By John Crudele

CNN is starting to go soft on President Trump.

The infamously liberal network that Trump is fixated on as the purveyor of fake news has actually done a couple of things in the past few days that might make the president happy.

And that’s a shocker.

CNN anchor Don Lemon told a Variety-hosted conference held in New York last Friday that Trump wasn’t going to be impeached. In fact, Lemon kind of scoffed at the notion.

And Lemon tried to position CNN squarely in the middle of the presidential ruckus by referring to liberal stations (MSNBC?) that are almost guaranteeing an impeachment and conservative ones (Fox?) that think Trump has done nothing wrong.

Anyone who watches CNN even for a couple of minutes will understand that the network hates Trump and never misses a chance to criticize him. It avoids saying anything good about him.

CNN loved Hillary Clinton and was dumbstruck when she lost the election. And, Lemon — the most liberal of all CNN anchors — probably wouldn’t dare tell viewers of his show that Trump wasn’t going to be impeached.

CNN did something else last Friday that was journalistically proper — and by that I mean it was something that the station likely wouldn’t have done just a few weeks ago when it apparently still thought special counsel Robert Mueller was going to bag the president

When a Virginia federal judge last Friday openly and harshly criticized Mueller for his tactics in going after Trump, CNN was all over the story. Real journalism! Another shocker.

But don’t expect CNN to be too soft on Trump. On Friday’s panel, Lemon repeated his charge that Trump is a racist. And he admitted that Trump’s problem with porn star Stormy Daniels has been mentioned on CNN so often because viewers want to hear about it.

It’s good for ratings, he said.

Others may disagree with me, but I think Trump’s Justice Department has retaliated against CNN by trying to block the acquisition of the network’s parent company, Time Warner, by AT&T.

In fact, an investment banker working on that deal told me early on that he wouldn’t be surprised if Time Warner had to sell the highly profitable CNN to get the merger done.

Justice has sued AT&T over the merger. A decision on the case is expected before the end of June.