With CNN’s glee at seeing President Trump hospitalized with COVID-19 and other media outlets whining about him getting the “best medical care possible,” it’s hard on to imagine which outcome they would relish. Adding to that notion on Sunday, the media panel for CNN’s so-called “Reliable Sources” almost said the quiet part out loud when New Yorker staff writer Masha Gessen likened the mixed messages to Trump’s health to the misinformation put out during the “death watch” of Soviet monster Joseph Stalin.
“Masha, what do you see happening in America right now with a country unable to know what to believe about the President's health,” host and media janitor Brian Stelter asked her at the top of the show.
Gessen wasted no time in making comparing Trump’s health condition to Stalin’s death. “Well, you know, Brian, there have been a lot of comparisons to the Soviet Union in the last couple of days. I think they are not unwarranted. The particular period I am thinking about is something I have written about a lot, which were the days of Stalin's deathwatch,” she proclaimed.
“When the foreign correspondents and the domestic correspondents, such as they were, all knew what was going on. Nobody was giving them any information. Everybody was expecting the final call, right? And the planet filled with rumor,” she added. “And the thing is, it's not so much what we are being told by White House officials or by the doctors.”
She went on to suggest that there was a “palpable sense that people are not speaking, that they are withholding information” and there was “a reasonable narrative” that someone could spin from it. Adding: “And of course, the sense of total lack of credibility that has been established the last four years.”
“Right. And that's the backdrop for all of this,” Stelter offishly agreed.
This wasn’t the first time Stelter had let someone get away with comparing Trump to Stalin, a butcher who had killed millions of people. A little over a year ago, Stelter featured a pair of unethical shrinks; one was there to diagnose the President with a mental condition (despite never seeing him as a patient), and the other claimed he had killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined.
A few minutes later, Stelter turned to former Fox News correspondent turned political journalist for frontpagelive.com Carl Cameron, who hyperbolically described what the country was going through as “the collapse of a democratic republic because of its leadership and its honesty.”
“And what we have now is a prima facie evidence of a person who became president by gaslighting the public, hiding his own failures, his lack of capacity and ability, and now finds himself in Walter Reed hospital with a virus that he essentially convinced a good portion of the country was not a threat to their lives,” he Cameron decried as people in the President’s age group had an over 94 percent survival rate.
Cameron then let loose with this pompous proclamation about the purported virtue of the press:
The media has plenty of problems, but journalism and news hinges on facts, and too often the media, whether it's on the internet or in entertainment, is considered actual news. And in that way, people get misled. So, reporters, journalists, and the news have a responsibility to lay bare all of the problems of any politician. And pat them on the back with had they get it right. We just haven't had a lot of that lately, Brian.
“No, we’ve not,” Stelter responded with a laugh.
Comparing Trump’s health condition with Stalin on “death watch” and calling it “the collapse of a democratic republic.” This is CNN.
This vile and hyperbolic segment on CNN was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from The Zebra and Farmers Insurance. Their contact information is linked so you can tell them about the biased news they’re funding.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN’s Reliable Sources
October 4, 2020
11:03:31 a.m. EasternBRIAN STELTER: Masha, what do you see happening in America right now with a country unable to know what to believe about the President's health?
MASHA GESSEN: Well, you know, Brian, there have been a lot of comparisons to the Soviet Union in the last couple of days. I think they are not unwarranted. The particular period I am thinking about is something I have written about a lot, which were the days of Stalin's deathwatch. Right?
When the foreign correspondents and the domestic correspondents, such as they were, all knew what was going on. Nobody was giving them any information. Everybody was expecting the final call, right? And the planet filled with rumor.
And the thing is, it's not so much what we are being told by White House officials or by the doctors. You could actually create a reasonable narrative from all of the things that they have put out there. It is the palpable sense that people are not speaking, that they are withholding information. And of course, the sense of total lack of credibility that has been established the last four years.
Stelter: Right. And that's the backdrop for all of this.
(…)
11:08:11 a.m. Eastern
STELTER: Carl Cameron, the question here is, do you have any advice for the journalists trying to keep up with all these stories? Frankly, Carl, any advice for the public trying to keep up with all of this news?
CARL CAMERON: Yeah, I think we have to take a really close look at what's happening today and then just rewind it to the campaign of 2015 and 2016, in which most Republicans voted for somebody else during the Republican nomination race in the various different states up until the very last moment where Trump won a plurality of Republicans for the Republican nomination.
And what we have now is a prima facie evidence of a person who became president by gaslighting the public, hiding his own failures, his lack of capacity and ability, and now finds himself in Walter Reed hospital with a virus that he essentially convinced a good portion of the country was not a threat to their lives. This is the collapse of a democratic republic because of its leadership and its honesty.
The media has plenty of problems, but journalism and news hinges on facts, and too often the media, whether it's on the internet or in entertainment, is considered actual news. And in that way, people get misled. So, reporters, journalists, and the news have a responsibility to lay bare all of the problems of any politician. And pat them on the back with had they get it right. We just haven't had a lot of that lately, Brian.
STELTER: No, we’ve not.
(…)
