CNN's ratings are in the gutter and continue to slip. I don't know anyone that really feels as though this is anything other than completely deserved also. I never really paid them much mind but these days I will look at what they are doing just to have a laugh about how far they have fallen into this pit that they can't possibly dig themselves out of.
Now that they are rocked with internal scandal of one of their producers messing about with 9-year old kids and of course the Cuomo issues, they don't really have much of a leg left to stand on.
I don't know what CNN could possibly do in order to salvage what remains of their failing company but they seem to be dead set on just continuing to do what got them into this problem of dying ratings in the first place and that is to attack anything and everything that is even remotely conservative. One of their favorite targets in Ted Cruz, quite possibly because it looks like Cruz could be positioning him to run for Prezzo in 2024.
Ted Cruz is from Texas as I am sure everyone knows. He has been anti-mask or at least anti believing that they actually accomplish anything for quite some time. Therefore, unless it is specifically mandated that he wear one, he chooses not to do so and at this point I think that at least in politics, that the entire mask thing is merely used as a talking point for gaining political favor inside one's voter-base anyway.
At Bob Dole's recent funeral a lot of politicians were in attendance. Many of them were wearing masks and I don't know if it was assigned seating or not, but Cruz ended up sitting next to Democrat Amy Klobuchar and at least from the stills and short video clips, their exchanges appeared to be civil. CNN decided to use this opportunity to attempt to get Amy to say nasty things about how Cruz wasn't wearing a mask even though he was sitting next to someone who recently recovered from breast cancer, as if there was some sort of connection between the two things.
Jake Tapper, one of the remaining blowhards from CNN tried in vain to get Klobuchar to bad-mouth Cruz even though the discussion they were having was meant to be about honoring the late Bob Dole.
Klobuchar was remarkably civil in this exchange and wouldn't take the bait and use this as an opportunity to turn the subject away from Dole and towards attacking conservatives, which is really the only thing that they do at CNN anymore. I'm surprised that they actually had a feature about honoring Bob Dole in the first place.
CNN also conveniently didn't feature other photos of Klobuchar and Cruz from earlier on in the same day
Tapper also falsely made the claim that masks were "required" by the rules of the gathering at the National Cathedral but later pivoted to admit that masks were merely "recommended."
I was actually quite proud of Amy for not falling into CNN's partisan trap when she simply stated that "I believe people should wear masks" and she also moved on, avoiding the question any further by stating the obvious.
“We were there to honor Bob Dole and his memory. Bob Dole was all about consensus and bringing people together. Let’s not forget that.”
While Klobuchar did use this opportunity to plug vaccines she resisted CNN's trap to get her to turn this into bad-mouthing Cruz. Perhaps she did this because her state of Minnesota isn't a guaranteed win for Dems but I still have at least some respect for her. I can not say that this is ever true of CNN though. It is also worth noting that in the very video that CNN decided to air that Klobuchar was wearing her mask below her nose, thereby rendering it useless even if there is some truth to masks protecting people from Covid and Tapper, who made the spurious claim that people who recovered from cancer are somehow more at risk of catching Covid, was himself maskless during their discussion.