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John Berman Resents Having to Correct the Record As Audie Cornish Makes Incorrect Victimhood

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Jan 20, 2026
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

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BlueAnon – CNN

  • The legal team might have been up late last night.

With John Berman sitting in for Abby Phillip, the roundtable discussion featured new CNN analyst Cameron Kasky, who is known for being a survivor of the Parkland High School shooting incident. Many people were focused on how he supposedly dressed down Scott Jennings (please with this…) by telling him what is forbidden to say. Jennings was properly dismissive of the sniveling autocrat attempt.

But the larger issue in their exchange was when Kasky announced definitively that the president of the country was a known sex trafficker. He wanted to move on from that declarative sentence, but Jennings was right to call out that comment, and turned to Berman to ask if he was going to correct that comment. Clearly, John was hesitant to do so, and when he eventually gave a tepid record correction, he turned to Jennings, with a dismissive, “Satisfied?!”

Unreal approach to all of this…

Border-line Obsession – REUTERS

  • I’m sure you folks saw a connection here, but few others see it.

A Reuters reporter attempted to make a sympathetic case about ICE agents taking an elderly man into custody. He showed a staff photo of agents escorting him out of his home and into snowy conditions while wearing only shorts, Crocs, and a blanket draped over him. 

In a post about the incident, the news syndicate correspondent saw fit to also include mention of the Renee Nicole Good shooting, even though that incident had absolutely zero bearing on this case.

Perhaps the reason for this distracting inclusion was that it might deflect away from the fact that this man was being detained for housing and blocking agents from detaining two illegals in his residence, who had convictions of sex crimes; one for rape, the other for sex with a minor, and both carrying orders for removal.

Low-Octane Gaslighting – CNN

  • These poor, put-upon, bedraggled attackers are the real victims!

One of the ever-growing realities from the Left, and seen in the press, is that illegal behavior is excused away if it is framed as simply being a form of protest. Tearing up the downtown areas of Los Angeles? Just an innocent anti-ICE demonstration. Firebombing a Tesla dealership? Just a form of the resistance crowd free expression!

With this approach, Audie Cornish had a really curious interpretation covering the mob scene that played out this weekend at a Minneapolis church, the one involving Don Lemon. 

Cornish stipulates that, see, those mob members are the real victims. How, you may ask?! Well…

According to the wizened pundit, the people in that city feel like they had no other choice in voicing their opposition! What is markedly obtuse about her explanation is how, within the span of one sentence, she describes the people as being “helpless,” then states they were “bullying” their way into the church. You may want to pick a lane there, Audie.

Body Checking the Fact-Checkers – MS NOW

  • Say, Jake? The reports of their backing were made the very same day, you may want to check on that.

At MS NOW, on Ana Cabrera Reports, she turned to correspondent Jake Traylor who was covering President Trump’s comments on the Minnesota protests and the church raid that took place. Traylor was clearly slanted in attempting to fact-check the president, starting with the proof he offered of ICE misbehavior coming from stray videos provided by protesters. As we have seen, they lean on brief clips of 15 seconds or so, showing skirmishes from federal agents, but lacking in the prior minutes of provocations by protesters that instigated the responses. These are sufficient for Traylor to stand as “proof.”

But he also took issue with Trump stating that the church mob was a group of paid protesters. Traylor postured that he was disproving this “baseless claim” by stating through the past few weeks correspondents spoke to protesters who told them they were not paid agitators. See?! It totally checks out!

This was a pitiful distraction. Previous protesters in the streets had no bearing on the organized incursion at the church, because even Don Lemon notified viewers that the mob had been entirely orchestrated by Black Lives Matter organizers.

Prose & Contradiction – THE ATLANTIC

  • This new trend is totally MAGA; just ignore who the biggest name actually supports.

The Atlantic makes a pathetically desperate attempt to label a fringe movement of mentally-imbalanced folks as being connected to Trump. “Looksmaxxersa” is allegedly a growing trend of people taking extreme steps to improve their appearances, such as altering their bodies in an aggressive, almost violent fashion.

The so-called looksmaxxing movement is narcissistic, cruel, racist, shot through with social Darwinism, and proudly anti-compassion. As the name suggests, looksmaxxers share a monomaniacal commitment to improving their physical appearance. If you had to pick a single corner of the internet that best captures the vices of the Trump era, you couldn’t beat the looksmaxxers.

Well, surely there must be some example provided to prove this is somehow connected to Trump, right? Thomas Chatterton Williams, writing about this “movement,” offers up one such example, but you may note a bit of a contradictory summation of what this person says and Williams's conclusion:

They defy neat political classification. The community is simply too nihilistic. Its newest star, Braden Peters, made this clear during a recent podcast interview with the conservative commentator Michael Knowles, in which the two discussed a potential 2028 presidential contest between California Governor Gavin Newsom and Vice President J. D. Vance. Peters said he disagrees with Newsom’s politics, but would vote for the governor anyway because he’s more handsome—or, in the group’s parlance, he “mogs” Vance.