CNN's Bash Admits Latest Epstein Photos Have 'No Context' But Calls Release 'Important News'
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CNN's Bash Admits Latest Epstein Photos Have 'No Context' But Calls Release 'Important News'

On Thursday, one day before the deadline for the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee were at it again, releasing 68 more photos from the Epstein estate. Remember   back on December 12th, the same Dems released their first batch of photos. Thursday, Ranking member Robert Garcia of California issued a statement which said in part, "We must end this White House cover-up, and the DOJ must release the Epstein files now.” He offered no evidence for his claims of a coverup. He did however admit, "The Epstein estate did not provide context for any of the 95,000 images they transmitted and therefore the images are presented as received."  That didn't stop the leftist media from running with the 'story' of the latest release. When Thursday's edition of CNN's Inside Politics kicked off at noon ET, only 5 of the 68 photos had been released, but host Dana Bash led with it, and spent 13 minutes on the non-story, even though she and correspondent MJ Lee both repeatedly echoed Rep. Garcia's admission that the photos had "no context."  Bash began, "We just got five more pictures from the Epstein estate, courtesy of Democrats who are eager to keep the story in the headlines. The photos were provided without context." So, Bash eagerly admitted to her audience that she was doing the dirty work of the Democrats. Beautiful! She then handed it over to Lee, who couldn't stop telling us that this was a non-story. LEE: First of all, I'm really glad that you said that these photographs have been released without any kind of context. We shouldn't be reading into them. What we can do is simply describe what we are seeing here, and certainly we can talk about the political context that is behind all of this as well.... They were obtained from the Epstein estate, and Committee Democrats also are saying that they were received without the context. So, it's not as though they are holding back context that they otherwise have from the estate. Translation.. 'Here's our lead story, but there is no story for us to tell. We can show you some meaningless pictures, because the Democrats would like to keep this story in the news, and hopefully make viewers think of Donald Trump.' Lee then goes on to describe the 5 photos, sort of. LEE: First, we have..., a woman's foot with a quote from Lolita. This is a novel about a man's sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl. You see in the background there the actual book itself. And then we have a photo that appears to be a series of text messages sent by somebody. And again, we don't know who, discussing, quote, sending girls... The next photo is what appears to be a Ukrainian woman's passport. No context there, of course, about who this person might be. And then we have two photos, one of philosopher Noam Chomsky on a plane with Epstein, and then Bill Gates posing for a photograph with a woman... And then this admission, "..Dana, there's nothing here that explicitly seems to sort of depict any kind of sexual misconduct. But again, without any kind of proper context, we have no idea what these text messages are supposed to suggest, what the significance of these images might be..." Then Lee went where CNN reporters don't usually dare to go, questioning the Democrats motive, followed by Bash's admission of giving the Dems what they want.  LEE: And Republicans on the committee have certainly accused Democrats of cherry-picking certain information to release a little bit at a time for political reasons. And I do think it is an important question to sort of ask, what the service might be that Democrats think they are serving by doing this in this manner, when they could be releasing, perhaps everything at the same time, or maybe waiting until we do have the context so we can understand what exactly we are seeing here.  BASH: Well, we're talking about it. So that gives the answer to your question, and we're doing it, I should say, not to be flip. We are doing this because it is an important news story particularly on the eve of the important date on the calendar tomorrow, which is [when] the DOJ is, by law, supposed to release the Epstein files... Really? Is that why Bash would follow Lee with a 6 minute panel discussion on this? After repeatedly telling us "there is no context" to the pictures, and we don't know what the pictures mean, all of a sudden it's "an important news story"? This ridiculous presentation was as close to a Seinfeld episode, a show about nothing, that you'll ever see presented by a "journalist."