Home » Latest » Politics » Gutfeld: CNN becomes more ‘racist’ everyday, they are in freefall

Gutfeld: CNN becomes more ‘racist’ everyday, they are in freefall

3

InfoSearched 44 0 Politics

5.5

SaveSavedRemoved 7

Greg Gutfeld says CNN’s race obsession is a symptom of a network in “freefall.”

On ‘The Five,’ Gutfeld and the panel tore into CNN anchor Brianna Keilar’s on-air confrontation with Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, using it as Exhibit A for what they called the network’s habit of reducing every political disagreement to race. The exchange centered on Donalds’ exclusion from the Congressional Black Caucus and whether his conservative record disqualifies him from it in Keilar’s eyes.

• CNN’s Brianna Keilar pressed GOP Rep. Byron Donalds on ‘New Day’ over his exclusion from the Congressional Black Caucus, questioning whether his support for voting restriction legislation clashes with the CBC’s agenda.
• Greg Gutfeld and ‘The Five’ panel accused Keilar of racial essentialism, arguing CNN treats Black political opinion as monolithic and shuts out conservative voices within it.
• Gutfeld tied the segment to a larger claim that CNN is in ratings “freefall” post-Trump and leans on race-driven controversy to hold viewers.

The Keilar-Donalds Exchange

The flashpoint was straightforward on its face: Byron Donalds, a Black Republican congressman from Florida, isn’t a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Brianna Keilar wanted to know why — and whether it had anything to do with his politics. She pushed him specifically on his defense of state-level voting restriction bills, framing the question as whether those positions put him at odds with what the CBC is supposed to represent.

To Gutfeld and his co-hosts, that framing was the problem. Their read was that Keilar wasn’t asking Donalds to explain his votes so much as she was auditing his right to hold them as a Black conservative, treating “Black” and “progressive” as functionally interchangeable and anything outside that lane as suspect or inauthentic.

Gutfeld’s “Racist” Charge

Gutfeld didn’t soften the accusation. His argument was that CNN’s coverage increasingly sorts people by race first and ideas second, which he says is itself a form of the bigotry the network claims to be fighting. In his telling, a Black Republican who defends voter-ID-style laws isn’t allowed to just be a congressman with a policy position — he has to be interrogated about his identity.

CNN becomes more “racist” everyday, they are in freefall.

That line, delivered on-air, was the crux of the segment. The panel’s broader point was that treating Black conservatives as an anomaly to be explained, rather than simply politicians to be covered, is its own kind of gatekeeping — deciding in advance which views a Black public figure is “supposed” to hold.

The “Freefall” Ratings Argument

Gutfeld connected the Keilar-Donalds moment to a claim he’s made repeatedly since Trump left office: that CNN’s audience cratered once the network lost its central antagonist, and that identity-driven controversies are a substitute for the ratings Trump-era coverage used to generate. The implication is a network chasing engagement through racial flashpoints rather than straight political reporting.

It’s not a new argument on Fox’s side of the aisle — hosts across the network have made versions of it throughout 2021 as cable news audiences shifted post-election — but Gutfeld used the Donalds exchange as a live, specific example rather than an abstract complaint. For readers tracking the broader media fight, the segment sits alongside other Fox-versus-CNN flashpoints of the period, including ongoing sniping over the network’s leadership and coverage decisions under Jeff Zucker.

Donalds, for his part, isn’t a bit player in this fight — he’s become one of the House GOP’s go-to voices for pushing back on exactly this kind of framing, and it’s a safe bet CNN won’t be the last network to put him in that chair. Expect the same question to come up the next time a Black Republican votes against the CBC’s line, because neither side is backing off it.