CNN’s Chris Cillizza Has an Epiphany

If you watch CNN for any length of time, you’re bound to see what passes for analysis from Chris Cillizza, who is widely derided as one of the worst in the business. Perhaps the best take on Cillizza comes from Deadspin:

When I write that CNN politics writer Chris Cillizza is the rankest assbrain in the Western Hemisphere, I am not being nice to him. When I write that God clowned Chris Cillizza before he was born by making him Chris Cillizza instead of a shit-eating maggot, I am being unkind. When I say that Chris Cillizza himself is the punchline to the cruelest work of absurdist comedy in the history of the fucking universe, and that the title of that work is On the Origin of Species, I am being mean. Likewise it probably is downright nasty for me to write that on the whole American society would benefit greatly by Chris Cillizza being fired out of a large cannon into an even larger cliff face. But I am not bullying Chris Cillizza. Categorically, I cannot do that.

…and that’s the polite part.

Perhaps one of the worst things Cillizza did during the 2016 election was obsessing over Hillary Clinton’s emails, so much so that a google search of his catchphrase “but her emails” brings up more than 86,000 angry and derisive results. The fact that he did this while celebrating Donald Trump’s insults as if they were hard news made it even worse.

We are living in a golden age of political nicknames.

President Donald Trump is the Michael Jordan of name-calling, seemingly upping the ante of what’s possible in the nickname sphere with each passing week.
On Tuesday morning, Trump added another — “Cheatin’ Obama”– in reference to his immediate predecessor in the White House. It’s not clear what exactly where Obama was “cheatin’,” but it doesn’t matter! It’s a nickname! It doesn’t have to make sense!
Where does the latest nickname fit in my definitive rankings of Trump’s nicknames for his political enemies? Good question! Scroll down.

Cillizza was so proud of this little project he even put up a self-congratulatory post on Facebook.

Chris Cillizza celebrating candidate Donald Trump’s name-calling/Facebook screen shot

Nearly a year and a half later -our reputation as the world’s leader in tatters, as Nazis march in our streets, as redneck states try to strip women of their reproductive rights, as thousands of migrant children languish in cages, as the bottom begins to drop out of our economy, and as Trump makes more overt authoritarian moves every single day- Cillizza has had an epiphany. Maybe –JUST MAYBE– it wasn’t a good idea to mindlessly parrot everything Donald Trump says as just another funny joke, as something that wasn’t to be taken seriously, as something we could all have a laugh at and then click over to whatever sit-com or reality show is rotting our collective brains right now. Yes, dude-bro Cillizza has seen the light, and now he’s “working on not doing it going forward.”

I am sure that everyone in America who has been hurt by the Trump administration is duly grateful that Cillizza -who can’t make any promises, mind you- will “work” on not being the dumbest guy at CNN.

I’m sure everyone is holding their breath.