The problem with CNN is that it's explicitly entertainment. It's adjacent to ESPN.
The information is always genuine and factual, they're not pedaling overt white supremacy, but they're so contrived and I don't doubt that their position on issues of equality, social justice and general morality are about eyeballs first and not any sense of real conviction.
Their television is hardly a news network, they're an entertainment network, but again they do tell the truth, and when the primary like-for-like alternative is an open white supremacist propaganda network in Fox News, they can carry being truthful and morally decent all the way to the bank.
My biggest complaint about CNN is that they bring the lowest common denominator Republican/White supremacist shill on as a counter point, and just let them talk bull**** (see Kayleigh Mcenany circa 2016, Jason Miller, etc), instead of actual coherent opposing views that can then be countered and dismantled in constructive manner, by their generally solid political commentators.
I'd be more likely to tune in and watch caricatures like Don Lemon or Chris Cuomo as a form of entertainment/background noise at the end of the day if the network took itself more or less seriously, I'm not even ****ing sure which.
You're not gonna see any political news on CNN that you didn't see a link to here in this thread first, earlier in the day, and also connected to better written sources, commentary, and probably analysis .
But this all minutiae that's pretty irrelevant in a conversation with a Trump supporter.
There's zero equivalency between CNN and fake news, or an overtly racist propaganda network like Fox News.