CNN senior reporter Matt Egan stepped in it again by completely upending the narrative his network has been selling to Americans for years that a government shutdown would be disastrous for the economy.

Egan foolishly tried to paint what he caricatured as the potential, horrific effects effects of the ongoing turmoil over government funding as being unique to President Donald Trump’s bureaucratic gutting policies. “Government shutdowns usually don’t hurt the economy. This time could be different,” read Egan’s September 29 shocking headline.

Using examples like the 2018-2019 government shutdown, Egan argued that “Whatever economic damage occurs during that time tends to be limited and quickly fixed,” a trend which he claims Trump’s mass firing of federal workers, specifically, could totally reverse.

Here’s the problem: CNN has repeatedly stipulated in the past that government shutdowns were terrible, especially when Republicans in the House of Representatives would attempt hardball with the Biden administration and his Democrat cohorts in the Senate over their outrageous spending policies. Now that the onus is on Democrats to quit being stubborn and make a deal with Trump, Egan is now downplaying the effects of government shutdowns writ large and making it appear that any negative effects would effectively be Trump’s fault.

On September 28, 2023, Egan himself had a completely different spin on the possibility of a government shutdown: “Analysis: A government shutdown is the last thing the economy needs.” While conceding that short-term shutdown wouldn’t necessarily “wreck the economy,” he argued that if a “shutdown lasts long enough, it could, along with these other headwinds, do some real damage.” 

His colleagues also had drastically different takes in the past. 

On September 29, 2023, CNN reporters Betsy Klein and Tami Luhby were adamant that should “Congress fail to pass a short-term spending bill to keep the proverbial lights on, a shutdown could have enormous impacts on all Americans, in areas from air travel to clean drinking water.” In addition, Klein and Luhby drummed up fears over the “massive economic implications” that would supposedly transpire for the broader economy.

Just a few days prior, CNN economics writer Bryan Mena scare-mongered that a shutdown would “would leave the Fed flying blind.” 

In December 2024 during the lame-duck session, CNN reporters Luhby, Klein and Katie Lobosco wrote that “A shutdown would also hurt the economy. Each week it lasts would cost the economy $6 billion and shave 0.1 percentage points off the gross domestic product, or GDP, in the fourth quarter, according to Gregory Daco, EY chief economist.” But Egan, in his latest anti-Trump drivel, did a 180-degree turnaround on that entire narrative: 

Normally, the rule of thumb is that each week of a government shutdown trims about 0.2 percentage points from gross domestic product (GDP) – or economic growth. But those losses are quickly reversed as the government reopens.

Again, this is a completely different take from the Egan we knew in 2023, who wrote that the “hit to GDP could add up in a lengthy shutdown. And it comes at a time when all of these other wild cards, from the UAW strike, high gas prices and the return of student loan payments, are already weighing on growth.” See the problem?

Egan’s only point in bringing this up now in regards to Trump, however, was to ding Trump for supposedly hampering the government's ability to quickly recover lost economic growth, a supposed skill of the federal government he didn’t bother bringing up in his 2023 piece when Republicans controlled the House: “However, permanent layoffs in the federal government would raise the risk of more long-lived effects, forcing investors and economists to rethink the damage to the US economy.”

What Egan probably didn’t realize is that he was torpedoing years worth of his network’s past reporting making it seem like government shutdowns writ large were somehow a catalyst for an economic hurricane, usually to slam the GOP.  Now, Egan is trying to isolate the Trump factor and shoehorn it into his argument that cutting government bloat would cause economic tumult. 

Sheesh, even a fish would be jealous of CNN's flip-flopping skills.