MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and CNN host Brian Stelter claim to hate Fake News, but each keeps promoting the original News Faker, disgraced former CBS anchor Dan Rather. On Monday night, Maddow invited Rather to discuss Trump and how he golfed on Martin Luther King Day. But first, she cued up Rather to denounce Trump's alleged "s---hole" remarks, and Rather typically compared Trump to another of his nemeses, Richard Nixon:
RATHER: These comments were racist comments and for the president the United States to have to say straight out, I am not a racist, echoes of President Nixon back in the mid-70s saying, "I am not a crook." You know, as a people, as a country, as a society, we're better than this. We're better than this, which is what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was always trying to say, that a version of we're better than this.
Brian Stelter eagerly quoted this on Twitter and in his daily e-mail newsletter. Rather claimed that somehow, MLK stopped being a "favorite of the media" when he opposed the Vietnam War and pushed for leftist economic "justice."
RATHER: During the what I call the height of his of his rise, the early 1960s, to almost the mid-1960s, he was a favorite of the media. Once he began calling for economic justice, once he broke with support of the Vietnam War and said some very controversial things, then not so much.
You know, when I was covering Dr. King, you always knew he was walking moment to moment on the razor's edge of danger and death. Once he came out against the Vietnam War and started saying some very controversial things at that time about the war, then one took a deep breath and said, you know, the target on his back just got bigger and it was in fact not very long after that, he was assassinated.
Maddow then directed him to condemn Trump for rejecting the activity/photo op of volunteering on Martin Luther King Day instead of just golfing at Mar-a-Lago. It's not like they would have praised him for volunteering, especially considering their high dudgeon against him right now. But strangely, Rather predicted the King holiday may be repealed, which is highly unlikely:
MADDOW: Do you feel like the holiday now that we've been celebrating it for this many years as a federal holiday and it is striking to see the president not acknowledge it really in any in any way today at least not do any public service the way that other presidents have, do you feel like the holiday is appreciating him as a full, as in the fullness of his being? I mean, you sent -- you publicized this portion of what unites us today I think basically to try to widen the lens in terms of the way the King is remembered.
RATHER: Right. No, and I`m not at all sure this holiday will survive as time goes on. I certainly hope it does. But as a national holiday, I mean the fact that a president the United States and ostensibly ignored it -- he put out a statement -- but didn't. he didn't pay service to it, I think going forward, to keep it to be a true national holiday, it's going to require a continued struggle. I hope I'm wrong about that.
Don't worry, Dan Rather. As usual, you're wrong.
