CNN has much to answer for before it can attack anyone over softball interviews. Sure, President Donald Trump sat down with Chris Wallace of Fox News for an interview. Fox News is a right-leaning outlet, but it’s not as though Wallace is a Trump-friendly journalist. Wallace has apparently offered Joe Biden the same opportunity, which the Biden camp appears to have turned down.

It makes sense, honestly. Biden’s public appearances and speeches are fraught with problematic stumbles and clear mental lapses. He is not well, and it shows. The Democratic Party’s last hope against Trump is fighting a losing battle against senility.

Of course, I say all that knowing that the American public does not appear to be taking that into consideration right now. Trump has more problems on his plate, and voters are vastly more concerned with the coronavirus, the economy, and the fear and violence in our nation’s streets.

But the Biden camp doesn’t want to give the public a reason to fear his mental status, so they’re keeping him under lock and key, with handpicked interviews and softball questions. To Trump’s credit, it was known going in that Wallace was tough on the administration, drawing the ire of Trump supporters on numerous occasions.

Did Trump get asked about key controversial issues? Not really. Was the interview tough? Sure. The two didn’t get combative, per se, but Wallace did challenge him at times.

What irks me, though, is that anyone from CNN would dare to accuse anyone else of giving a softball interview when their own network has been allowing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to appear on his brother’s news program only to be lavished with praise and allowed to joke around.

So, when I see tweets like this, I get irritated.

Speaking of sit down: you had an interview with the president and you asked about mean tweets about you and not about intel reports about GRU bounties against US and UK servicemembers. https://t.co/5uyf7YEL6x

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 26, 2020

I like and respect Tapper, but this is simply ridiculous when there has not been a single person at the network who has condemned the shameful mockery of journalism that Chris Cuomo has been allowed to air on numerous occasions. While Andrew Cuomo has been able to get the Friends and Family Discount at CNN, the people who are not related to him are willing to deflect their own network’s problems onto other networks — primarily Fox.

To be fair, Tapper is the closest anyone has come to it, but simply to check Andrew Cuomo’s victory lap over the COVID-19 response, where he rightfully corrected the record on the Governor’s claims of “success” in the state worst hit by the virus.

That is all well and good, but that does not excuse the silence on the matter of the Cuomo brothers. The network has acted shamefully, and no one, from its top anchors to its “media reporters” has shown any sort of remorse for how their colleague has been acting through all this. Say what you want about Fox News, but there has been no breach of journalism there even remotely as scandalous as literal journalistic nepotism. Much as I dislike watching Fox News, at least I know no one there has invited their politician brother on the air to defend themselves with absolutely no challenge at all.

It’s frustrating because CNN and so many other networks have made it a point to “challenge” politicians. Tapper himself can be combative with Democrats and Republicans, which makes him one of the best people on the network. Perhaps his callout of Andrew Cuomo was his way of criticizing a colleague without publicly calling them out, it’s simply not enough when the scandalous behavior is that damning. Chris Cuomo should be barred by the network from interviewing his older brother, but instead, he’s allowed to use props for comic relief in interviewing him with no challenge whatsoever.

I do think that Wallace could have and should have been tougher on the President, but the fact is that when it comes to challenging a politician, until CNN answers for its editorial judgment on letting Chris Cuomo interview his brother, any accusation even remotely accusing anyone of giving a softball interview from anyone at the network is not a serious one.