RUTHFULLY YOURS

Newscaster Bob Schieffer unwittingly demonstrated the depths his colleagues will descend to disparage President Trump at CNN.

Schieffer broke from the standard CNN narrative to remark that the president “actually” sounded “dignified and even presidential,” during his momentous speech before more than 50 Arab and Muslim leaders delivered recently in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, Schieffer had gone too far in his faint praise of the president.

“You know, Bob,” said his on-air colleague John Berman, “There will be people who look at that last comment you made and say, you’re normalizing the president.” That was just the wind-up before landing the real punch: Berman mused aloud over making laudatory remarks about the president just “because he (Trump) met this admittedly very low bar for not sounding foolish.”

This time Berman wasn’t dealing the race card, but rather pulled out the character assassination card from the bottom of the deck. After all — you wouldn’t want to “normalize” a wife beater, or serial killer. Why would you think of “normalizing” the president? Liberal hysteria is now a national condition.

There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Schieffer wasn’t going to be shamed into marching back his remarks on President Trump: “I’m not trying to normalize him in any way,” Schieffer replied. “I’m trying to do what reporters do — report and try to emphasize what I think is important.”

Being an old-school journalist, Schieffer may be raising the bar for his colleagues at the Trump-bashing network. Sadly, in the end, Schieffer joined his colleagues at the cable channel in both condescending rhetoric and mean-spirited tone.

“He didn’t sound like the guy at the end of the bar popping off,” Schieffer added. “You may agree or disagree with what he said but he sounded like a president. This went over very well — mainly because he stayed on script. He sounded like someone who actually thought about what he was going to say before he said it. No tweets today.” Faint praise indeed.

Schieffer never veered too far off script himself: But, just for a moment, he actually sounded like he was a newscaster “trying to do what reporters do — report.”