I don’t believe it. But I want to believe it. A Fox News/CNN merger? “Hannity & Tapper” at 9 p.m.! Wolf Blitzer as “one lucky guy” on “Outnumbered”! Jim Acosta and Shep Smith kibitizing every day for hours on end about how much they hate Trump!

The Russia segments alone would be must-see TV. Imagine Tucker Carlson and Anderson Cooper trying to get to the bottom of whether Trump perpetrated or was the victim of the worst act of foreign interference in an election in American history.

If this is fake news, it needs to become real. Find the money somewhere, Rupert.

According to one of the sources on Friday, Murdoch called [AT&T CEO Randall] Stephenson twice, unprompted, on May 16 and Aug. 8 and on both occasions asked if CNN was for sale. Stephenson replied both times that it was not, according to the source.

It would not be the first time Murdoch has attempted to take control of CNN.

Twenty-First Century Fox made an $80 billion offer for Time Warner in 2014 but abandoned the plan in the face of Time Warner’s resistance. At that time, Fox had planned to divest CNN – which competes with Fox News – in order to avoid antitrust issues.

Another source told Reuters that Murdoch had “zero interest” in the network. Normally the idea of him purchasing CNN would be preposterous on its face, as putting two of the big three cable news networks under common ownership would create obvious monopoly fears. Any other administration would nuke the idea on sight. But an administration led by a man who despises CNN, whose biggest cheering section resides at Fox, and who’s personally acquainted with Murdoch?

I don’t know. Would you bet a mortgage payment that the Trump DOJ would block a News Corp acquisition of CNN? Grocery money? I might put a ten-spot on it. Might.

Here’s Hannity’s future co-host quizzing a Roy Moore supporter about whether he’d vote for a child molester over a Democrat. At least one conservative has answered that question today in the affirmative. A Twitter pal brought me up short earlier when he snarked, “looking forward to first pro-genocide Republican candidate so we can have ‘abortion is genocide so it’s really a choice between evils’ takes.” Doug Jones, Moore’s opponent in Alabama, is in fact an abortion fanatic; no doubt some Republicans there will justify sticking with Moore on grounds that he’s (tell me if this sounds familiar) the lesser of two evils. We’re headed towards a place where the most outre candidate in a GOP primary is the populist favorite purely because he makes Mitch McConnell cry and then that candidate *must* be supported in the general election as nominee only because, whatever his alleged misdeeds, the Democrat by definition is worse. People seem to have concluded that Trump enjoyed solid Republican support last fall because Hillary was a uniquely poor candidate uniquely disliked by the right. Not so. Not by a long shot, I’ll bet.