Mark Finkelstein

CNN is a seemingly endless fount of dumb ideas.

Yesterday, we caught a CNN correspondent recommending that if Anas Al-Sharif was a Hamas terrorist, instead of killing him, the IDF should have asked Al Jazeera to fire him!

Today, it was CNN contributor and former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s turn. Criticizing Trump’s use of federal agents to supplement DC police, Garcia-Navarro said the real solution to “girl brawls” is to have “better social media policies and better money for schools.”

So, limit teens to 15 minutes a day on TikTok, perhaps? Yup, that’ll bring girl brawls and other crime by the city’s ‘yuts’ to a screeching halt! Assuming you could even enforce such policies: “Sergeant, we just tracked a girl at Union Station who’s been on TikTok for 27 minutes. Get a SWAT team over there: STAT!”

As for spending “better money for schools,” in 2022-23, guess which school district ranked #1 in the country in per pupil spending? Yup!  And the returns on that lavish spending have been dismal. In 2024, two-thirds of students failed to read at grade level, and almost 80% failed to reach grade level in math. Entrusting even more money to the tender mercies of the teachers’ union isn’t going to fix the problem.

Garcia-Navarro managed to work in a shot at Trump for meeting with Putin regarding Ukraine. Guess what? To negotiate the end of a war, you have to talk with the other side.

She also parroted a current liberal trope, saying that “of course,” the “biggest episode of crime” in D.C. was on January 6th. For the record: the biggest episode of crime in the history of D.C. was the riots in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Hundreds of stores were looted, and the fire department reported over 1,000 fires set, with arsonists setting buildings ablaze.

The man-in-the-DC-street interviews, which aired at the top of the segment, backfired badly on CNN. Surely the hope was that local residents would condemn Trump’s moves, and agree with the liberal “experts” that crime is down in the city. Nope! One man did say that instead of using federal agents, the city should hire more police officers. But other than that . . . 

The first person interviewed, asked what she thinks of Trump’s actions, said: “I love it! I think this is long overdue. I’ve been wanting the National Guard in this area for years.”

A store clerk, told that the city says crime is down, replied: “I don’t think the crime is down. Crime is up.” A lady in the store seconded that: “[Crime down] in D.C? Who told that lie?!”

Note: Flaunting her hip knowledge of kid-speak, Garcia-Navarro said that Trump’s actions on crime and his summit with Putin demonstrate that “we live in the dumbest timeline.” Ironically, Lulu, you might have uttered the dumbest line of the day!