CNN’s April Ryan is having a rough couple of days. After the Senate Intelligence Committee released a copy of former FBI director James Comey’s written statement about his conversations with President Trump surrounding the Russia investigation, CNN was forced to issue a correction on some of its predictions about the testimony. CNN’s initial report predicted that Comey would contradict Trump’s claims the former FBI director had several times told the president the latter was not under investigation.
During a panel discussion on “Anderson Cooper 360” a few hours after copy of the testimony was released, The Federalist’s Mary Katharine Ham pointed out that because Comey was the first one to ask for a private, one-on-one meeting with Trump while he was president-elect, that may have made Trump think it was no different to meet with Comey in a similar fashion after he was sworn in as president.
“The president is a person who acts inappropriately at times, who lies at times,” Ham said. “I think many people actually voted for him knowing that and in an exit poll said: ‘Yeah, we know those things.’ That’s like a baseline. . . I think the question is not whether he acted inappropriately but whether that amounts to an obstruction of justice. On a panel sometimes it feels a lot of reporters have already come to a conclusion about that before they’ve even heard him speak.”
“I’ve been in that room 150 feet from the Oval Office for 20 years,” Ryan shot back, outing herself as a reporter who had jumped to conclusions about Comey’s statements before the actual text was released. Then she doubled down on the narrative that Comey’s testimony would be damning to Trump. “I’m not condemning him, but I’m going to tell you this, there’s a lot of smoke and there are a lot of alarm bells.”
“You just told him it happened,” Ham said.
“It’s a big egg on the face of members of the media who wanted this to be a big thing,” Jason Miller said, in reference to the CNN report that Comey’s statement would directly contradict Trump.
“Oh please!” Ryan said. “My face is clean. No egg. I think you’re trying to spin. Republicans are trying to spin as their poll numbers are dropping watching this. People are believing the former FBI director was fired because of an investigation.”
