Donie O’Sullivan is a senior correspondent for CNN who purports to be an expert on political “extremism” in America. The esteemed journalist earned an Emmy nomination for his three-part series, MisinfoNation: Extreme America, in which he traveled “around the country meeting far-right extremists with a long history of hate.” For some reason, O’Sullivan has been remarkably uninterested in covering the ongoing outburst of left-wing violence in this country.
Over the past three weeks, two Israeli embassy officials were gunned down by a radical leftist shouting “Free Palestine,” more than a dozen peaceful protesters (including a Holocaust survivor) were injured in a makeshift flamethrower attack carried out by an illegal immigrant who said he wanted to “kill all Zionist people,” and violent hooligans in Los Angeles have rioted in support of illegal immigration by looting stores, setting fire to cars, and hurling bricks at police officers. In New York City on Wednesday, illegal immigration supporters chanted, “From Mexico to Gaza, globalize the intifada.”
During that time, O’Sullivan produced just one lousy segment for CNN. Three days after the firebomb attack in Boulder, Colo., he traveled to Denver (less than an hour away) to cover the defamation trial of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. He appeared on the failing network several times last week to discuss the public feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Yet observers have taken note of O’Sullivan’s glaring absence as left-wing extremists wreaked havoc in Los Angeles. Perhaps in an effort to provide proof of life, the journalist logged onto his X account and reposted his colleague Brian Stelter’s absurd comments about how the “unrest” in Los Angeles was being blown out of proportion by “fake content” from “unvetted social media accounts.”
It may very well be that O’Sullivan does not view the murder and firebombing of Jews, or the LA rioting in defense of illegal immigration, to be anywhere near as “extreme” and dangerous for democracy as the lunatic rantings of Mike Lindell. The journalist has explicitly argued that left-wing extremism is not a big deal. “When it comes to extremism in this country, I mean, the issue very much so is on the right, on the far right, from, you know, from Charlottesville to to January 6th,” he said in April while promoting a new episode of his MisinfoNation series. “There isn‘t exactly an equivalent on the left in this moment.”
Maybe O’Sullivan is simply afraid to report on left-wing violence. In Los Angeles, the peaceful hooligans have been handing out fliers threatening journalists who attempt to film or photograph them, the sort of behavior that journalists routinely denounce as “fascist” or “extreme” when anyone else does it.
Update: O’Sullivan has finally surfaced. Sort of. He appears to have been hard at work producing a new segment for CNN. Does it have anything to do with the alarming outbursts of left-wing violence? No, of course not. He went to a conference of UFO enthusiasts and spoke to a “UFO lobbyist” who thinks Donald Trump will soon confirm the existence of alien life. “Greetings, do you all come in peace?” he told a group of freaks getting off a bus in the California desert. “We’re all Earthlings here.”
O’Sullivan has made clear that he finds the concept of left-wing extremism and political violence to be rather giggle-inducing. In one episode of his Emmy-nomited series, he conducted a friendly interview with Taylor Lorenz, the demented former New York Times journalist who accused Joe Biden of commiting “genocide” by refusing to impose COVID-related mask mandates. They discussed how Lorenz and other left-wing freaks were fawning over Luigi Mangione, the cold-blooded assassin who gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
O’Sullivan and Lorenz, who admitted feeling “joy” upon learning of Thompson’s death, casually joked about how Mangione had become a radical chic sex symbol. “Like, here’s this man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who’s young, who’s smart,” Lorenz said of the accused murderer. “He’s a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find [deranged laughter].” O’Sullivan quipped that “women will literally date an assassin before they swipe right on me.” Since their lighthearted discussion about why murderers who espouse left-wing politics are “morally good,” Lorenz has accused Pete Buttigieg of supporting “far-right eugenics” (for lamenting the Democratic Party’s efforts to keep schools closed during the pandemic) and argued that the United States “deserved” 9/11.
It’s not the first time a celebrated CNN reporter has mysteriously disappeared. The network’s premier fact-checker, Daniel Dale, went missing for several weeks in the fall of 2021, and again in December 2022, presumably because he had nothing to do. After all, a Democrat was president and Donald Trump was still banned from social media. Like O’Sullivan, Dale is hyper-focused on covering right-wing personalities and random Facebook users. Even after he returned from his “vacations,” Dale was not very interested in fact-checking Joe Biden or other Democrats, but he continued to deligently investigate claims from “conservative tweeters” and “right-wing circles” and, in one instance, an “anarcho-nihilist” bodybuilder.
CNN has struggled regain the magic it briefly captured during the first Trump administration, when colorful anti-Trump personalities such as Michael Avenatti (now a convicted felon) dominated the airwaves. Earlier this week, CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced it was splitting off the network from its more profitable streaming business, a move that mirrors the spinoff of failing left-wing network MSNBC from parent company Comcast.