Monday night, after over a week spent in Ferguson, MO, stirring the racial pot without knowing if race had anything to do with anything, the story was out of gas, so CNN poured unverified audio on the fire.

Because it makes it okay, Don Lemon assured us CNN hadn’t authenticated the maybe-audio recording of the shooting death of Brown. But the network broadcast it anyway — repeatedly, practically every hour on the hour (that I monitored) for the next 36 or so hours.

(I wonder, though, did Don Lemon automatically or semi-automatically believe the audio was authentic?)

Four days later, CNN still hasn’t authenticated the audio.  

Four.

Days.

After two of CNN’s own experts came on the air Wednesday morning to express their belief that the audio might be a hoax, CNN did the right thing: As far as I could tell, the network stopped running the audio. Silly me, I thought CNN had finally decided to be a responsible news outlet and authenticate the audio before broadcasting it again.

My bad.

Thursday afternoon, CNN resurrected the audio under the pretense that it is now news when a major cable news network is a step closer to verifying that its explosive three-day-old scoop is not a fraud. The video messaging service Glide has verified the timestamp. Regardless, per CNN, the audio still isn’t authenticated, but when there’s a single piece of evidence that says the audio might not be fake, that’s news.

The audio may well be authentic. That’s not the point. The point is that whether CNN’s reckless gamble ends up paying off or not, the leftwing network still chose to drop a grenade into the racial tinderbox of Ferguson at the very moment things had finally settled down.

It was Monday evening. Michael Brown had just been buried; his family and community had had time to mourn. The streets were quiet. And after a week-plus of reckless and irresponsible race-baiting from news outlets like CNN, life in Ferguson was finally-finally-finally returning to normal.

Why drop the audio at that moment? If it had been authenticated, fine. You can’t sit on a scoop like that. The audio, however, was not authenticated — note even close. Regardless…

Night had fallen.

The crickets were chirping.

The streetlights were on.

CNN just couldn’t wait.

INCOMING!

Thankfully the good people of Ferguson didn’t take the bait. Despite CNN giving it the ole’ college try, everything remained quiet.

What else are we to expect from a network that fabricated evidence against George Zimmerman and colluded with Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to create a multi-part campaign commercial for him.

***UPDATE: Some commenters are trolling this post with the claim that the video messaging service verifying the timestamp is verification. It is not. That’s the single piece of evidence linked in this piece.

Even CNN isn’t calling the audio authenticated yet, so don’t be fooled by the trolls trying to muddy the waters. I’ve also updated the post. 

John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC