On Monday’s CNN NewsNight (aka the CNN Thunderdome) sunk to a predictable low as, helmed by fill-in host Audie Cornish, the leftists loons argued Daniel Penny was no different than Luigi Mangione, the alleged murderer of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson.
Worse yet, they claimed Penny protecting fellow New York subway riders from Jordan Neely a case of “vigilante action” and exacerbated by, of course, racism. Thankfully, CNN’s Scott Jennings took them to school with a hand-drawn chart that Penny is a “good guy” and Mangione the “bad guy.”
“[L]et me just help you understand,” Jennings began as he introduced a handy chart to Cornish. “If you’re on the American left tonight, here’s my chart. The good guys today — Daniel Penny. The bad guys — Luigi Mangione.”
Cornish clutched her pearls, wondering “what’s the chart for victims” in reference to Neely and Thompson as though the circumstances of their deaths were the same.
Jennings wasn’t having it, declaring he’s “just telling you what I see out in the world today” that “[i]t seems to me everybody on the left...seem to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.”
The former NPR host played dumb by insisting she’s wasn’t “actually asking...about people on the left.”
“I want to know whether you think that as Congressman [Eli] Crane does, that Daniel Penny should get the Congressional Gold Medal to recognize his heroism,” she asked.
Jennings quipped “he ought to get a medal” in addition to “a statue...in New York City.”
Far-left Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Solomon Jones injected the race angle to the Neely case, which Jennings promptly ripped apart (click “expand”):
JONES: I think that race — and I’m going to say it. I’m going to say it the dreaded R-word. Race place a role in this, right? And so, we see it —
JENNINGS: Does it?
JONES: — yes, absolutely —
VILLALONA: Yes, yes.
JONES: — because statistics say that —
JENNINGS: Wasn’t there — wasn’t there a similar case in New York City —
JONES: — statistics — wait a minute —
JENNINGS: — at the same time that this was going on?
JONES: — statistics say that when people kill people who are white, they tend to get harsher sentences
JENNINGS: Do they?
JONES: —especially if they’re people of color.
JENNINGS: What about the Jordan Williams case? What about the Jordan Williams case?
JONES: That always —
VILLALONA: Whoa, whoa, whoa —
JONES: — okay, that is —
VILLALONA: — Scott, Scott, Scott —
JONES: — what happens in our criminal justice system.
VILLALONA: — first of all —
JONES: No, I’m not going to stop because race absolutely plays a role in this.
JENNINGS: I didn’t ask you to stop. I said —
VILLALONA: — some of the witnesses —
JENNINGS: — I said — what about the Jordan Williams case here in New York? Same situation, African American gets on a subway, ends up killing a guy. Grand jury tosses it out at the exact same time as the Penny case.
Longtime Democratic Party strategist Hilary Rosen actually agreed with Jennings and Aidala and described this tragedy as “not a left-right issue” but “the right decision” and the blasted the insinuation of racism because “were multiple witnesses that were people of color” (including someone who assisted Penny) as well as on the jury.
Jones tried to interject, but Rosen pointed out Neely “was still alive when the paramedics got there and they ended up delaying their attention to him because they were afraid he might be dangerous[.]”
Rewinding to earlier in the show, Cornish’s tease for the first of two segments on this gross comparison spelled doom: “Plus, some MAGA allies are celebrating the verdict of Daniel Penny, a former Marine acquitted for choking to death a mentally ill homeless man on the subway.”
Dr. Jeff Gardere said the Thompson murder was a result of “this last presidential election, where hate is allowed to be an impetus, to support certain people and certain causes,” which led longtime NYC attorney and frequent cable TV guest Arthur Aidala to tee, off saying it’s not “fair” to “be correlating an execution and assassination with the election of President Trump”
“I never said that, Arthur. What I did say is that there has been a lot of hate and there has been divisiveness from this particular presidential election, and we see this happening on both sides where hate separates people,” Gardere replied.
Cornish backed him up, disingenuously arguing Trump’s only part of the equation because a reporter asked Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) about the first Trump assassination attempt during a Monday night presser about Mangione’s arrest.
