The liberal media threw a proverbial hissy fit Monday in response to President-Elect Donald Trump’s dubious claim that millions of votes were cast illegally. While seeming pretend that Trump would be the first president ever to tell a lie, public radio host Bob Garfield went on a long winded tirade, on MSNBC’s All In, railing against the “Right wing media.” “The people who get it and we at the mainstream media, you know, get the straight dope but about half the electorate is getting their information from other sources, none credible,” he whined.
The ranting Garfield blamed the success of “right wing media” on what he called “330 million individual echo chambers,” which he claimed helped to insulate people from news they don’t want to hear. He didn’t seem to realize that his belief works both ways, especially when it’s evident that left does not want to consider another perspective on nearly everything.
“And the convergence of the socially mediated world and an unprecedentedly dishonest president have put us in this crazy nightmare inside of an outrage inside of an apocalypse. It’s nuts,” he exclaimed. That might be a step up for Trump, who Garfield once called, “A raving meth head with a machete.” A statement which proves Garfield is anything but objective.
Garfield continued his rambling rant by hitting all the stereotypical tropes the left flings at conservatives as he claimed they have been “brainwashed” to believe lies:
And right now we have about half the population who is -- who have been conditioned, conditioned, one might even say brainwashed by close to 50 years of right-wing media, which has characterized, demonized mainstream media and characterized it as unpatriotic and un-American and has talked about grossly misogynistic way and in grossly racist terms, in Islamicophobic and xenophobic terms and has allowed about half of our population to bathe in a sort humiliation.
“The humiliation that I think is strikingly parallel to the humiliation of the German people after World War I and the treaty of Versailles,” he argued, basically smearing the right as the pre-World War II Germany that allowed Adolf Hitler to rise to power. Such an original leftist attack.
The host of On The Media, produced by WNYC in New York and distributed to over 400 public-radio stations across America, continued his prattling by listing off what he claimed “humiliated” the right, including “civil rights” passing and the “Miranda warning.” Garfield accusation perpetuates the liberal media lie that conservatives tried to block Civil Rights laws, when in fact it was Democrats. His belief that conservatives what people to be ignorant of their rights shows that he probably doesn’t socialize with them very often.
All In host Chris Hayes was quick to jump into the comparison of conservatives to Nazis, telling Garfield, “I tend to stay away from Weimar comparisons for a variety reasons, though I will say that one of the most striking and upsetting moments in the entire campaign was a man shouting “lugenpresse,” which is the Nazi German term for the lying press.”
[Executive editor's note: While On The Media used to be a show distributed by NPR, it is no longer formally associated in that way. The editor's addition of NPR to the headlines has been removed.]
Transcript below:
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MSNBC
All In With Chris Hayes
November 28, 2016
8:14:12 PM EasternCHRIS HAYES: Yeah. And I think it's -- part of it is this reality distortion that to me is sort of broader and more difficult problematic issue. Right? People say things like-- Alex Jones can say 3 million people voted illegally or there can be a Drudge-- It's just not the case usually that someone with a level of sort of implied authority. As a person who’s president-elect of the United States, when that person says a thing, suddenly the claim has to be -- even if debunked, it takes on an authority, right? So in this case it is not true—
BOB GARFIELD: Yes. And it has consequences.
HAYES: That has consequences!
GARFIELD: For our allies, for our adversaries, for the other branches of government and, of course, let us not forget the citizens of the United States of America. He either doesn't grasp that or doesn't care. And this is all happening, Chris, at a time in our technological history when we are living in, you know, as Americans, at about 330 million individual echo chambers. And those echo chambers are served and guaranteed by social media which just feed us more and more and more of what we have expressed interest of in the past. And you know, one of the problems with the media coverage of Trump's lies is that it hardly matters.
HAYES: Right.
GARFIELD: Because the people who get it and we at the mainstream media, you know, get the straight dope but about half the electorate is getting their information from other sources, none credible. And the convergence of the socially mediated world and an unprecedentedly dishonest president have put us in this crazy nightmare inside of an outrage inside of an apocalypse. It’s nuts.
HAYES: Yeah, it is nuts.
…
GARFIELD: I'm glad you said that because it takes two for a lie to work, the liar and the person who’s willing to accept it. And right now we have about half the population who is -- who have been conditioned, conditioned, one might even say brainwashed by close to 50 years of right-wing media, which has characterized, demonized mainstream media and characterized it as unpatriotic and un-American and has talked about grossly misogynistic way and in grossly racist terms, in Islamicophobic and xenophobic terms and has allowed about half of our population to bathe in a sort humiliation.
And I use that term advisedly because, you know, some of us are nervously paying attention to Weimar Germany and seeing where the parallels are.
The humiliation that I think is strikingly parallel to the humiliation of the German people after World War I and the treaty of Versailles. And you know they have had to put up with affirmative action, the end of prayer in school, marriage equality and civil rights and Miranda warnings, the whole social justice agenda of the left which has expanded even as the politics have gone right. They are mad. They are enraged and they've been told to believe that everything from mainstream media is a lie.
HAYES: Is a lie.
GARFIELD: Trump is benefiting from that fairly well.
HAYES: I tend to stay away from Weimar comparisons for a variety reasons, though I will say that one of the most striking and upsetting moments in the entire campaign was a man shouting “lugenpresse,” which is the Nazi German term for the lying press, at the press pen at a Trump event. That actually happened in this campaign.
