If you need a chuckle, here’s how CNN touts its ‘NewsNight’ show hosted by Abby Phillip. The once-respected network claims the host is ‘driven by the facts and pursuit of the truth.’ In fact, she is the dishonest ringleader of a shout fest that is a modern version of The Jerry Springer Show. Springer’s guests threw punches; Phillip’s rowdy gang hurls insults and invective.
CNN also boasts that the show is the network’s third-most-watched program, which is akin to being the third-ranking Ayatollah on February 28th. On a good night, if there is such a thing with NewsNight, Phillip attracts about 800,000 viewers, far behind the competition on Fox News and MS NOW. The show matches the audience of the Ultimate Baking Championship on the Food Network, but is far less savory.
But ratings aren’t the main reason the show and its host are widely ridiculed; far worse is the total absence of fairness and honesty. The conservative Media Research Center recently endured ten episodes of NewsNight and – spoiler alert! – discovered that Phillip argued with conservative guests 127 times compared to just three times with liberals. By our admittedly rusty math, that’s a ratio of 42 – 1. Heckuva job, Abby.
Phillip was in peak form Wednesday night after President Trump spoke to the nation about the war in Iran. She characterized the speech as dishonest, duplicitous, repetitive, and worthless. That is par for the course - Phillip doesn’t even try to disguise her loathing of Donald Trump and everything he does. A few days ago, when a guest praised the war effort, Abby quickly pointed out that Iran is doing just fine and ‘making twice as much money as they were making before.’ Were she injected with an effective truth serum, we suspect Abby would admit she’s hoping for a USA debacle.
And it’s not just Iran. When Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was confronted by a hostile man at a rally, Phillip blamed none other than Donald Trump. And remember when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a fool of herself in Munich with her nonsensical answer about Taiwan? Dear Abby offered this defense: ‘Are we really going to pretend that the actual president of the United States has not made similar or perhaps worse flubs on the global stage?’ One of her most egregious blunders came when ISIS-inspired young men threw explosives at anti-Islam protesters in New York City. She falsely characterized it as a ‘terror attack against New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani’ and was forced to apologize a day later.
Abby admits that CNN and her show skew ‘center left,’ but most honest observers would omit the ‘center’ part. She let the mask slip during an interview with the ever-lovely Joy Reid. ‘Conservatives are living in a completely different information world,’ Phillip declared, adding that those on the right ‘don’t even hear the facts.’ No one is claiming that Abby Phillip, who studied government at Harvard, is a stupid person, but she sure does a good job of playing that role on TV. When not arguing with a conservative, she wears a blank stare that brings to mind the word ‘vapid.’
Right now, CNN’s ratings-challenged hosts are looking over their collective shoulders as the network’s parent company is likely to be swallowed up by Paramount. Will the new owners make some dramatic changes to boost those miserable ratings? And will Abby Phillip make the cut? Those are unanswerable questions right now, but we do hear that Jim Acosta and Don Lemon are looking for work.
