To: Mrjns who wrote (183909 ) 1/29/2020 6:18:04 PM From: Mrjns 3 RecommendationsRecommended By
Read Replies (5) | Respond to CNN and Ignorance The odd exchange obscures how little the CNN guys know about the story they’re supposed to be covering. transcript , the network’s Don Lemon opened a recent program by talking about the “great oratory” of House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D.Calif.). WILSON: [Mr. Pompeo] also knows deep in his heart that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it. He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world, and so that’s partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience, you know, credulous boomer rube demo that back Donald Trump, that wants to think that Donald Trump’s a smart one, and y’all -- y’all elitists are dumb. ALI: You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling even though -- WILSON: Your math, your reading. ALI: Yes, your reading, you know. Your geography knowing other countries. Sipping your latte. WILSON: All those lines on the map. ALI: Only them elitists know where Ukraine is. Sorry. I apologize. LEMON: Oh my God. ALI: But you know what -- it was Rick’s fault. I blame Rick. LEMON: Oh my God. ALI: But in all honesty -- WILSON: Blame Rick, why not. ALI: -- you know what NPR should do. LEMON: Sorry, hold on. Wait, wait. Give me a second. Hold on. Hold on. That was good. Sorry. Rick, that was a good one. I needed that. OK, so listen let’s go back to business here. The discussion surely must have been insulting to non-leftist viewers who clicked on CNN or—more likely—were simply stuck in the terminal awaiting a boarding announcement. But ironically the program also exposed a gap in CNN’s coverage. The network has largely accepted the narrative from Rep. Schiff casting the former Ambassador Yovanovitch as the heroic defender of Ukraine as it faces the Russian bear. The record suggests the President should consider apologizing to Ukraine for waiting so long to fire her. reported in November:Marie Yovanovitch, the former US envoy to Ukraine, offered a powerful and impassioned defense of the work the US foreign service in the face of attacks from the President of the United States and his allies and minimal public defense from the secretary of state. Contrasting the “perception that diplomats lead a comfortable life throwing dinner parties in fancy homes,” Yovanovitch described her own tenure in the foreign service: moving 13 times, serving in five hardship posts, getting caught in crossfire in Russia. She also offered a cutting criticism of the State Department’s failure to defend her against smears, including from President Trump. When Ms. Yovanovitch was nominated to serve as ambassador toward the end of the Obama administration, the Ukrainians were looking for help to defend themselves against—not smears—but the Russian military which had occupied large parts of their country in 2014, killed thousands of their people and was abusing countless others. Ukraine needed weapons.report last year from Glenn Thrush and Kenneth Vogel, the Ukrainians’ need for weapons to defend themselves was well known for years, even at the highest levels of the U.S. government: When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2014, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. pressed President Barack Obama to take decisive action, and fast, to make Moscow “pay in blood and money” for its aggression. The president, a Biden aide recalled, was having none of it. Mr. Biden worked Mr. Obama during their weekly private lunches, imploring him to increase lethal aid, backing a push to ship FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kiev. The president flatly rejected the idea and dispatched him to the region as an emissary, cautioning him “about not overpromising to the Ukrainian government,” Mr. Biden would later write in a memoir. Appearing before the Senate in 2016, Ms. Yovanovitch perfectly toed the Obama line, so much so that senators from both parties wondered aloud if the U.S. was being too tough on a country under constant pressure from its aggressive Russian neighbor. One can only imagine how worried the Ukrainians must have been—and not just sometimes. Fortunately for them, a few months later the U.S. elected a new President who provided the critical weapons Mr. Obama never would.
