‘Coded racist rhetoric’? CNN under fire for crediting group of white congresswomen with Trump impeachment inquiry

CNN has found new heroes of the unraveling Trump impeachment saga – a group of white congresswomen with security backgrounds – and got its woke image tarnished for forgetting Maxine Waters, Al Green and AOC’s “squad.”

The story focuses on a group of “moderate” freshman congresswomen — Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pennsylvania), Mikie Sherrill (D-New Jersey) and Elaine Luria (D-Virginia) — who all changed their minds and decided to back the House impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump last week. All of them have served either in the military or in the CIA.

CNN said their decision to back the inquiry “changed history,” prompting outrage from critics who noticed that the piece makes some not-so-thinly-veiled jabs at the more vocal ‘squad’ of four anti-Trump freshmen – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachussetts) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan).

“None of us is ever going to get in a Twitter war with anyone else,” Slotkin told CNN, while Spanberger said none of the moderate group wants to be “the loudest voice in the room” but would rather be “the most effective.”

That bit about being effective got CNN accused of employing “coded racist rhetoric” against the 'squad' by giving the impression that they were loud and ineffective by comparison.

The story was also panned as “trash” by activist and MSNBC contributor Elie Mystal, who tweeted that CNN gave the white women credit “when in fact they were late in the game followers.” 

“If not for the work of women of color, there would have been no impeachment movement for them to glom onto, a fact this story seems to forget,” Mystal wrote.

Some rebuked CNN for not only forgetting the “squad,”  but also Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) had been tirelessly calling for Trump’s ouster — in her case, practically since he took office. Congressman Al Green (D-Texas) was the first to introduce it in the House. Green and Waters are both African-American.

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