If you turn to CNN at any given moment, you’re likely to be greeted with some form of lunacy, but a recent segment on CNN’s New Day may have replaced its “did the Malaysian flight fall into a black hole” segment by Don Lemon as its most ludicrous news report ever.

As first presented by my colleague Bonchie writing a very solid article about what COVID-19 hysteria has driven people to, I’m going to show you just the relevant clip. In it, you’ll see a very smug daughter sitting with her very proud mother in mid-explanation to a weirdly smiling New Day host John Berman about how she’s okay with the fact that her daughter flipped a bunch of people near her school not wearing masks the bird.

“You know, what else was she supposed to do in that moment?” asked the mother before making it seem like her daughter had no other recourse for communication except vulgarity.

Mother of 14-year-old who flipped off anti-mask protesters outside her school says she's proud of her daughter.

"You know, what else was she supposed to do?" pic.twitter.com/7Yc1jfGOvZ

— Alli Hedges Maser (@AllisonLHedges) September 8, 2021

This is what “the most trusted name in news” considers to be news. A teenager making rude gestures at people she disagrees with is somehow good reason to hold more major pressing issues within the news cycle back from the public’s attention. It comes off less like a report and more of an encouragement for young men and women to engage with their ideological opposites with vulgarity. The same could be said for the mother-of-the-year in the segment, making it seem like other mothers should applaud gleefully and proudly when their child resorts to insults and name-calling instead of debate.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about fun, lighthearted segments on news shows. We get enough news about how the world’s on fire, and it’s good to take a break to appreciate the little things.

But this segment that has the host grinning like an idiot at the smugness of a totally rebellious teenager obeying the culture du jour as her mother brags about it is just stupid. Not only stupid but harmful to societal discourse. It perpetuates the idea that there is no talking to one another. It’s just division.

But its stupidity is being punished. The numbers are in, and it would appear CNN isn’t just bringing up the rear, it’s lagging behind like a sloth with asthma. According to Fox News, CNN failed to pass up a million viewers a day:

Over the course of 92 days, CNN failed to reach 1 million viewers on 53 of them, roughly 58% of the summer, according to Nielsen data. The network averaged just 603,000 in total day viewership, a staggering 42% decrease from Summer 2020.

At one point this summer, CNN suffered a 13-day stretch without ever reaching 1 million viewers throughout the entire day from July 28 through August 9. The breaking news of Cuomo’s announced resignation broke the network’s streak of six-digit viewership on August 10.

CNN’s primetime lineup, which provides the network’s most-watched programming, went a whopping 80 out of 92 days below 1 million viewers, a devastating 87% of the time and marking over a 50% drop from last year.

“Cuomo Prime Time,” CNN’s most-watched show, average a measly 948,000 viewers from June through August, falling below 1 million viewers over two-thirds of the time whenever anchor Chris Cuomo was on-air, which is a 50% decrease from the 1.9 million viewers he averaged a year ago. By comparison, Fox News’ “Hannity” averaged 2.8 million viewers and MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” averaged 2.2 million viewers this summer, neither of them ever falling below 1 million viewers.

I can’t emphasize this enough, but “oof.”

CNN deserves this. This is what happens when your network dedicates itself to being a propaganda mouthpiece instead of a news organization and then proceeds to tell everyone it’s a reliable place to get the news of the world. Blatant propaganda is easy to spot for anyone willing to put forward a little effort into critical thinking. Under a million people don’t seem to want to do that, but even then, I’m not sure how many of these “people” are airports.

A final fun fact for you…

CNN’s viewership currently sits, on average, at 603,000 viewers. A 2018 survey reported that in the United States, between 1 and 1.5 million people identify themselves as pagans or witches.

This means that you’re more likely going to run into a witch than you are a CNN viewer in the United States.

Have fun with that factoid.