Media top headlines May 10
NBC's Chuck Todd failing to ask Dr. Fauci about the origins of COVID and more round out today's top media headlines.
Left-wing CNN analyst Susan Hennessey is joining the Justice Department in another example of the liberal network serving as a pipeline to the Biden administration.
Hennessey will serve as senior counsel for the department's national security division after a stint at the Brookings Institution and the Lawfare blog.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken served as a global affairs analyst for CNN after a prior stint in the Obama administration's State Department, and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, another Obama alumna, was a CNN commentator before being tapped for her current position.
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Current CNN anchors and hosts include former Obama official Jim Sciutto, former Obama adviser David Axelrod, former Obama official Van Jones, and Laura Jarrett, daughter of former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
Hennessey has been an enthusiastic proponent of Russia collusion theories, such as bolstering the discredited Christopher Steele dossier that was ultimately dismissed as a pile of falsehoods, rumor and innuendo by an Inspector General investigation. Prior to her CNN stint, she served in the Obama administration as an attorney in the National Security Agency.
Online observers noted thousands of tweets had been deleted ahead of the announcement of her new position. Fellow Brookings Institution member Benjamin Wittes said Hennessey merely had her tweets set to auto-delete and wasn't trying to hide her record.
Among her memory-holed tweets include a widely panned one blaming the United States in part for Iran shooting down a Ukrainian passenger plane in 2020. Also gone are comments on the sprawling Russia probe, including a dismissal of the 2018 Republican memo casting aspersions on surveillance warrant abuses by the Justice Department and one from 2017 asserting a "concrete allegation of Trump team collusion."
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Hennessey devoted a podcast to the Robert Mueller Russia investigation report, which ultimately found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to fix the 2016 election, but she was uninterested in similar coverage of the Inspector General report that found significant FISA abuses by officials at the department she is now joining.
Presented on CNN as a dispassionate analyst, she asked Twitter followers last year what concrete steps they would take to "ensure" then-President Donald Trump was defeated in November.
Liberal media critic Glenn Greenwald blasted Hennessey as "one of the most deranged Russiagate conspiracists of the last 4 years."
"You think this is nuts, just wait until Biden appoints Louise Mensch Marshal of the Supreme Court," Fox News contributor Ben Domenech joked, alluding to the notorious conspiracy theorist.
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Hennessey's hiring was also met with some media praise.
"Big job for a smart cookie!" Politico's Blake Hounshell wrote.
Left-wing pundit Molly Jong-Fast also offered her congratulations.
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