On Thursday, CNN anchor John Berman likened Republicans to dirty pigs as he discussed the upcoming 1/6 hearings with former Congressman Joe Walsh and CNN host Brianna Keilar.
Berman began, “We begin with brand-new reporting about the Capitol insurrection and the Democrats’ strategy to investigate it. Sources tell CNN that Democrats are making a conscious effort to avoid turning the probe into a spectacle. Something that they think Republicans might attempt to do. Democrats are also looking to keep some of the work they do behind closed doors.”
As Mark Finkelstein of Newsbusters reported, Berman then played a clip of Fox “repeatedly channeling all of the Democrat chatter that Republicans will politicize the 1/6 hearings,” like this:
[Look], the committee has met twice behind closed doors to try to sort out how they are going to move forward in investigating what happened on January 6. And one thing that they’re very conscious of, very aware of, is that Republicans are going to try to make this a spectacle as quickly as they can . . . They’re very conscious of the fact that select committees like the Benghazi select committee became something that was a political firework every time they had a public hearing. Some of the work that they want to do is going to happen behind closed doors . . . They’re also aware of the fact that to get some new information, to actually break through what happened on January 6, how these people were able to communicate ahead of this event, they need to have some real investigations that happen behind closed doors. … Whether or not Democrats can keep this from becoming a political circus, they’re going to try really hard and they’re very conscious of that.
Fox then surmised, ignoring the fact that Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) presence on the committee would not strike some members of the GOP as being representative of their positions, “And we should also note that Pelosi, in trying to make sure this doesn’t look like a partisan circus, has Liz Cheney that she appointed to this committee. That was a very conscious decision to send a message to some of her moderate members.”
A few minutes later on the show, Walsh told Keilar, “The Democrats shouldn’t be afraid, Brianna, to look into that truth, because that truth is that Donald Trump and the Republicans, the big lie, led to the why, to why people were there. I think Democrats really need to be unafraid here to pursue the truth.”
Berman patronized, “The problem, though, is, as they used to say to me growing up on the farm, Joe, is that the thing is, when you wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it. The Republicans, as you say, they want this to be dirty.”