On Sunday, CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter oozed about his "special one-on-one interview" with what CNN described as "legendary journalist" Bill Moyers, asking drama-queen softballs like "Do you fear for the country?" They put "legendary journalist" on screen, the same honorific they gave Sam Donaldson a few weeks ago. If you worked to ruin Nixon and Reagan and the Bushes, you're "legendary."
Stelter noted Moyers was a press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, and then his many years as a host (well, left-wing propagandist) on PBS
BRIAN STELTER: You have been around a little longer than me. You covered Watergate. You covered the Clinton impeachment.
On the eve of another impeachment inquiry -- hearings this week, do you fear for the country?BILL MOYERS: For the first time in my long life -- and I was born in the Depression, lived through World War II, have been a part of politics and government for all these years -- yes, for the first time because I -- you know, a society, a democracy can die of too many lies. And we're getting close to that terminal moment unless we reverse the obsession with lies that are being fed around the country.
STELTER: So, will people care this week? Will democracy hold up through this process?
MOYERS: Some people will always care. We have to remember that we need to serve those people who will get up in the morning and watch the hearings, come home at night and watch the hearings because they really want to be confused, they want to be -- they want to understand. They want to cut through --
STELTER: Cut through the confusion.
MOYERS: Yes, the lies. So, we have to be -- we have to be concerned with them. Then we have to think about how do we reach the people who don't care? Do facts matter anymore? I think they do. I think they mattered in the Watergate hearings, in the Clinton hearings, and I think they'll matter this time, too. I listened this morning to Donald Trump's rally in Louisiana. It was astonishing. He shouted at his audience, and they responded. They believed everything he said.
I'm hoping, if (ph) only 10 percent of those people come and watch the hearings in toto, they will see it's not a witch hunt, and they will begin to doubt their master. And they will begin to break off and maybe become a citizen again instead of a partisan.
Trump-hating partisans proclaim that you're not a "citizen" if you support the president. Moyers sort of gave the game away that impeachment is actually a campaign maneuver to deny Trump re-election.
STELTER: So when he says coup and hoax, even if many of his supporters believe that, it just takes 10 percent perhaps, you're saying?
MOYERS: Yes, I think in a close election. As you know, he's strong in many states even though he's not popular. And I think his chances of winning, like most people do, are pretty good. So, that's -- we have to keep that in mind. It may be only a slight shift in the swing states, but -- of people who begin to doubt the lies and begin to live by something else.
For three years now, leftists like Stelter and Moyers have desperately hoped that Trump's backers would fall away. They have constantly predicted doom is right around the corner. But their hopes have yet to become reality.