Filling in for the devoutly partisan Phillip, Cornish knew when to lob the incendiary rhetoric given her past at NPR by directly tying Penny and Mangione. With Jennings still a segment away, Aidala thankfully stepped in to argue with Cornish. Also in this blow-up, Gardere threw out the word “vigilante” to describe Penny (click “expand”):
CORNISH: I’m going to phrase it slightly differently, and you guys can tell me if I’m completely wrong in saying it this way. You know, later in the night, we’re also going to talk about Penny and the verdict there. There you also have a victim who somebody determined did not deserve to continue living, right?
AIDALA: No. No No. No. No.
CORNISH: Yes. Tell me. Tell me which vigilante action is okay.
AIDALA: One is — one being proactive, right? So, this kid who executed someone, executed a guy walking away from him, shot him in the back, shot him in the — for no reason, whatsoever. Daniel Penny is a hero. You can say anything you want. Talk to people who ride the subway every day, because I do all the time. I do all the time.
CORNISH: Okay, so let me bring in —
AIDALA: I can’t find anyone who rides the subway who’s unhappy about this verdict.
CORNISH: — I’m going to bring — well, that doesn’t sound any more pleasant than what we’re hearing from — but here’s an ICU nurse commenting on Reddit saying, “honestly, I’m not wishing anyone harm, but when you’ve spent so much time and made so much money by increasing the suffering of the humanity around you, it’s hard for me to summon empathy that you died. I’m sure someone somewhere is sad about this. I’m following his lead of indifference.” This is so specific and it’s from someone in the healthcare industry. I don’t know. I’m just trying to make sense of it.
GARDERE: And — and it’s — and what’s happening in our society is there is this lack of empathy. And, Arthur, again, it is because we allow this to happen.
CORNISH: But she says it doesn’t come from nowhere, right?
GARDERE: Right, exactly.
CORNISH: She’s making a justification.
GARDERE: And — and people feel disaffected. They feel very angry. They feel cheated. They feel that there’s no way that they can participate in the system in a fair way and I think that’s a lot of what’s happening. Now, if we had more empathy with this situation, with this alleged killer of the CEO, we would say, this is a tragedy for the person who died. This is a tragedy for the family of this person who’s the alleged killer because there may be some mental health issues, some other things happening and it’s also a tragedy that that person on the subway was killed.
AIDALA: Of course. Of course, no — no — I was with —
CORNISH: It didn’t sound like a chorus, Arthur.
AIDALA: — I was with Daniel Penny this afternoon. You don’t think he regrets what took place? Absolutely. He took — when they grabbed him right after it happened, he didn’t even know someone was dead, let alone did he mean to kill anybody, and the jury of 12 people who heard all the evidence —
CARDERE: — I hear you, Arthur —
AIDALA: — unlike all of us here, found the same thing.
GARDERE: — but people should not be celebrating something that appeared to be or may have been a — an action, whether out of defense, whether helping, but seen as vigilante and saying, well, that’s good.
With the v-word having been deployed, Aidala pushed back and tried to turn the temperature down by admitting it was “a failure of society” that Neely wasn’t taken off the streets and given the help he needed, but reminded viewers that one fellow passenger “said she was shaking like a leaf because she thought she was going to die if Daniel Penny didn’t stand up and do something[.]”
The second segment of partisan bloviating commenced with Cornish whining that Penny’s 2023 encounter with Neely “shoved a discussion about race, crime, and urban decay onto the front pages” and “turned Penny, a former Marine, into a MAGA hero.”
Things became contentious when Jones whined “it’s not reasonable to kill somebody for yelling” and especially because they didn’t “know his criminal record” or his mental state.
In other words, in a vast oversimplification of the situation in which Neely’s yelling was both loud and direct in its threats.
So, Solomon, what’s some harmless death threats between passerby on the subway!
Having waited patiently, this went right into Jennings’s latest schooling.
To see the relevant CNN transcript from December 9, click here.
