CNN was clearly having a very bad day on July 23.

It was the only English-speaking channel I could get in my Tokyo hotel room as their Asia affiliate switched back and forth between featured coverage of Theresa May’s farewell speech as UK Prime Minister and the congressional Mueller hearings I had been keen on watching.

It rapidly became extremely annoying to observe a repeated pattern. Every time the alternating five-minute time sequence allotted for questioning of the former FBI director became a Republican turn, the program immediately flipped again to May’s replacement as PM by pro-Brexit Boris Johnson whom CNN’s anything-but-moderate British moderator decried as a “racist like Trump.”

CNN soon dropped coverage of the U.S. congressional hearings altogether.

This occurred as it became obvious that a transparently bewildered and beleaguered Mueller had not only not authored the long-awaited report, he evidently hadn’t even read it.

Mueller was even unfamiliar with the identity of Fusion GPS, the organization responsible for producing the phony Russian “dirty dossier” purchased by Clinton which was used as a pretext to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to authorize illicit FBI spying on virtually anyone and everyone connected with the Trump campaign.

The increasingly distraught CNN commentator droned on and on about the tragic loss of May as a heroic champion of British fealty to European unity. The screen image froze on her departing car. Any hope of witnessing further coverage of the unfolding Mueller testimony debacle ended with that tearful scene.

So, what sort of terrific unified EU future will Brexit really be abandoning?

The selection of European Commission’s upcoming new President, Ursula von der Leyen, indicates that it will be one where unelected Brussels bureaucrats expand domination over all aspects of European economic and social life.

Former German Defense Minister von der Leyen, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, has proposed sweeping expansion of EU regulatory powers. Featured, is a comprehensive “European Rule of Law Mechanism” to ensure the top-down primacy of EU law over the sovereignty of member nations.

The massive rule changes would authorize the EU to act even without unanimous member nation-state consent. Von der Leyen has warned that noncompliance will bring severe financial consequences.

Uber left-leaning EU political elites have emphatically adopted ideological socialist playbook agendas resoundingly trumpeted by presidential hopefuls in last week’s CNN-hosted Democratic debates. Centrally included, are regulations that will double-down on already economically destructive “climate change” and carbon taxation policies.

President von der Leyen has called for a “European Green Deal” to be established during her first 100 days in office. The plan will incorporate a first “European Climate Law” mandating that the EU be “carbon neutral” by 2050.

EU’s new administrative head has also pledged to introduce a “Carbon Border Tax” that will apply to trade with non-European companies. In addition, a “European Climate Pact” will “commit to a set of pledges to bring about a change in behavior, from the individual to the largest multinational.”

Social reengineering of the entire energy sector would somehow be paid for by European taxpayers through an enormously costly “Sustainable Europe Investment Plan” over the next decade covering “every corner of the EU.”

To accomplish this, von der Leyen warns that “Carbon emissions must have a price. Every person and every sector will have to contribute.”

Yes, and every sector is already paying very dearly for such policies.

Germany installed a 15-fold increase in wind and solar capacities between 1999 and 2012 — by 2013 the country had more solar than any other nation.

Simultaneously, 40 million of their households and industries witnessed an estimated 50 percent increase in electricity costs. German residents pay nearly three times more for electricity than we do in the United States.

Adding that intermittent wind and solar capacity has disrupted electrical power reliability. Up until 2008, Germany’s grid had never been interrupted. In 2012 there were 1,000 brownouts, followed by more than 2,500 in 2013.

Meanwhile, as the Eurozone’s recent annualized gross domestic product growth rate stalled at 0.8 percent, the U.S. economy grew 2.1 percent.

As reported in the Guardian, Germany’s heavily automotive export-dominated economy narrowly escaped recession “by the skin of its teeth” in the second half of 2018 and early 2019. Italy’s heavily-dependent automobile manufacturing economy is suffering its fifth recession in two decades.

Much of this industry sector’s recent decline  — a 3.1 percent downturn in sales over the past six months compared with the same period in 2018 – is attributed to struggling attempts of car makers to comply with new rules on carbon emissions and a EU-forced shift away from petroleum.

Reflecting back, perhaps that frozen hotel room CNN screen image of Theresa May’s limousine evacuating her former PM position wasn’t really what I had then imagined it to be after all.

Maybe her vehicle simply ran out of gas?