoes the swell of anger at health insurance companies and support for the shooter on social media.”
To conservatives on the other hand, the Thompson killing was an act of terrorism, pure and simple. And whoever committed it — Mangione is innocent until proven guilty — deserves to deal with the full weight of the criminal justice system.
It’s almost astonishing that two such blindingly obvious facts need to be explained at all, but in the United States of the 21st century, that’s how morally blind the progressive left has become.
The reality is, though, that it’s really not that hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys, even without Scott Jennings to spell it out.
All it takes is to open eyes, and a willingness to see the truth.
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