It turns out that CNN has a sick fetish for Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti. According to Newsbusters, in the span of less than two months (from March 7 to April 30), the media giant has interviewed the porn star’s attack dog a total of 59 times — more than once per day on average.
As the bartender would tell the dock worker on his fifth round of shots: “I think you’ve had enough, buddy.”
“Since Avenatti’s first appearance on March 7, he has been interviewed on CNN a whopping 59 times, more than one-third of which (19) were with Anderson Cooper — who, of course, interviewed Stormy Daniels on CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ back in March,” reports Newsbusters.
To demonstrate just how ridiculous that amount of coverage is, CNN hosted House Democrat Adam Schiff (CA) during that same time period a total of 10 times, which, as NB notes, is “a generous portion of airtime for any politician.” Interestingly, prior to the Stormy Daniels controversy taking the media by storm (puns abound), Schiff enjoyed even greater attention from CNN. Between January and February, the notably anti-Trump congressman visited the network a total of 17 times. That means Schiff’s star-power on CNN fell a whole 40% with the arrival of Stormy Daniels and her attack dog Avenatti.
When comparing Republican presence on CNN versus Avenatti, the discrepancy is even worse. During that same time period, Newsbusters also found that “all 51 Republican Senators combined received just 34 interviews on the cable network.”
So, a single lawyer representing a porn star who claims to have shtupped President Trump between intervals of watching “Shark Week” received more airtime on CNN than the entire Senate majority. Surprisingly, some even at CNN recognize that perhaps they need to let the Stormy storm weather down a bit. More from Newsbusters:
On April 6, New Day stand-in host David Gregory elicited a laugh from his fellow panelists when he sarcastically referred to “rare public comments from Michael Avenatti.” And on April 30, CNN legal analyst Paul Callan characterized the lawyer’s most recent lawsuit against the President as “a publicity stunt” during yet another appearance by Avenatti on Cooper’s show.
Despite these remarks by Gregory and Callan, it remains to be seen whether CNN will ratchet back the absurd amount of coverage they have given Avenatti. But if their current pace of 1.09 interviews per day (including weekends) continues for the rest of the year, the network will have bombarded viewers with a total of 327 Avenatti appearances for all of 2018.
The big winner here is, of course, Stormy Daniels, who has been catapulted overnight from a has-been frat boy’s wet dream to one of the most searched names on Pornhub. Her Vegas striptease billing her as the “Trump mistress” has taken itself on the road where premium seats are selling for $35 bucks a pop.
This is truly CNN.