Predicting “an election mess in the making, with three months before ballots will be counted” was how CNN media activist and resident soothsayer Brian Stelter was reading in the tea leaves at the top of Sunday’s show. And according to this wildly anti-Trump activist, President Trump was at the wheel of an out of control car with all of us trapped in there with him, except the vehicle wasn’t out of control and Trump planned to crash America.
“Picture all of us Americans in a car together. President Trump is the driver. And he is trying to drive us off the road. He is trying to crash the car,” Stelter proclaimed as if he knew what he was talking about. “In this analogy, the car is our democracy. It is old, it’s got a lot of miles on it but it's still running, strong. It's been well maintained. It stays humming along. It stays on the road through voting, through elections.”
Going further with his hyperbolic car analogy, Stelter ominously suggest that “something’s going on with the driver” and he’s intentionally trying to kill his passengers:
But the driver, ever since 2016, I don't know, either he wants to go off-roading or he wants the car all to himself or he doesn't know where he's going. Something's going on with the driver. He's trying to crash the car. But all of us are along for the ride.
In reality, it’s been the media who have been trying to take the wheels off of our democracy car. Since 2016, they have insisted Trump’s presidency was illegitimate and backed every effort to remove him from office (impeachment and the 25th Amendment). And all the while, they have been stoking divisions and enflaming tensions among the citizenry (calling all Trump supporters racist and backing leftist extremists like Antifa).
Stelter’s evidence was one tweet where the President floated the idea of delaying the election because of the coronavirus, and somehow that added up to “creeping authoritarianism.”
“The New York Times called it Trump's campaign to undercut democracy,” he noted, as if the opinion of a rag newspaper meant something. “And you can say it was just a tweet and you can say he was just kidding. It is still creeping authoritarianism, even if the guy is joking!”
But Trump didn’t call for delaying the election as the opposition media were claiming. His tweet merely posed it as a question.
CNN finally had something good to say about Republicans as Stelter boasted about congressional Republicans pushing back on the idea. Of course, that was over-shadowed by his admiration for the media:
Of course, the good news this week is the Republicans did immediately challenge Trump's musing about delaying the election. And more good news, news outlets did a good job truth-squatting, right away, immediately pointing out in the headlines that Trump didn't have the authority to delay anything way.
“But it's August 2nd. The election's November 3rd. There's going to be three more months of this. Three more months of the lies, three more months of the sowing doubt of delegitimizing the election,” he decried as he angrily pounded his hand on the desk. “Three more months of this. And the President still has the keys. He is still behind the wheel. His words still have power in this looming car crash.”
Stelter may have whined about “three more months of the sowing doubt of delegitimizing the election,” but we’ve had almost four years of the media trying to delegitimize the last one.
Brian Stelter’s unhinged rant was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Allstate and Oral-B. Their contact information is linked if you want to tell them about what they’re funding. Stelter has also asked people reach out to him on Twitter (@brianstelter) and let him know what they thought of the show.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN’s Reliable Sources
August 2, 2020
11:00:49 a.m. EasternBRIAN STELTER: But first, an election mess in the making, with three months before ballots will be counted.
Picture all of us Americans in a car together. President Trump is the driver. And he is trying to drive us off the road. He is trying to crash the car. In this analogy, the car is our democracy. It is old, it’s got a lot of miles on it but it's still running, strong. It's been well maintained. It stays humming along. It stays on the road through voting, through elections. But the driver, ever since 2016, I don't know, either he wants to go off-roading or he wants the car all to himself or he doesn't know where he's going. Something's going on with the driver. He's trying to crash the car. But all of us are along for the ride.
(…)
11:04:23 a.m. Easter
Because we are witnessing creeping authoritarianism in America. The New York Times called it Trump's campaign to undercut democracy. And you can say it was just a tweet and you can say he was just kidding. It is still creeping authoritarianism, even if the guy is joking!
Of course, the good news this week is the Republicans did immediately challenge Trump's musing about delaying the election. And more good news, news outlets did a good job truth-squatting, right away, immediately pointing out in the headlines that Trump didn't have the authority to delay anything way.
But it's August 2nd. The election's November 3rd. There's going to be three more months of this. Three more months of the lies, three more months of the sowing doubt of delegitimizing the election. Three more months of this. And the President still has the keys. He is still behind the wheel. His words still have power in this looming car crash.
(…)
