The TV hosts tackled the network's new marketing campaign with parodies of their own.Ellen DeGeneres and Stephen Colbert have explained facts and fake news with a few fruit demonstrations of their own, referencing a new ad put forth by CNN that uses an apple as a metaphor to denounce fake news.
The ad is part of a new marketing campaign called "Facts First," which CNN president Jeff Zucker announced Monday morning, and which comes as a response to President Donald Trump calling various news networks, including CNN, "fake news." On her eponymous daytime talk show Wednesday, DeGeneres reiterated the network's new message with her own fruit demonstration.
Using an apple to demonstrate "the facts" and a banana to represent "fake news," she explained that both fruits are a result "of things the president has said," and pulled out an orange to represent Trump. (A pineapple was used to represent CNN host Anderson Cooper.)
Holding up the banana, DeGeneres asked the audience if they can tell that it is, in fact, a banana. "Wrong! It's plastic; it's fake. It's not a real banana and that's the problem. Sometimes you don't know if you're looking at a real banana or a fake banana," she said.
"I hope we learned something about what's real or not real, and I hope we learned a lot about fruit as well. This cost me $53 at Whole Foods, you guys," she joked.
DeGeneres wasn't the only television personality to reference CNN's new campaign. The Late Show's Colbert also tackled it Tuesday night. After playing CNN's clip for the audience, he joked, "Not bad CNN, but where was the apple during Benghazi?"
Explaining that he personally found the ad to be "a bit subtle," he decided to come up with "a slightly more honest version." The spoof tackled White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump's response to the hurricane crisis in Puerto Rico, national anthem protests, the Russians and more, ending with the very straightforward message: "That was about Trump."
It ends by posing a question: "Orange you ready to impeach?"
Watch the clip below.