Earlier today, we reported on allegations that Fox’s much-touted, then much-retracted Seth Rich story was coordinated with the White House, as part of a possible effort to distract Americans from all the awful things happening (mostly at the White House) these days. And while the ongoing paper trail examinations, misdirections, and outright lies have been good for little more than a pounding headache so far, it did make for some pretty wild TV tonight in the hands of CNN’s Chris Cuomo, who pretty much tore one its key figures to shreds on his show.
The above video shows Cuomo talking to Ed Butowsky, the guy who allegedly served as the liaison between Trump’s White House and Rod Wheeler, the former cop and detective who was hired to look into the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich. It’s not just that Cuomo is relentless, at one point asking Butowsky about an alleged witticism in his texts with Wheeler, “That was a joke that’s funny how? What’s the punchline?” It’s also that Butowsky does not appear to be very good at making his case, or possibly any case grounded in reality, visibly searching his own mind for ways to counter Cuomo’s relatively straightforward questions. Butowsky manages to stick to the party line in the end, but there’s enough touch and go there to glean a quick dose of nightly schadenfreude out of it, before dipping back into our drab-bordering-on-nightmare political lives.