Alex Thomas
Chris Cillizza of CNN is known as one of the more conservative voices on the network for his exhausting coverage of the Clinton-email story and his consistent defense of Ivanka Trump. The pundit has a long and successful history in beltway journalism, having worked for Roll Call and The Washington Post. He eventually went to CNN for what was reportedly a treasure chest of a salary. His marketability derives, in part, from a huge following online, as he boasts a whopping 512,000 Twitter followers. On Tuesday morning, Cillizza decided to host an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit, and his critics made their presence known.
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https://twitter.com/isikbreen/status/887333295134035968
Some comments included “Why are you such a dipshit?” and “how many times per day do you look in the mirror and wonder how the hell you get paid so much?”
we truly do not deserve something this pure https://t.co/PXov7KnLJR pic.twitter.com/VhCm0DN2An
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) July 18, 2017
And fellow journalists didn’t shy away from making themselves known. Ashley Feinberg, who currently writes at Wired and gained a following when she broke a story claiming that she’d discovered James Comey’s Twitter account, wrote, “How could you have possibly thought that this would be a good idea?”
The questions for the Chris Cillizza reddit AMA are absolutely glorious.https://t.co/2vYv7BPb1f pic.twitter.com/7CFODwUYej
— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) July 18, 2017
Libby Watson, a politics writer at Fusion, wrote, “Why do you think so many other journalists think you suck?”
https://twitter.com/libbycwatson/status/887343074841636866
And there were a slew of comments along the same lines, cracking jokes at the expense of Cillizza and other CNN faces. One user under the moniker “MafiaVsNinja” wrote, “Does Wolf Blitzer just live in a cabinet at CNN and is folded away after use?” Another user asked, “I saw you posted a lot of pictures from a U2 concert recently. Do you like any bands that are even more boring than them?”
And while there were a few serious questions in there — Cillizza was consistently asked how he got his job — the super-pundit probably learned that it might be wiser to stick to television hits.
