In a Friday morning newsletter, the network’s Oliver Darcy insisted it was “absurd” to treat Trump and Biden the same, and said CNN was perfectly justified in giving Biden softball questions at his Pennsylvania town hall on Thursday, because Trump “has no allegiance to truth.”

Meanwhile, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale insisted on Twitter that while Biden may have made “some false and misleading claims,” his “assertions of fact have been largely factual,” while Trump is “incessantly and egregiously dishonest.”

“This isn't journalism. This is propaganda,” fumed journalist Curtis Houck.

Countering Dale’s argument that “there's just no equivalence” between Trump and Biden, Greg Price pointed out three claims made by the former vice-president that are, at the very least, questionable.

One of them – that he was the first in his family to go to college – goes all the way back to Biden’s 1988 presidential run, when he plagiarized it from British politician Neil Kinnock.

Time and again, however, reporters fawning over Biden refused to fact-check the Kinnock ripoff.

While the social media discussion of the issue quickly devolved into partisan name-calling, a handful of voices quietly pointed out that Darcy and Dale’s coverage is more like a cover-up on behalf of Biden.

Pundit Stephen L. Miller even noted that CNN president Jeff Zucker broke his own rules about getting involved in politics to back the Senate campaign of Kamala Harris, now Biden’s running mate.

Harris was aggressively promoted by mainstream media as the 'front-runner' among the Democrats until she dropped out of the race due to lack of funds before the first primary. After Biden picked her as someone who can take over from him “on day one,” the sycophantic reportage continued, as shown by the recent fawning media coverage of her Timberland boots.

CNN’s nemesis, the satirical site Babylon Bee, weighed in on the controversy by posting a political retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’.