CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley surfaced on Monday afternoon’s CNN Newsroom to reprise his role as a far-left sycophant. This time, he justified Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake’s comparison of President Trump to Joseph Stalin and channeled Kayne West to blast Trump as someone who doesn’t care about the “plight of people that aren't white.”
Host Brooke Baldwin teed up Brinkley by first playing tape of Flake from CNN International’s Amanpour in which he hilariously denied ever comparing Trump to Stalin, correctly pointing out that “Stalin is a killer” while Trump isn’t. The problem is he then defended his comparison in how they supposedly view press freedoms the same way.
“[I]t sounds to me nevertheless, though, he does plan to invoke Joseph Stalin's name in speaking about our President from the floor of the Senate, which I still think is pretty darn remarkable,” Balwin exclaimed.
Obviously, Brinkley agreed and while he made a caveat that “[i]t's always a slippery slope...when you do analogies to Mussolini or Hitler or Franco or Stalin,” but it nonetheless rung true:
Well, it is remarkable. But you know, Donald Trump has had people compare him to dictators before where any time you want to annihilate the press, call the press the enemy of the people, that's what fascist dictators around the world do and the point Jeff Flake wants to make....But the idea is hereby choosing Stalin and saying the language is similar, it raises the Russia probe stories. Donald Trump is to influenced by Moscow and Putin and that’s he’s kind of more mentally aligned with Russian thinking than traditional American love of the First Amendment.
“Annihilate the press?” Are you kidding me? Trump tweets about the “Fake News Media” on an almost daily basis, but most serious people have noticed that he’s talked about libel laws for some time and he’s never acted on his threats. For liberals suddenly again interested in the Constitution, they should know that Congress and/or the Courts would push back on any changes.
Speaking later about Trump’s light schedule for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Brinkley babbled: “[L]eave it Donald Trump to botch Martin Luther King Day. You know, he botches all of these kinds of special events cause he has no real understanding of Dr. King. He is not — he doesn't read King's writings.”
“I wouldn't expect anything less of Donald Trump and worse yet, history is going to be talking about Martin Luther King weekend when we're dealing with that whole shithole controversy in his denouncing African countries and Haiti and the like. So, it’ll all be morphed together in history as Trump showing an continued insensitivity to the plight of people that aren't white in the world,” Brinkley concluded, casually dropping a vulgarity since that’s all fun and games over at CNN.
Here’s the relevant transcript from January 15's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin:
CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin
January 15, 2018
3:17 p.m. Eastern
BROOKE BALDWIN: Moments ago, Senator Flake talked to Christiane Amanpour and he actually denied his speech was meant to compare Trump to the brutal Russian dictator.
REPUBLICAN SENATOR JEFF FLAKE (Ariz.): I'm in no way comparing President Trump to Joseph Stalin. Joesph Stalin was a killer. Our President is not, but it just puzzles me as to why you would use a phrase that is so loaded and it has steeper, meaning the press being the enemy of the people and so that is a big concern.
BALDWIN: Let’s start there. Julian Zelier is with me. He’s a CNN political analyst and historian and professor at Princeton University and Douglas Brinkley, who is CNN presidential historian. So, gentlemen, thank you both for being here and, Doug Brinkley, just starting with you, you heard the sound from Senator Flake, sort of trying to clarify but it sounds to me nevertheless, though, he does plan to invoke Joseph Stalin's name in speaking about our President from the floor of the Senate, which I still think is pretty darn remarkable.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: Well, it is remarkable. But you know, Donald Trump has had people compare him to dictators before where any time you want to annihilate the press, call the press the enemy of the people, that's what fascist dictators around the world do and the point Jeff Flake wants to make. It's always a slippery slope, as Julian knows, when you do analogies to Mussolini or Hitler or Franco or Stalin and that’s why you saw Flake walking that back a little bit. But the idea is hereby choosing Stalin and saying the language is similar, it raises the Russia probe stories. Donald Trump is to influenced by Moscow and Putin and that’s he’s kind of more mentally aligned with Russian thinking than traditional American love of the First Amendment.
(....)
BALDWIN: We know that, you know, the President and every other president designated this day as a day of service. It goes back to 1994. We should point out the President put out a tweet with an MLK Day video message but the only other thing that we've noticed public on his schedule is he was playing golf earlier today and flying back to the White House. No community service that we know of. Doug Brinkley, is that odd to you?
BRINKLEY: Um, well, leave it Donald Trump to botch Martin Luther King Day. You know, he botches all of these kinds of special events cause he has no real understanding of Dr. King. He is not — he doesn't read King's writings. He might remember bits and pieces from the I Have a Dream speech. So, to him, it's a day off today. It's not a day of reflection on civil rights, on the long battle for equal justice in the United States. So, to me, it’s — I wouldn't expect anything less of Donald Trump and worse yet, history is going to be talking about Martin Luther King weekend when we're dealing with that whole shithole controversy in his denouncing African countries and Haiti and the like. So, it’ll all be morphed together in history as Trump showing an continued insensitivity to the plight of people that aren't white in the world.
