CNN’s Scott Jennings has made a habit of embarrassing his liberal colleagues, and Tuesday night’s episode of CNN Newsnight was no exception. As the panel tried—again—to paint Donald Trump as a dictator, Jennings came armed with cold, hard facts that immediately blew apart their narrative.
Scott Jennings should get overtime pay for having to deal with this stuff.
When pressed about how Trump is “shredding the Constitution,” Toure literally says he’s taken over the military and FBI.
I’m not kidding.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) February 27, 2025
The conversation started with former DNC spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa clutching her pearls over Trump banning journalists from White House events. “That’s something a dictator would do,” she declared, right before host Abby Phillip read a post from New York Times reporter Peter Baker, who compared Trump’s media policies to the Kremlin’s.
It was all very dramatic, but there was just one problem: none of it was true.
Jennings, not one to let nonsense slide, came prepared with a recent post from former CNN journalist Chris Cillizza, who had actually crunched the numbers on Trump’s media engagement.
“Our old friend Chris Cillizza calculated that in the first month of the Trump administration, the president took 1,009 questions. Hardly dictatorial behavior.”
That’s right—Trump, the so-called press-fearing autocrat, took over a thousand questions from reporters in his first month.
And what about Joe Biden, the “defender of democracy”?
“Same stat for Joe Biden: 141.”
Ouch.
But Jennings wasn’t done yet. He then reminded the panel of something the mainstream media would rather pretend never happened:
“And I would remind you all that in 2023, the Biden administration revoked the hard passes of 442 journalists.”
Phillip, clearly flustered, tried to spin the numbers, asking how many of those journalists were removed for not attending White House events enough.
Jennings didn’t take the bait:
“I don’t know. They lost their access. They lost their access. 442.”
And that, folks, was the sound of an argument collapsing in real time.
Let’s be clear: The claim that Trump is “anti-press” has always been a manufactured narrative. Yes, Trump clashed with journalists, called out fake news, and didn’t play along with the media’s leftist bias. But he engaged with reporters—constantly.
Biden, on the other hand? He’s the most scripted and shielded president in modern history. His handlers limit his availability, he rarely takes unscripted questions, and when he does, his answers are pre-selected from a list of approved reporters.
The idea that Trump is a dictator for banning a few select reporters while Biden silenced nearly 450 members of the press is laughable. But, of course, the media didn’t mind because they were more than happy to protect Biden from scrutiny.
