CNN spent the better part of five years trying to convince Americans that former President Donald Trump was a blight on American existence. They did everything but sit in sackcloth and ashes moaning in the streets about how horrible the “Orange man” was. While that response seemed still on the table at the time of the 2020 presidential elections, the suits over at CNN seem to have composed themselves somewhat and are ready to take a more mature approach to reporting on Trump.
Most recently, Thomas Balcerski, a professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University penned an Op-Ed which was published by CNN on Wednesday where he admitted that Trump was NOT the worst president in the history of the United States (though don’t worry, they did put him firmly in the bottom five).
Balcerski began his thinly veiled diatribe by citing a C-SPAN survey about the 2021 Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, which had the astonishing trait of featuring, that’s right, former President Donald Trump. Balcerski went on to talk about the technical aspects of the survey, saying they drew from a “broad ideological and demographic spectrum,” which sounds super fancy until you hear that that supposed “broad” group was made up of 142 presidential historians and professional observers of the presidency, of which the author of the aforementioned CNN Op-Ed, was one.
“The results are from my fellow historians are now in: Donald Trump is not our worst president,” Balcerski announced. “Instead, James Buchanan continues to hold the bottom spot. Trump ranks in 41st place, with three presidents beneath him.”
Balcerski then went on to talk about Buchanan, citing his own research about the former American president. However, when pointing to the terrible and awful things Buchanan did, Balcerski seemed to blatantly point to things that the left has accused Trump of doing, but could never really prove. The game here for someone, not a scrapper, but rather an intellectual, appears to be to trigger associations in the minds of his readers with things that the left beat into their heads over and over, saying that Trump did, without the proof that he actually did them.
First up, is the idea that Buchanan is worse than Trump because he was “meddling into the affairs of the Supreme Court.” This is something the left is highly sore about, thanks to Trump’s ability to name not just one or two, but three Supreme Court justices during his tenure in the White House. Trump’s move wasn’t meddling, but much like a petulant child who wants someone punished regardless, they appear to be trying to make the accusation stick.
The professor also cited Buchanan’s time where “he presided over the secession of seven Southern states from the Union and declared himself unable to stop it.”
“’It is beyond the power of any president, no matter what may be his own political proclivities, to restore peace and harmony among the states,’ he said in his annual message to Congress in 1860.”
Balcerski even pointed out Buchanan’s leaning on the constitution for his justification. The parallels there between what the left has accused Trump of and what has actually happened amongst frustrated Americans is hardly shrouded even in a shaw of pretense.
However, the major win here in terms of psychological messaging is clearly the unadulterated joy that can be heard through the screen when the network was able to put “Trump” and “worst president” in the same sentences over and over, emblazoning it in the minds of readers, without actually saying something that they don’t have the science to back up. But at least they seem to be *trying* to not say the blatant lies that defy proof out loud, I guess that’s something.
For our part, however, CNN may not be the worst-ranked cable news network on television, but it’s programming like this that makes us *think* CNN should be the worst network on cable television. Technically CNN ranks 11th in recent reports, however, it was beat out in primetime by the History Channel, the Hallmark Channel, and Investigation Discovery, so while CNN isn’t yet the least-watched channel on television, it’s making tracks in that direction fast and CNN may *soon* be known as the worst cable news channel, ever.
