Politico reports that “The White House has refused to send its spokespeople or surrogates onto CNN shows, effectively icing out the network from on-air administration voices.” Currently CNN ranks #2 behind Fox News.

A White House official told Politico “We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda.”

And CNN won’t play ball. We recently saw Anderson Cooper unwittingly retweeted a satirical Onion piece on him which says Spicer’s “role in the Trump administration will be to provide the American public with robust and clearly articulated misinformation.”

So, yeah.

The last laugh may be on Trump. CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who has known Trump a long time (and while with NBC brought The Apprentice to TV) told New York Magazine,

“One of the things I think this administration hasn’t figured out yet is that there’s only one television network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus — and that’s CNN.”

On the other hand, this might be okay with Trump, just all a part of his “America First” program. He might even realize foreigners aren’t dumb enough to believe the kind of nonsense Fox News peddles anyway (he certainly thinks the American public is that stupid).

There is an upside for America: We might get to see the Democratic point of view stated on network news shows, typically dominated by right wing talking points, a bit more than we have in the past. And CNN would not only have a chance to redeem itself for the sin of hosting Corey Lewandowski but might actually see its ratings go up.

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