The mainstream media will assume its usual role as lap dog for Democrats when CNN rolls out the welcome mat for President Obama and his gun control agenda.

On Thursday night, Obama will join CNN’s Anderson Cooper for a live town hall on gun control, hoping to use the prime-time platform to drum up support for his latest executive action and perhaps set the stage for more.

That Obama chose CNN and Cooper for this task is no accident. Cooper has a history of strong support for anti-gun causes, and CNN has frequently been accused of tilting unambiguously to the left.

During the Bill Clinton reign in the 1990s, CNN was so in the bag for the Democratic president that some referred to the 24-hour channel as the “Clinton News Network.” After eight years of bashing former President George W. Bush, the network returned to praising his successor — another Democrat. Then, in a 2012 debate between Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney, CNN’s Candy Crowley famously sided with Obama in a dispute over what Obama said about Libya.

So it comes as no surprise that CNN is jumping in with both feet to support Obama’s move to restrict gun sales, putting on an hour-long “town hall” to give the president a platform to sell his latest attack on the Second Amendment.

As for Cooper, he spent $1.4 million in 2014 — outbidding then CNN colleague Piers Morgan — on a Jeff Koons sculpture composed of the 65 guns formerly owned by actor Sean Penn, the Washington Times reported. The intent behind the creation and auction of the sculpture was made crystal clear by Penn. “The highest bidder gets every single one of my guns put in the hands of this iconic artist and sculptor,” Penn said. “Koons will decommission [and] render inactive all of my cowardly killing machines.”

In January 2013, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, Cooper hosted a gun control town hall special, titled “Guns Under Fire,” at George Washington University in the nation’s capital. Introducing the program, Cooper did little to hide is pro-gun control sympathies.

“There was a shooting just today in a middle school in southeast Atlanta. A student was hit, so the need for action is clear,” Cooper said.

Demonstrating that he had an agenda, Cooper spoke of “goals” he hoped were “achievable.”

“The debate over what to do ends in shouting and pointed fingers which is why tonight we want to try to cut through the talking points and the slogans, and have an actual discussion that zeros in on some key issues and what goals, if any, are actually achievable,” he said.

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CNN has been no stranger to hosts and anchors who lobby for gun control, most notably Morgan. He was let go from the network in the spring of 2014, but used his final show to blast the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby in America. His parting words on his final “Piers Morgan Live” were: “The gun lobby in America, led by the NRA, has bullied this nation’s politicians into cowardly, supine silence. Even when 20 young children are blown away in their classrooms. This is a shameful situation that has made me very angry.”

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Recently, in an article written by CNN reporters Elizabeth Cohen and John Bonifield, Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was accused of lacking “courage” because he wasn’t demanding that Congress allow the CDC to use tax dollars to pay gun control activists to conduct research designed to promote and support gun control. The article, titled “What Happened to the CDC’s Courage on Guns,” also came with an accompanying video compiled by the network titled “CDC Boss Silent on Gun Violence.”

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Thursday’s live hour-long special titled “Guns in America” begins at 8 p.m. EST. It will be moderated by Cooper and feature questions from the audience. An article published by CNN described the broadcast as Obama’s “final pitch to the public” on the issue of gun control.

The event will take place at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, not coincidentally the same city that is home to the headquarters of the NRA.

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