Late-night host Bill Maher lashed out at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins over the left-wing network’s “praise” of Vice President Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention.
Maher, the host of Real Time with Bill Maher, sat down with the CNN anchor on Friday to ask her about the network’s journalistic integrity, as she insisted the cable news network was objective.
He mentioned the awkward moment last week when Stephen Colbert’s audience laughed after he referred to the network as “objective.”
“I’m a big CNN supporter, but that says a lot, doesn’t it?” Maher, whose show airs on the network on Saturday nights, pressed the journalist.
How do you think they’re doing in terms of the idea that “this is a terribly divided country. Not only are we politicized, but many people hate the other side”?
“And CNN, in my opinion, should be the place where both sides can see the situation. How do you think you’re doing?”
Bill Maher sat down with Kaitlan Collins on his show Friday to ask her about CNN’s journalistic integrity, as she insisted she is objective.
But Collins said CNN is “the place where both sides can look.”
“My show is proof of that,” he said. “We have legislators from both parties. We’ll have Elizabeth Warren one night, we’ll have Ted Cruz another night… I mean, look at what just happened in Chicago.
‘We had 300 CNN people on site covering that convention. There were several reporters from our team on site alone relaying the information in real time to the people.
“And I think CNN puts resources behind things and delivers a level of news that you don’t get anywhere else.”
But Maher stepped in, saying: “I’m talking about the people at CNN. I know what the conservatives in America think and I don’t blame them.”
He then pointed to CNN’s coverage of Harris’ convention speech on Thursday night, noting that she concluded her speech at 11:09 p.m. EST.
Maher noted that there was only one conservative on the network’s panel, which aired about 15 minutes later, but Collins argued that CNN “is the place where both sides can watch.”
“It wasn’t until 11:23 that the conservative guy showed up. What’s his name?”
“Scott Jennings,” Collins replied, referring to a Republican political strategist.
“I call him Lonesome Scott,” Maher replied, at which point Collins pointed out that lobbyist David Urban was also there.
“From 8:09 to 8:23 (Pacific time), everyone was raving about how great the speech was,” Maher said of the CNN panel.
“And I think he did well. I didn’t think he was as good as they were making him out to be.
“But if I’m a conservative in the United States and I watch CNN just for the centrist stance, that’s what I hear for 15 minutes. It’s great.”
“And then came Lonely Scott,” he said.
“It seems like a symbolic thing. It’s like what happens with ‘The View.’ It’s almost better that there’s no one there, like on MSNBC.”
Maher argued that it is almost better to have no conservative on the panel than to have a token conservative.
Still, Collins rejected Maher’s characterization of the network.
“I don’t think you can say it’s better to not have anybody there and then also lament the fact that the conservative guy, Scott Jennings, who’s great and we have him on my show all the time, isn’t believed to have spoken up early enough,” he argued.
“It was a Democratic convention, they turned to Democrats… to look into this. And I don’t think you can say CNN is biased at all, I mean we covered President Biden’s exit from the race very closely, the pressure on him to drop out.
“And I feel like I can speak with authority on this,” Collins continued.
‘I’m from Alabama. I’m from a very Republican state. I have a very conservative family. A lot of them are Trump voters.
‘They watch my show every night, and I think they know they can trust me, that, you know, we call lies from all sides, not just whatever leanings our audience might have, and I think that’s something that people really want more of.
“And everyone who spoke last night was not all Democrats,” he added. “I mean Dana Bash, Jake Tapper, Abby Phillip, all my amazing colleagues, they came to offer their analysis.”
“That’s what they look like,” Maher agreed, though he continued to argue that the coverage was unbalanced.
“At a time like this, it was like the odds were five to one. It always seems like it’s five to one,” he argued.
The interview came just days after Collins received harsh words from conservatives for retracting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s controversial remarks about Donald Trump.
The awkward interview came just days after Collins was criticized by conservatives for failing to challenge Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s controversial claims about Donald Trump.
She interviewed Shapiro from the floor of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night and asked him about Trump’s claims that anti-Semitism led to his being passed over for Harris’ running mate.
“Donald Trump has no credibility to speak on this issue,” Shapiro said. “He’s a person who has acted with intolerance, he’s a person who spreads hate.”
He then discussed Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville riots in 2017, saying that Trump’s reaction to neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us” was to say “there are good people on both sides. There weren’t good people on both sides!”
This claim has been challenged by several fact-checkers, including Spies and Political factwho point out that Trump was not referring to neo-Nazis and white nationalists, but to protesters and counter-protesters who were addressing the original reason for the meeting: the removal of a Confederate statue.
The former president, at the same press conference days after the riots, said neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be “totally condemned.”
This led many to criticise Collins – a veteran of the conservative Daily Caller newspaper – for failing to refute Shapiro’s already controversial claims.
John LeFevre wrote: ‘Here is Governor Josh Shapiro knowingly and intentionally repeating the Charlottesville lie to paint Donald Trump as a ‘bigot.’ @kaitlancollins, who is quick to respond to Republicans, does nothing to correct it.
“This is not journalism.”