CNN anchor Anderson Cooper suggested Tuesday night that the White House firing of FBI Director James Comey has set the nation well on its way to Soviet-style, autocratic rule.

After political analyst David Gregory characterized President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey as a “purge,” Jeffrey Lord shot back in Trump’s defense. “This is not the Kremlin, this is not the Kremlin —” said Lord.

“Not yet,” Cooper interjected, deadpan.

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The suggestion is simply stunning. Cooper would have his audience believe that the firing of a single agency head who had been roundly criticized by his peers, experts and lawmakers from both parties — is somehow indicative of an inevitable downward spiral into repression.

But Cooper wasn’t the only media figure to lunge at the opportunity to use Comey’s firing to draw Trump-Russia parallels.

CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston said Tuesday evening that Comey’s firing doubtless serves Vladimir Putin’s personal interests, yet provided no proof or explanation of such.

“There is … one big winner in this,” said Preston. “The winner is Vladimir Putin. You know they’re laughing — in Russia. They are looking at us right now and saying look at what we did by affecting the election, by toying with their election continues to have dominoes drop,” Preston continued.

“And that is true. There’s no argument about that. Regardless of what happens and why he was — why Director Comey was dismissed. We know that Vladimir Putin right now is happy about it.”

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MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, not wanting to be outdone by his hysterical peers on CNN, declared that the decision to fire Comey was an example of Trump “using his power to prevent himself from falling under the justice system.”

In a separate conversation with former FBI agent Clint Watts, Matthews said that Trump’s decision carried with it “a little whiff of fascism tonight it’s fair to say … a little whiff of ‘I don’t care about the law, I’m the boss.'”

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The truth, however, is that Trump’s decision came at the recommendation of the highly respected, No. 2 official in the Justice Department.

“The firing of FBI Director James Comey has pushed the deranged, bloodthirsty media over the edge,” said the Media Research Council in an official statement. “Rather than reporting the facts, the media rushed to breathlessly pushing Democratic talking points and conspiracy theories untethered to reason or reality.”

“Any media report that leaves out how Democratic officials flipped from slamming Comey’s handling of the email investigation to feigning outrage and mourning his dismissal is worthless,” the statement said.