Ted Cruz says CNN has become ‘weak echo of MSNBC’

He accused the network of ‘deciding to abandon journalism’ while sharing a tweet by the Daily Caller

File image of Ted Cruz during a news in May in Washington, DC (Getty Images)

Republican senator Ted Cruz has lashed out at CNN, calling it a “weak echo of MSNBC” in a late-night rant on Twitter.

In the post, Mr Cruz shared a Daily Caller tweet that said that “CNN host Jake Tapper lost 75 per cent of his audience since Trump left office.” Retweeting it with a quote, Mr Cruz said: “It’s almost as if CNN deciding to abandon journalism and become full-time political propagandists has turned them into a weak echo of MSNBC.”

He added: “Hard to imagine there isn’t a huge audience for dishonest leftists preaching to other leftists.” The tweet has been shared some 950 times and liked by more than 6,100 at the time of writing.

According to Fox News, CNN journalist Jake Tapper’s show — “The Lead With Jake Tapper” — has lost 75 per cent of its audience since former president Donald Trump left the White House in January. It added that the network had a jump in viewership in January but has been “steadily declining” since then.

Mr Tapper’s show had an average of 2.8 million viewers in January but fell to an average of 706,000 viewers between 31 May and 23 June, Fox News reported, saying the show’s viewership fell 49 per cent from the first to the second quarter.

Meanwhile, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) joined Mr Cruz in hitting out at Mr Tapper’s reported rating slump in recent months. She retweeted the same Daily Caller article that Mr Cruz shared and added: “No amount of his secret begging of Republicans to appear on his unwatched show will change this trajectory. Americans are tuning out #FakeTapper for good reason. I’m sure he will throw his producers and bookers under the bus again...”

CNN is often attacked by conservative politicians, while MSNBC — a more left-leaning outlet — is known for drawing the ire of the political right.

Mr Trump regularly hit out at CNN during his presidency and often referred to the network as “fake news”. He was – and indeed still is – more likely to favour and make appearances on right-leaning networks including Fox News and One America News Network.

The Daily Caller reported that all major cable news channels have lost viewers since the events of January, including the Capital riot and President Joe Biden’s inauguration, but “CNN’s losses have been the most dramatic.”

It added that the May ratings from Nielsen Media Research indicated that CNN lost 67 per cent of its total viewers since January. And since January, MSNBC had the second-largest drop in viewership — losing 49 per cent of its total viewership between January and May. Fox News was reported to have lost 12 per cent of its viewers during the same period.