On Sunday, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo interviewed President Trump for most of her Sunday Morning Futures program about his challenges to the election results in multiple states. This caused an eruption of outrage hours later on CNN’s Reliable Sources, that Bartiromo would give the president softball questioning on such a controversial issue.
The president’s lawyers haven’t been winning in court, and as always, CNN attempted to discredit the competition to maximum effect. CNN host Brian Stelter said Bartiromo was "not a journalist at all." He summarized: "Fundamentally, that is what this is about, destroying trust in the election system. It’s about delegitimizing Biden's presidency."
Wow. No irony, at all. Given the leftist media’s four-year war on the President, and CNN’s own history with the Russia coverage, it is not Fox News that is destroying trust in our election system. CNN's been doing that for years.
Stelter brought on fellow CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy and Amanda Carpenter, a Ted Cruz aide-turned-Bulwark writer and CNN political commentator, who denounced this and Fox News: “They no longer see it as their job to deliver the news, to ask tough questions, but it act as a function of Trump's Republican Party.”
This projecting attack showcases CNN’s need to look in a mirror. Just in the past few months, Stelter has covered up the Hunter Biden scandal, copying Biden’s talking points, and outright praising the ‘peace’ of Biden.
It is laughable that Stelter and his guests are accusing Fox News of being partisan hacks and spreading misinformation given their recent history. Stelter hypocritically lamented Bartiromo’s “fall”: “it's sad that a journalist like Bartiromo, who had a storied career, is now not a journalist at all. She is now on there just teeing up the President to lie to the viewers.”
Carpenter piled on: “This is propaganda. If the RNC, if the Trump campaign produced a commercial, Brian, it would be more constrained by the truth to go on the airwaves than what transpired that hour.” This coming from the network that literally ran chunks of a Michelle Obama "closing argument" for Biden and called it a "news" show. Carpenter also previewed her Fox attack on Twitter:
This is especially ironic, considering that Stelter's weekly show is designed as a softball-fest for liberal journalists as they all agree that Trump is a dangerous menace to democracy and truth. Stelter puts on Dan Rather and always asks him softballs like an indulgent grandson.
A study done by MRC has shown that the media had a big influence on the 2020 election, largely due to them suppressing information. Yet, Carpenter remarked how Fox was damaging people’s trust: “When everyone cowers to [Trump] they give him more air time literally like we saw this morning to question the integrity of the election and destroy trust in government.”
Maybe if CNN could report on the news and not constantly pander to its own liberal audience and their passionate loathing of Trump, their claim that Fox News is "propaganda" would not sound like such a hollow attack.
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A transcript is included below:
Reliable Sources
1/29/20
11:02 AM ETBRIAN STELTER: So we are going to blow up our original plan to start this program and bring in two experts who understand the media and understand Fox. Oliver Darcy is CNN's senior media reporter with Amanda Carpenter, CNN commentator and the author of Gaslighting America. So Oliver, I want to try to summarize this interview without repeating the lies that are being spread. Why don't you start off and tell us why this was so disturbing?
OLIVER DARCY: You know, history will not remember people like Maria Bartiromo very well. The interview with Trump, it's an example of why not. I was trying to think of a word that would describe that interview and I don't think there is a word in the English dictionary to describe how reckless and irresponsible and dangerous that interview was. It wasn't an interview. She was inviting him to lie and spin fantasies on her program suggesting that he won, which is just delusional at this point. She interviewed him like she was interviewing someone not spinning lies, conspiracy theories, you know. It was irresponsible. It was reckless. -
STELTER: That's the problem. You are absolutely right. Maria Bartiromo is taking the president seriously when he is spinning up delusional stories about mass voter fraud, about machines being rigged, about the DoJ and FBI maybe being in on it. This is what is so dangerous about how Fox treats Trump. They act like he is serious and telling the truth when they know he is full of you know what, when they know he is full of B.S. It's gone on for four years now. It's not excusable. It was never excusable. But it sure is heck not as excusable now when millions of people end up buying into these lies.
DARCY: Right. She is not being a journalist. She is being a propagandist. That's what Fox News employs. There would be outrage if Fox News hired someone like Info Wars' Alex Jones to be anchoring a show on their network. Frankly, there is not much daylight between Maria and Alex Jones. She is accepting the same delusional conspiracy theories that the president is spinning. She is encouraging him. She is acting shocked. Can you confirm this? He spins another lie and she acts shocked and said, wow, well you know, people don't believe the election results. Well, gee, I wonder why.
STELTER: It's so sad. It's sad for the president who is about to leave office and this is going to be the last chapter of his administration and it's sad that a journalist like Bartiromo, who had a storied career, is now not a journalist at all. She is now on there just teeing up the President to lie to the viewers. I don't know if it's for ratings. I don't know if it's for her own career. She has a long-term contract. She shouldn't be worried about the next week or month. She can do the right thing. Instead, she just sits there and she goes on and on. For example, Trump said world leaders are calling him and telling him how messed up the U.S. election is. Bartiromo didn't say which world leaders. She pretended he was telling the truth. He said they stuffed the ballot boxes. She didn't ask who he meant by they. She just sat there and listened. Lies about a voting machine company dominion. She just sat there and pretended it was reality. So Amanda Carpenter, let me come to you. What stood out to you in this dialogue, really more of a monologue, the President delivering a series of speeches on Fox vowing, claiming that he won the election?
AMANDA CARPENTER: I think Oliver hit the nail on the head when he described this as propaganda. That's what we witnessed last hour between Maria Bart roam and the President. And so you asked, why is she doing this? This is her choice, Brian. I think this is a choice that many in the right of center media are making. They no longer see it as their job to deliver the news, to ask tough questions, but it act as a function of Trump's Republican party. This is a dynamic I think has been on a slow boil over time. But when you see Fox, this isn't just Maria Bartiromo. The Fox News network decided to give the President almost a full hour to lie, not just a regular lie, but about our elections, in a way that will affect the incoming administration. They are playing with our government and our politics and not -- it's not just Donald Trump. It's what Maria did, it’s what Fox gave her the platform to do. I don't see any rolling this back. It's important that we diagnose this. This is propaganda. If the RNC, if the Trump campaign produced a commercial, Brian, it would be more constrained by the truth to go on the airwaves than what transpired that hour.
STELTER: It is embarrassing conduct by Fox, by the Murdochs, because they are providing this platform for Trump not to be challenged whatsoever about the reality of the election.
