CNN’s Brian Stelter now claims that a technical issue led to him to allow a psychiatrist claim that President Trump is literally worse than some of the most brutal dictators in history on his Sunday program.
As The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported, Stelter took serious criticism for allowing Dr. Allen Frances to make one of the most wild claims against President Trump yet without so much as a mild correction.
“Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were,” Frances said on the Sunday program.
Even though those dictators killed approximately 100 million people between them while enacting destructive wars that brought the world into chaos, Stelter issued no correction or challenge to the claim made by Frances.
“CNN actually does need to require [Brian Stelter] apologize or discipline him for what he let happen on his show today,” conservative commentator Erick Erickson wrote on Twitter. “Stelter allowed a man to compare the President to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao and not only didn’t challenge him on that, but then argued the man whose thesis was that it is irresponsible to discuss the President’s mental state was wrong for not wanting to discuss Trump’s mental health. Stelter gave him zero push back on the Hitler comparison, but argued we should discuss the President’s mental state.”
After taking considerable heat for the blatant mea culpa for up to 48 hours, Fox News reports that he blamed the moment on a technical issue.
“I agree that I should have interrupted after that line. I wish I had heard him say it, but I was distracted by tech difficulties,” Stelter responded on Twitter. “Not hearing the comment is my fault.”
As noted by Fox News, the “technical difficulties” excuse doesn’t pass the smell test, considering that it took 48 hours to issue a correction when a CNN producer most likely notified Stelter immediately after the segment aired. Rob Eno of The Blaze said Stelter’s past behavior proves his excuse false.
“That would be believable if Stelter hadn’t spent the last three years telling us that Trump was a threat to established norms and that the media should talk about Trump’s mental state,” Eno wrote. “Frances’ characterization is exactly the path Stelter wanted to go down, because it fits his agenda.”
Reporter Joe Concha of The Hill said that the moment was indeed intentional, given that Frances has made equally ridiculous statements about the president in the past and that CNN promoted it on social media as if it were something to be advertised.
“That psychiatrist that was booked by Stelter yesterday has a long history on social media of anti-Trump tweets — things even more unhinged than saying that the president is responsible for more deaths than Mao and Stalin and Hitler,” Concha said. “This is the narrative that Brian Stelter wanted to push. It is intentional. It is shameful, it is reckless and it is horrible for this profession.”