CNN Stars Gripe Biden ‘Political Damage is Done’ No Matter How Much CNN Points Out There’s No Evidence

CNN anchor Dana Bash and her newsroom colleagues bemoaned the fact that despite CNN’s reporting about the lack of evidence against President Joe Biden, “the damage has been done” by a “partisan media” and former President Donald Trump.

Wednesday’s closed-door Hunter Biden testimony — scheduled after Hunter tried to crash a public hearing to testify several weeks ago — brought more media attention to a probe that is ostentatiously imploding.

On Wednesday afternoon’s edition of CNN’s Inside Politics, Bash roasted the GOP impeachment inquiry as “the wildest of goose chases” as she fact-checked an exchange between Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and Paula Reid.

But correspondent Jeff Zeleny pointed out that after all the coverage, there’s no putting it all “back in the bottle” — to agreement from Bash and correspondent Evan Perez:

JEFF ZELENY: All that said, it does not mean that there still isn’t a political problem for the administration because you can’t put all of this sort of back in the bottle. I mean, this has been something that is, has been a drip, drip, drip for months and years.

And now suddenly to find out. “Oh, wait! Not true!”

The political damage in some respects has been done. So, we can’t sort of lose sight of that. But going forward here, this will be looked at as a chapter, where Congress clearly is following the lead of not a branch of government, but the fourth estate, you know, a partisan, partisan media.

DANA BASH: And the former president.

JEFF ZELENY: And the former president, of course, talking all that. But I think the practical matter of this, vis-a-vis, it contributes to the president’s lower approval rating. When you talk to voters and other things, they believe that he is complicit in this. And so that’s a problem.

EVAN PEREZ: Right. And kind of that is that is kind of the point. Right. And I think, I think a lot of us, you know, certainly if we’ve been covering this, we’ve heard from people close to Republicans who’ve told them and warned them that there was no there there.

But they still pursued it, because that is the point. The point, it is sort of following the script of, of of what the Republicans did to Hillary Clinton with Benghazi. Right?

There was nothing there. But they spent months, dinging her and damaging her. And in the end, Chaffetz went on television and said, we kind of, that’s what we did.

DANA BASH: Yeah. And and your point about not being able to put the genie back in the bottle?

I mean, as much as we go on and give the facts and give the information and try to give the reality as much as we know it, as we learn it and have said for months, if not longer, these are the Republican claims. They have not give us, given us any evidence really, to back it up.

You can’t change the echo chamber, through which a lot of Americans get their information. And it’s hard to imagine, unfortunately, that the tone and tenor is going to change much, even though the facts aren’t on their side.

Watch above via CNN’s Inside Politics.