CNN's Erin Burnett shreds right-wing hypocrisy with devastating superclip of their remarks
CNN anchor Erin Burnett tore into MAGA hypocrisy Thursday night in the aftermath of Jimmy Kimmel's suspension from ABC by throwing their own remarks back at them.
After showing new images of the late-night comedian less than 24 hours after his show was suddenly pulled, she noted President Donald Trump has made it "clear he is not done."
"The president is now threatening more networks," she said, playing a clip of Trump suggesting networks could lose their licenses for negative coverage.
Burnett then played a devastating series of clips to make the point that Republicans used to defend free speech, telling viewers, "If you are surprised at what has happened, maybe it is because you took the president, the vice president and the chairman of the FCC at their word when Trump came into office."
"If you don't have free speech, you don't have a country," Trump said in a 2022 clip played by Burnett.
"Thank God we have a president now who believes in free speech," Vice President JD Vance says in a subsequent clip.
"Free speech, diversity of opinion — and those are the bedrocks of democracy," said Brendan Carr, Trump's head of the Federal Communications Commission.
Carr, she noted, was the "very same man who made this threat this week after Kimmel's comments regarding Charlie Kirk."
"They have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest," Carr tells far-right podcaster Benny Johnson. He later adds: "But frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way."
Burnett slammed Carr over his abrupt 180, and hurled his own tweet back at him.
"Threats obviously don't get more clearer than that, and that threat is a real about-face from a man, Brendan Carr, who, in December of 2023, wrote — and I want to quote him — 'Free speech is the counterweight. It is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarians' dream.'"
After playing a clip of Kimmel's words that got him targeted, Burnett played a 2021 clip of Fox News host Jesse Watters making an inflammatory joke about Dr. Anthony Fauci.
"Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot with an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn't see it coming. This is when you say, 'Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab, the same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people don't trust you, don't you?' Boom, he is dead is done."
Watters was promoted a month after the comment.
Burnett also played remarks from other right-wing pundits making light of Paul Pelosi's hammer attack, in which he was hospitalized with a skull fracture.
"There was a lot of really ugly rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the right at the time," she noted.
"At 82 years old, and comes home to find out that her husband's playing hide the hammer with the Black Lives Matter guy!" exclaimed Jason Whitlock on Fox News in 2022.
"We can't confirm or deny your suggestion," a coy Tucker Carlson replies in a subsequent clip.
"It's MAGA extremists behind this, because they always attract illegal alien nudists who live in school buses, who think they're Jesus Christ," Greg Gutfeld yells at viewers.
Donald Trump Jr., Burnett noted, posted a photo on Instagram of a hammer and underwear after Pelosi was attacked.
"Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready," he wrote.
Elon Musk chimed in, "There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye," linking to an article suggesting the attack stemmed from a drunken encounter with a male sex worker.