As new CNN head Chris Licht looks to revamp a network that has lost its way, he has one thing working in his favor: The "news" network at this point couldn't possibly get worse. That's what you'd think, anyway, as the once-news-heavy network turned into a den of cheap punditry that swiftly turned every breaking story into a rote-format Teatime For Assholes segment featuring a line of partisan provocateurs to insist that the story, whatever it was, was yet more proof that whoever last wrote a check for their consulting services is the one with all the answers to these problems.

Whether the shift was an attempt to copy the combative style of Fox News (that is, by promoting voices that simply flat-out lie to their audience) or was simply a product of new network cheapness (journalism is expensive; propping four contracted loudmouths to Opine about journalism costs considerably less) is irrelevant. The end result was yet another network that has been doing as much to misinform Americans as inform them. Specifically, the network responded to the horror of its established conservative pundits when faced with the candidacy of boorish, racist, sexist, ever crime-adjacent Trump by hiring new conservative pundits willing to excuse all of those things, for "balance," and indeed responded to each new in-office scandal and impeachable crime by Trump's burgeoning fascist circle with new hires either willing to excuse those new things or who were active participants themselves.