CNN gives Trump opening to blast the media—and ignore healthcare

It is the last thing a media organization ever really wants—to become the news when there's news to report.

The U.S. Senate is considering a bill that would repeal the Affordable Care Act, give a big tax cut to the wealthy, and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, leave more than 22 million Americans without insurance by 2026.

Not that you'd know it if you followed President Donald Trump.

As Republicans tried to round up the requisite majority of votes for the secretive bill, Trump spent Tuesday morning lambasting CNN. That's pretty routine, with one big exception—CNN had it coming.

Three senior CNN journalists resigned on Monday evening after the network retracted an investigative story about a congressional investigation into Trump officials' ties to a Russian investment fund. The journalists had not followed CNN's editorial process, and the story was based on a single anonymous source.

The resignations included three heavy hitters: Lex Haris, executive editor of CNNMoney's new investigative unit; Eric Lichtblau, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who had recently joined the company from the New York Times; and journalist Thomas Frank.

Trump, never one to miss an opportunity to go after the media, let fly.

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As if to add insult to injury, a videotape was released late Tuesday evening showing a CNN producer saying that the channel's coverage of Trump in relation to Russia was "mostly bullshit" and "good for business."

Mistakes happen in journalism, but these unforced errors come at a particularly bad time for CNN—and the media in general.

Trump and his administration are now engaged in all-out war with the press, which he often refers to as "the enemy." Routine briefings are prevented from being broadcast. The president and his advisers rarely talk to any media that is not avowedly pro-Trump. In turn, that pro-Trump media also spends much of its time parroting Trump's mainstream media attacks.

Now, CNN has thrown fuel on the fire at a very inopportune time. The healthcare bill being considered by the Senate includes $1 trillion in tax cuts, with 40 percent of that going to the top 1 percent of income earners. Politicians, analysts, and journalists have been scrambling to unpack the bill, which was drafted in secret and only recently released.

That lack of transparency made the bill very easy to ignore up until Monday, when the CBO issued its report, finding that 22 million Americans will lose health insurance. Trump had promised in January "insurance for everybody" in the Republican replacement for Obamacare. He also promised not to cut Medicaid, which the bill also cuts.

How to address that incongruity? Ignore it completely in favor of a conveniently timed media story. By late Tuesday morning, Breitbart and the Drudge Report were both running with CNN stories and barely a mention of the healthcare legislation.

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Going after the media has become the go-to move for Trump and his supporters anytime there's a topic they don't want to deal with. Even after Trump fired James Comey as director of the FBI, attention turned not to the president's motivations but instead to the media's coverage of the firing.

CNN in particular has been a punching bag for Trump. Though the New York Times and Washington Post have arguably produced the more damaging journalism about him, Trump's affinity for cable news means CNN never appears to be far from his thoughts.

This isn't foreign knowledge to CNN or its CEO Jeff Zucker, who has publicly acknowledged just how good the Trump drama has been for the news company. He's faced criticism from both conservatives and liberals for taking advantage of the situation.

With CNN already a flashpoint, the retraction, resignations, and tape were more than enough to help Trump and his friendly media lapdogs dodge any serious healthcare discussions.