CNN's Oliver Darcy blasted his own network, claiming its decision to host a Vivek Ramaswamy town hall helped to "legitimise" the GOP primary candidate's "dangerous lies."
Mr Darcy, the network’s senior media reporter, made the comments in CNN's Reliable Sources newsletter. He said the network was "helping to legitimize the dishonest GOP presidential hopeful who has spewed dangerous lies and injected poison into the national discourse at every chance."
He pointed to Donald Trump's massive lead in the GOP primary polling, and noted that Mr Ramaswamy is not even among the few Republicans who are polling at a distant second to the former president.
“The notion that the infotainer, who CNN has reported ‘struggles for relevance’ as he polls in the low single digits and remains exceedingly unlikely to be the Republican Party’s nominee, deserves an hour-long national platform to sell his personal brand and insidious talking points to the masses taxes the imagination.” he wrote.
He also noted that the network did not offer a similar town hall to independent candidate Robert F Kennedy, Jr, who is polling higher than Mr Ramaswamy.
He suggested that if the network felt the need to highlight Mr Ramaswamy, it should have done so with a pre-recorded interview, and not a live platform.
“Why would any major news network help to validate such a preposterous figure by putting him on stage and allowing him to infect the public with his conspiracy campaign?” he wrote.
Mr Darcy said that "handing Ramaswamy a microphone" and providing him with a platform and a live audience to ask him questions "provides oxygen to the menacing wildfire of delusions he has pushed into the public discourse."
CNN defended its town hall in a statement to Mr Darcy, arguing that Mr Ramaswamy is a "significant candidate for the GOP nomination, having made every debate stage thus far," and said that voters in Iowa deserved the chance to question him before the state's Republican primary.
“We will always work to hold every candidate accountable and provide voters with the information necessary to make informed decisions going into an election,” a spokesperson for the network told Mr Darcy.
The significance of Mr Ramaswamy's campaign is largely subjective; he is polling fourth behind Mr Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Ms Haley and Mr DeSantis lead Mr Ramaswamy by about 8 points, and Mr Trump is beating them all by more than 40 points, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling aggregator. And while he has participated in all of the debates, Mr Ramadwamy has largely served as Ms Haley's punching bag.
