Trump-hating cable television network CNN’s Thursday night coverage was dominated by the latest anonymously sourced tale about former President Donald J. Trump, this one claiming that he was loose-lipped about nuclear secrets.
On Thursday, ABC News reported that Trump allegedly discussed “potentially sensitive information about U.S. nuclear submarines” with an Australian billionaire who was a member of his Mar-a-Lago club in South Florida with the scoop attributed to the usual “sources familiar with the matter.”
According to the ABC News report, the Aussie billionaire, packaging tycoon Anthony Pratt who runs U.S.-based Pratt Industries, then “allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists,” the unnamed sources claimed.
The story was accompanied by another Maggie Haberman special in The New York Times that “confirmed” its fellow news outlet’s reporting about the allegations which were “reported to special counsel Jack Smith’s team,” and the big scoop dominated coverage on the self-proclaimed “most-trusted name in news” on its opinion-saturated primetime talk shows.
Haberman joined anchor Anderson Cooper on “AC 360” where she speculated that the allegations could be the reason why President Joe Biden ended the classified intel briefings traditionally provided to former presidents.
(Video: CNN)
“It doesn’t appear he showed a document to this gentleman,” Habermen told Cooper, a seeming admission that there is no actual evidence. “But I don’t know for prosecutors that that matters because our understanding is he is among the trial witnesses who prosecutors have listed as possible people they will call. And what they would likely use him for is to establish a pattern of Trump being loose with sensitive information and the government’s secrets.”
She said that Pratt could be called as a witness at Trump’s upcoming trial and rattled off some examples of previous stories that would support Biden’s yanking of the briefings.
“There was an infamous Oval Office meeting with two Russian officials where he is said to have spilled some sensitive information that upset Israeli officials,” she continued. “He tweeted out a classified picture of an Iranian launch site, I think it was in 2019. This is something he has done for a while. This is the kind of behavior that added to why President Biden cut off Trump’s briefings that ex-presidents get to sensitive information and classified briefings, because according to the current president, you know, what could happen other than that Trump would slip up and say something?”
Later, anchor Kaitlan Collins brought in one-issue Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie, an ex-federal prosecutor because what would any anti-Trump story be without the input of the former New Jersey Governor?
(Video: CNN)
“It just shows you how unfit he is for the presidency,” Christie said. “I mean you know, this is him though. He wants to show off. He wants to make himself seem important. It’s not enough for him to have been the former President of the United States, now he has to spew secrets, sensitive information to people to show off, on the…you know, on the balcony at Mar-a-Lago.”
“It’s both completely unthinkable, but also completely typical, at the same time,” he added. “And it’s why he doesn’t have the temperament, the self-control, the self-discipline to be President of the United States.”
After the story broke during “The Situation Room,” CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, one of a panel of experts, speculated that it could be bad news for Trump’s defense.
(Video: CNN)
“The reason we have these rules, and he’s not charged with disseminating the information, a different crime, he’s charged with unlawfully possessing it,” he said. But the reason we have these rules is precisely because of the risk that it will get into the wrong hands.”
“It also sheds light on his intent. In any criminal case, you have to prove state of mind, and so it’s relevant on that ground. But we do have to caution, of course, it’s a media report now,” Eisen added, admitting that there is no proof other than the anonymously sourced report. “It does not appear to be in the case, certainly is not in the existing charges. We’ll see if it enters the case, but very damaging, even if it turns out not to have been strictly accurate.”
CNN’s coverage was heavy on hyperbole despite the flimsiness of the story and Dilbert creator Scott Adams summed it up perfectly.
The most predictable CNN story of all time.
I’m guessing anonymous sources and documents too sensitive for the public to see. Lol.
Next: Wheel out the “Worse than Watergate” team. pic.twitter.com/gr5CQ4e0sH
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) October 5, 2023
“The most predictable CNN story of all time. I’m guessing anonymous sources and documents too sensitive for the public to see. Lol,” Adams wrote on X. “Next: Wheel out the ‘Worse than Watergate’ team.”
The submarine story has all of the characteristics of one of the nothing burgers that the media specializes in cooking up but soon disappears from the headlines.
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