On Friday's Amanpour & Co. on PBS, Walter Isaacson, the former editor of Time magazine, interviewed Jon Meacham, the former editor of Newsweek magazine. At this time, Meacham poses as a pseudo-impartial historian, just as PBS poses as an unbiased channel of intelligent information.
Isaacson added to this preposterous exercise by suggesting he had no idea that Meacham had a political orientation. It's like meeting Meacham in person and not figuring out he's about five and a half feet tall.
Meacham then blamed Trump for leading to the deaths of more Americans than the Vietnam War:
WALTER ISAACSON: I've known you, Jon, for almost going on 40 years -- it's difficult to think we're that old -- and I've never known your political orientation. I've never known whether you felt more of a Republican or a Democrat. And yet, right now, you said you would favor Joe Biden because he has certain character traits. Explain to me why you came to that conclusion.
MEACHAM: I think that we are seeing, in the most elemental way, the significance and relevance of a fact-based, enlightenment-driven,empathetic presidency of the United States. I wrote the piece about Vice President Biden because it seemed to me that, at a certain point, if you have any claim on people's attention, however minor, you have a moral obligation to say what you think.
And I believe that, as we read more and more of these reconstructions, as we look at more and more of what we used to call the ticktocks, we will see that the Trump administration, because of the character of the person at the top, created a reality distortion field that slowed and warped a response that is going to kill more people than the Vietnam War did.
And in that case, given those stakes, and if there's a choice at hand, I don't mind saying who my choice would be.
In fact, Meacham has an extensive history of slanting left. He once claimed that President Ronald Reagan "treated the poor poorly," and he also hinted that he would prefer to vote for dog feces instead of Trump or Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
Isaacson then asked "Given the many missteps in the mishandling of this crisis that have led us to where we are today, why hasn't there been more of a hit on President Trump's approval ratings?" Meacham expressed confidence they would go back down to his usual average.
Earlier in the pre-recorded segment, Isaacson invited Meacham to attack Trump, asking him how the President "and his movement have perverted" empathy.
ISAACSON: One of the doctrines that you write about in your book, Hope of Glory, is this notion of empathy -- this notion of that which you do to the least of us -- how is that something that you feel President Trump and his movement have perverted?
MEACHAM: Well, we have children in cages at the border, right? We have a rhetoric of members of Congress should go home when home is their district, not their family's country of origin. Leave aside the religious part, America has always been stronger when we have not been isolationists, when we haven't built walls, when we've opened our arms and opened our hearts. And that may sound sentimental and all that, but it's not. It's a simple fact.
Speaking of facts, Meacham blamed Trump for putting illegal immigrant children in cages without mentioning that the "cages" were built and first used by President Barack Obama's administration, and are still defended by the former President's Homeland Security Secretary.
