Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) despises reporters from CNN so much that he’s now refusing to speak to them in this life — or any other.
The House Intelligence Committee’s minority ranking member has gone woo woo. He’s also threatening to sue the news outlet that President Trump loves to refer to as “fake news” for reporting that he met with a Ukrainian official to allegedly hunt for intel on former Veep and Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden. The Daily Beast is also on Nunes’s chopping block for Betsy Swan‘s reporting on the subject.
Nunes called bullshit on CNN and The Daily Beast. He told Breitbart News that CNN’s reporting was “demonstrably false.”
Nunes has been a thorn in the side of House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during the House impeachment hearings, which he believes are a waste of time. He also says the mainstream media is distorting what is actually happening. (RELATED: Devin Nunes Yields To Adam Schiff For ‘Story Time Hour’)
Liberals are loathe to cut him any slack.
“Devin Nunes is truly one of the dumbest members of Congress ever,” ex-CNNer and lefty Roland Martin, who hosts The Roland Martin Show, told The Mirror when asked for comment. “He makes Louis Gohmert look like a Rhodes Scholar.”
As you may notice, Nunes didn’t say it’ll be a cold day in hell before he speaks to CNN reporters. He declared that he won’t speak to them now or in the afterlife. Which means he may be under the assumption that he’s got a spot in heaven.
The report by CNN’s Vicky Ward indicates that Nunes isn’t interested in any terrestrial communication with anyone at the network. So forget about it Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon. You, too, Brianna Keilar and Dana Bash.
Over the past two weeks, CNN approached Nunes on two occasions and reached out to his communications staff to get comment for this story. In the Capitol on Nov. 14, as CNN began to ask a question about the trip to Vienna, Nunes interjected and said, “I don’t talk to you in this lifetime or the next lifetime. At any time,” Nunes added. “On any question.”
On Thursday, he repeated his other life answer.
“To be perfectly clear, I don’t acknowledge any questions from you in this lifetime or the next lifetime,” Nunes said while leaving the impeachment hearing. “I don’t acknowledge any question from you ever.”
In other words, CNN is dead to Nunes. Future lives be damned. So, for example, even if he shows up as a mosquito in his next life, he’s never talking to congressional reporter Manu Raju or White House correspondents Kaitlan Collins and Jim Acosta and Fox News-hating media scribes Oliver Darcy and Brian Stelter ever again.
A CNN spokesperson did not reply to a hypothetical question about Manu Raju approaching Devin Nunes in heaven. There was also no response to the prospect of Raju becoming a horse in his next life or a head angel.
I also reached out to Nunes’s Communications Director Jack Langer to find out the latest on the potential lawsuits. “Yes. He will sue,” Langer replied when I asked if his boss was definitely going to sue the outlets.
Is Nunes channeling Prince? As the late musician sang, “Electric word/ life/It means forever and that’s a mighty long time/But I’m here to tell you/There’s something else/The afterworld. … Cause in this life/Things are much harder than in the afterworld/In this life/You’re on your own.”
Nunes is hardly the first lawmaker to draw a line in the sand where certain news outlets are concerned.
On Saturday, Democratic president hopeful Andrew Yang announced a boycott against MSNBC for a slew of sins such as calling him “John Yang” on air and not including him in their graphics. This was his response to MSNBC’s request for him to appear on one of their shows.
“They think we need them. We don’t,” Yang tweeted, adding that if they apologize to him on air, he’ll do a TV hit.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who also sits on the House Intelligence Committee, recently took her fury out on The Hill‘s senior reporter Scott Wong and said she’s no longer speaking to the publication. Her reason? John Solomon, a conservative journalist and former employee for The Hill, who wrote stories that have incited a newsroom uprising. Speier was outraged by the testimony of ex-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich and alleged “smears” against her in stories that are now under review by The Hill.
“I just find it reprehensible that any newspaper would just be willing to put that kind of crap out that is not — has no veracity whatsoever, and not check to see if it had any veracity,” said Speier in a story reported by Politico’s Michael Calderone. “And then it becomes a talking point. And he becomes a nonpartisan commentator. It’s corrupt. It’s just corrupt.”
Speier told Wong, “I’m not speaking to The Hill anymore. Sorry.”
Nunes isn’t the only one with lawsuits on the brain.
Solomon told Fox News that he’s considering litigation against outlets that have questioned his reporting. Solomon, however, is not suing proposing a lawsuit against a fake cow Twitter account or communications strategist Liz Mair for making fun of him. Nunes is currently suing Mair for $400 million. (RELATED: The Mirror Questionnaire With Liz Mair, The Woman At The Center Of A Lawsuit That Involves A Fake Cow)
When asked to comment on Nunes’s threats to sue CNN and The Daily Beast, Mair told me, “At first glance this looks like yet another Nunes lawsuit using litigation as a cudgel to stifle free speech … a right guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution … which Nunes swore an oath to support and defend— and not just the parts he happens to like (and the First Amendment seems in my opinion very much not to his liking).”
She continued, “Separately, if he does in fact sue CNN and it’s not thrown out before discovery, I think he’s likely to find himself talking exhaustively, under oath, to CNN’s lawyers.”
Mair tried to put herself in Nunes’s shoes.
“If it were me filing this kind of lawsuit, I think I’d rather talk to Manu Raju in a Hill corridor than CNN’s lawyers in, say, a deposition under oath.”