December 14, 2018

As Chris Cuomo's show ended Thursday night, he passed the ball on to Don Lemon, but instead of a smooth hand off, Don would not let him leave and took the time to scold him for having Kellyanne Conway lie and obfuscate on CNN's airwaves for almost forty minutes.

More of this please.

Cuomo: "CNN Tonight starts right now."

Don Lemon deeply sighed and said, "Oh, my God, Chris."

He paused.

Lemon: "You know, let's talk about this."

Cuomo: "I was anticipating this this afternoon."

Did Cuomo plan to have her on for almost his entire show? It appears to be the case.

Lemon: "Why?"

Cuomo: "I'll tell you why. I believe in exposing what the White House wants the American people to believe."

I don't want to silence Conway, however, it is pointless to indulge her and others to the point where they take up almost 40 minutes of airtime.

Cuomo: But it exposes the reality that they cannot explain away the lies of this president.

Giving Conway and any Trump surrogate an endless amount of time to lie and deflect with whataboutism is counterproductive to this narrative, Chris. And by putting so many liars on television like CNN does, it hasn't had the desired effect you wanted to achieve.

Lemon said he did not want to beat him up and Chris replied, "I know you don't think she should be on TV. I don't believe in silencing the other side."

Lemon: "It's not silencing the other side. It is not a right for someone to come on CNN and lie and deflect. This was a defective, dismissive and histrionic display of non-answers."

Cuomo: "People do that all the time."

Lemon: "Please, please, please. At a time when the American people need to be reassured that we are in good hands when all of the evidence shows that the president is lying to the American people, what Kellyanne Conway does and what the apologists do, they, how do I say this nicely? I don't want to be rude. They take up your time, our time, on national television, when we could be learning something that's important to us."

I am firmly in the camp that members of any presidential administration and cabinet should go on television and either explain their policies and how they are working or in Trump's case, explain his many deflections, distractions, exaggerations, and outright lies and untruths.

But what was witnessed on Chris Cuomo's almost 40 minutes of Kellyanne Conway bilge is not educational or illuminating or exposing her as a corrupter in chief. It is doing exactly what the White House hoped to accomplish when they sent her to the CNN studio.

Instead of accepting Kellyanne Conway as a stand-in, demand Donald Trump be interviewed by you, Chris, for thirty-nine minutes. That would be much more valuable than having Mrs. Alternative Facts mucking up the media multiverse.

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