CNN calls its media show Reliable Sources, but host Brian Stelter keeps bringing on Dan Rather, the legendary fabulist that Stelter calls a "legendary journalist." The topic was the New Zealand mosque attacks, and Stelter was railing against President Trump's lack of technological savvy. "The suspect has this awful digital history. But if the President and his aides don't know how the web works, don't know how the digital age works, if they're not savvy about this, how can they effectively respond to this rising threat of extremism on the Internet?"
Rather insisted "we have to deal with reality," which is not Dan's strong suit. "This is a whole new age and the president has this -- the strongest, the most powerful platform for propaganda that humans have ever had. No president has ever had this kind of reach -- combination of television and radio the internet, social media, tweet."
Like an indulgent grandson, Stelter inserted "Twitter, he does love Twitter. That's his one tech savviness, yes."
Trump faces never-ending 90 percent negative hate-coverage from almost the entire array of television "news" networks. That's not a "powerful platform for propaganda." The nation's largest newspapers (and add in screechy Time magazine) are just as hostile.
Somehow, Rather forgets the reach of Barack Obama -- all the liberal TV networks, all the loving newspaper coverage, and historic Twitter reach -- except he was pushing positive celebrity vibes, not hate-the-media tweets. He and Stelter have already forgotten Obama aide Ben Rhodes boasting in The New York Times about creating an "echo chamber" where he "ventriloquized" the press.
Rather also broke out the usual cornpone Ratherisms about Trump spreading manure:
RATHER: Well, with all respect, I don't think his age being 72 is any excuse of not keeping up. He's basically anti science. When you talk about being -- he says about climate change, oh that's in a wider context. Actually this administration led by the president is downgrading science at a very time we need to be leaping forward, keeping up with science. They're cutting research and that sort of thing.
But you know, with Twitter much of the time, not all of the time, much of the time, I sense the public has -- the public has a sense that they're facing a manure spreader in a windstorm. It just keeps coming -- this keeps coming and coming in coming at you. It's ridiculous but it's unrelenting and he understands the value of that. But for the rest of us and for the public at large, it's time you know take a deep breath, say to yourself stay steady.
PS: At the end of the show, Rather suggested Trump was a dictator when Stelter brought up the recent leftist freakout over a recent Trump interview with Breitbart:
STELTER: In the interview of Breitbart, the President made a comment about how his supporters and the police the military are tough. He was basically threatening violence in the future. Does this remind you of any presidents in the past or we are in wholly uncharted waters?
RATHER: I think we're in wholly unchartered waters. When you have a president who isn't autocratic as autocratic as President Trump has been --
STELTER: Isn't he just an autocratic wannabe though? He's just a wannabe autocrat.
RATHER: Wannabe autocrat. Sometimes, wannabe autocratics turn out to be autocratics.
