OPINION:
A Republican pundit on CNN shut down his fellow election night panelists after telling them the truth and nothing but the truth about Donald Trump’s White House win, and it was a truth that went, in essence, like this: Dear Democrats, MAGAs are not “garbage” and “Nazis” and advancing that narrative is in large part why Kamala Harris lost.
Cue Barack Obama’s mic drop.
Is there an American out there who ever imagined seeing and hearing such insightful, incisive and in-your-face-all-you-leftists analysis on CNN?
Scott Jennings is 47. He was born in Kentucky. And he now holds the distinction of being the first GOP analyst to stupefy an entire panel of CNN left-leaning media elites into utter silence. And their silence lasted the whole two-plus minutes he spoke. They couldn’t think of anything to say. They were so shocked they couldn’t even remember to cut him off, to shout him down, to interject and interrupt with angry, sarcastic expressions of outrage. It was as if their usual snark had been zapped with a stun gun.
Among his remarks: “I’m interpreting the results tonight as revenge of just the regular old working-class American, the anonymous American who has been crushed, insulted, condescended to,” he said, the Daily Mail wrote.
He went on: “They’re not garbage. They’re not Nazis. They’re just regular people who get up and go to work every day and are trying to make a better life for their kids, and they feel like they have been told to just shut up when they have complained about the things that are hurting them in their own lives.”
He went on even more, chastising those in the pundit world who believed “gimmicks [like] Tim Walz and the camo hats” could win Harris the White House, and that Democrats wouldn’t have to deal with inflation and “people feeling like they were barely able to tread water at best” if they flashed enough shiny objects at voters — he chastised them as blinded to reality.
“For all of us who cover elections,” Jennings went on, “we have to figure out how to understand, talk to and listen to the half of the country that rose up … and said, ‘We’ve had enough.’”
Quite right.
And there’s one quick and easy way.
Note to media outlets: Hire some MAGA types for the news and opinion sections. Then, install some MAGA types in editor roles so the higher-ups don’t edit away all the news coverage and opinions of the MAGA types who were just hired.
It might help. Just sayin’.
Some in the established media are perhaps already recognizing the failures of their establishment media. The Washington Post, under Jeff Bezos, refused to endorse a presidential candidate this election season. So, too, the left-leaning Los Angeles Times. But the decision was not without consequences. Snooty pro-Harris staffers threw hissy fits and quit their jobs at both papers. For a media in need of dramatic overhaul, this is actually good thing. Get rid of the elites. Let the MAGA haters go their way.
Word is both papers lost plenty of subscribed readers, too. But that’s a culling that shouldn’t be feared. If these same papers were to pick up some conservative voices for their pages, and allow their conservative voices to be heard uncensored, then those lost subscriptions would translate into new subscribers. There’s always a welcoming — paying — audience for balanced news.
“Trump’s return to power raises serious questions about the media’s credibility,” Brian Stelter wrote at CNN.
Actually, the questions have been raised for years — by conservatives — by Christians — by Trump — by all those tired of the censorship on social media and by corporate media against all voices that countered the company-preferred or government-approved narratives. These questions have been shouted from rooftops for years.
It’s just that they were coming from MAGA types, and the leftist-fawning media wouldn’t listen.
Maybe now, in the face of such utter Democrat defeat, they will.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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