For the decades I've been in the news biz, especially on radio and TV, where sound and pictures are paramount, and a reporter must not be afraid to ask the simple — some might say dumb — questions. A reporter usually gets the best answers by asking the simplest of questions. Follow-up questions are where the reporter gets crucial information and builds out a news story.
And then there's CNN host Brianna Keilar.
Keilar remains afflicted with TDS, an offshoot of the woke mind virus that she highlights for her viewers for hours every week. She doesn't try to hide her biases but instead sallies forth to get a gotcha moment against every GOP person who bothers to go on CNN. Her motives can't be trusted, of course, because she's not fair. Her worldview is woke, and everything else emanates from there. In her mind, people to the right of center are Nazis. Her questions begin with that assumption.
But Trump advisor Stephen Miller may have cracked the code.
Indeed, every person who's to the right of center should respond to Keilar's questions in the same manner as Miller. Instead of sputtering, Miller answered the question in the simplest way, assuming that the woke CNN host really needed the answer to her rudimentary question.
The net effect was that viewers became witnesses to a clash that left the CNN host wrecked by the time it was all over. Officer, I'd like to report a hit and run of a news anchor. And it was all because she couldn't get out of her own head to realize that not everyone with an R after their name is a Nazi.
Keilar's question was about how that rich African American meanie Elon Musk really has no right to save Americans money and fire people.
As our colleagues at Townhall put it, "Stephen Miller has to whip out the crayons" to explain that there's this thing called the Constitution. Blink twice if you understand what that means, Brianna, he seemed to say.
Stephen Miller has to whip out the crayons to explain how the federal government and presidential advisers work.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 18, 2025
"I understand that even a temporary interruption in federal employment is a great crisis and catastrophe for you and CNN." pic.twitter.com/lVudki9XHe
It went like this:
Keilar: Who's in charge of DOGE?
Miller: The president of the United States.
Keilar [changing the question]: He's the administrator of DOGE?
Miller: No. DOGE is formerly U.S. Digital Services, an agency of the federal government that reports in to the office of —the executive office of the president, which reports to the president of the United States.
Keilar: OK—
Miller: [obviously seeing a need to explain] The way Article II [the part of the Constitution that explains executive power and the role of the president] works is that the president wins an election. [Continuing in sing-song-y cadence] Then he appoints staff, including myself, including Mike Waltz, including Susie Wiles—
Keilar: Yes.
Miller: Including Elon Musk and those staff report to him.
Keilar: OK, well aware. So Elon Musk [she says, thinking she has a real gotcha moment coming up] a week ago answered a question about transparency at DOGE. This is how he spoke about DOGE.
[The sound bite is Elon Musk discussing how transparent DOGE is, using the word, "we."]
Keilar: Did you hear him there? "We post our actions...All of our actions are..."
Miller: [Smiling and enjoying himself]
Keilar: Does Elon Musk know he's not in charge of DOGE?
Miller: Again, the president runs the government, then the president appoints the advisers, including Elon, including myself, including all the other staff at the White House. And then, those staff in turn, execute the president's commands and directions to all the agencies in the federal government...
It's pretty basic, Keilar.
And now you know why CNN's ratings are in the crapper.
To give you an idea of CNN and Keilar's long walk off the journalistic short pier, in 2022, she co-hosted a program with the departed Jim Acosta called, "Democracy in Peril," which was, naturally, about that Bad Orange Man. Ratings to fill the spot that Chris Cuomo once occupied were abysmal, as The Wrap noted at the time:
CNN’s 9 p.m. hour averaged 556,000 total viewers, of whom just 139,000 were in the advertiser-coveted age demographic of 25 to 54. Compare that to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, whose competing program averaged 2.985 million total viewers Monday to Monday, with 426,000 in the demo, on average. CNN’s average total viewership number was closer to what Fox News pulled in the demo alone than it was to competing with Hannity’s total viewership.
Happily for Keilar, but unhappily for journalistic integrity, she still has a job. But plagued with the duty of having to ask questions that are sub-normal to satisfy her producers, if not her TDS-afflicted viewers, Keilar seems destined to replicate the stupidity of the past. Miller obliged her by answering her questions.
Where Keilar and the rest of the CNN staff failed was by not asking those in the Biden administration who was president. Now, that could have been interesting and newsworthy.
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