Witness the now-legendary CNN chyron — that’s the line of headline text gracing the bottom of the screen during every news story — which has taken to reminding viewers, often in cheeky parentheticals, what exactly one should think. Here’s a doozy from February: “WH: TRUMP HAS BEEN TOUGHER ON RUSSIA IN ONE YEAR THAN OBAMA WAS IN EIGHT (NO, HE HASN’T).” On Thursday, in response to a rather fluffy White House–sponsored “Sports and Fitness Day,” CNN got weirdly ponderous: “TRUMP AND FITNESS: AN EXERCISE IN HYPOCRISY?” During my brief yet torturous airport restaurant foray, the network’s chyron read something like — and please forgive my paraphrasing, but I was desperately trying to ignore the TV blaring over my head — “TRUMP FALSELY SLAMS ‘SPYING’ DURING HIS CAMPAIGN (ISN’T HE CRAZY? IT WAS AN ‘INFORMANT,’ NOT A SPY!).”

The good people at CNN can do what they want, but this blatant chyron-splaining sends a rather clear and unfortunate message: that they think their audience is daft and incapable of figuring things out for themselves.

CNN is frequently breathless when no one should be breathless, which would be kind of exhausting, if anyone cared. Take this headline from the network’s website this week: “The 45 Most Astonishing Lines from Donald Trump’s Nashville Speech.” Brace yourself, for here is just a small sample of those supposedly astonishing lines: