As today’s impeachment hearing was about to begin, CNN continued to do what they do best – lying to the American people.
During a segment in which they discussed how they believe that this impeachment will be a dark mark on the Trump Presidency, CNN’s John King claimed that if President Trump admitted to and apologized for the Ukraine situation, the Democrats would not be impeaching him today.
Most of the other panelists appeared to agree with Mr. King’s factless assertion that if President Trump admitted to being guilty of what they describe as a bribe or a “quid pro quo,” the Democrats would have forgiven him.
Wolf Blitzer: Another historic moment right now. There is a procedural vote going on, right now on the house of representatives. By the end of the day, the president of the United States is almost certainly going to be impeached. Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998 and now president Donald Trump is about to become the third president to be impeached.
Jake Tapper: It will forever be a black mark on his record. He will be impeached. It will be a part of his history and in as much as he professed it. As much as he pretends it doesn’t bother him, as much as his staff is making him feel better. They are having a rally in Michigan where he will be among thousands of thousands of supporters. This bothers him. He knows this is historically undermining of him, of his presidency and it is a judgment and it’s one that maybe viewers disagree with, but it is a judgment by a majority of the house of representatives that this president, what he did was wrong and that he needs to be removed from office in their view.
Wolf Blitzer: Right now they are beginning the discussions on the rules, the rules approved yesterday by the house rules committee. They have to go through this now. Eventually, they’ll get fairly soon into the real debate over these two articles.
Nia-Malika Henderson: We saw them debate the ten or 12 hours. They did this. This will be a part of it as well today. The meat of this bill, obviously, will be what happens at the end, the actual vote with those folks, in some ways putting their political careers on the line in deciding to vote either way this or against this president. So that will be the big moment that everyone is waiting for. Certainly, the president is waiting for that as well. His supporters, folks that have wanted him to be impeached for many years now. People like Maxine Waters and Al Green as well. We’ll see the reaction. We know the country at this point is divided. That probably won’t change. This will be a president that will have to go into his re-election, unlike any president we’ve seen with disdain on his legacy.
Gloria Borger: This was a president, I think it was Manu who asked him, one of our reporters asked the president, do you admit you’ve done —
Wolf Blitzer: Jim Acosta.
Gloria Borger: Thank you. Mapu is on The Hill. Do you believe you did anything wrong, anything? No, not at all. Not at all. Zero. And that is — that is what the American people are hearing from him. Bill Clinton, we were talking about 21 years ago, Bill Clinton admitted and apologized and it took him to while, lied to the American public for seven months before he did, eventually said, I’m sorry, I made a mistake. I messed up I think was the phrase. This is a president who will never say that and who will blame the Democrats and Republicans are afraid of this. They’re afraid of crossing him.
John King: I don’t want to give him too much credit, he apologized because he got caught. Told by a grand jury he had to testify.
Gloria Borger: And lied.
John King: The first time and came back.
Jake Tapper: By the way, if there wasn’t DNA every day he probably would deny it to this day.
Gloria Borger: I agree. You don’t want to give him this much credit.
John King: We wouldn’t be here if the president said you know what, now I understand what Rudy Guiliani was doing in Ukraine, whoa, sorry, went too far. If he had said that, we would not be here.
Mr. King’s false statement that all of this could have been avoided with an apology is one of the many reasons why CNN is struggling with ratings. Along with Ms. Borger’s comparing the crime of perjury, which President Clinton undoubtedly committed, to the policy disagreements and assertion of executive authority, CNN should apologize to anyone who was unfortunate enough to watch this horrible segment.
