CNN Analysts Issues Public Apology After Social Media Post and Deletes It

Well, folks, here we go again—another tragic event, another knee-jerk reaction from the professional outrage class. This time, it was CNN analyst Bakari Sellers who just couldn’t help himself. Mere hours after a devastating mid-air collision over Washington, D.C., claimed the lives of 67 people, Sellers rushed to social media to do what so many in the media instinctively do: blame Donald Trump.

Now, let’s take a step back and appreciate the sheer insanity of this. Before investigators could even begin piecing together what went wrong, before the full list of victims had even been released, before families could begin to process their grief, Sellers saw an opportunity to push a political narrative. He grabbed a headline from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Democrats, clipped out just enough context to make it look like Trump’s air traffic control hiring freeze was directly responsible for the crash, and hit “post.”

The backlash was immediate. Social media erupted, calling out the CNN pundit for what was—let’s be honest—a vile and opportunistic move. And rather than admit right away that he’d been caught politicizing a tragedy, Sellers did what so many media figures do: he deleted the post, then issued the classic non-apology apology.

“I deleted the post because timing matters,” Sellers wrote. Timing matters. As if the only problem with his tweet was that he posted it a little too soon. And then came the rest of the damage control:

“I f***ed up, I own that,” he said, before adding that he was “prayerful” but also “frustrated, upset, and disturbed with where we are as a country.”

Now, what does that even mean? Is he frustrated that he got caught? Is he upset that his attempt to blame Trump didn’t land the way he wanted? Because what’s noticeably missing from his statement is any acknowledgment of why his post was offensive in the first place. It wasn’t just bad timing—it was bad faith.

And let’s not forget, the so-called “evidence” he used to blame Trump was laughable to begin with. The headline he cropped was about an eight-day-old hiring freeze. Are we seriously supposed to believe that a pause in hiring, less than two weeks ago, somehow caused a Black Hawk pilot to fail to visually separate from an American Airlines jetliner?

The internet certainly wasn’t buying it. One user summed it up perfectly:

“You deleted the post because dozens of Americans are currently being fished out of the Potomac, and rather than have reverence for the victims, you chose to dishonestly (and despicably) blame @realDonaldTrump.”

Another called it out for exactly what it was:

“A plane crash & your first response is to blame your political enemy. This is pagan neo-Gnosticism.”

In other words, Sellers wasn’t engaging in journalism or thoughtful analysis—he was performing a political ritual. A tragedy happened, and instead of waiting for facts, he had to find a way to make it fit into his anti-Trump worldview. That’s how the media operates these days. It’s not about truth; it’s about confirming their audience’s biases as quickly as possible.