Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan rather, speaking on his show Dan Rather’s America, slammed President Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway for defending White house press secretary Sean Spicer’s fibs about Trump’s inauguration as “alternate facts.”
Rather stated, “(T)his idea of “alternate facts” is a propaganda tool. Yes, I used the word “propaganda” – a propaganda tool in order to confuse people. Personally, I think this is very dangerous.”
Rather hearkened back to his halcyon days when he targeted President Richard Nixon, asserting that although Nixon hated the press, he wouldn’t have acted as Trump, (who claimed one to one-and-a-half million people attended the inauguration) and Spicer did.
Even at the very worst of it, you didn’t have a circumstance where his press secretary was sent out to lie and to know that he was lying; don’t misunderstand me; Nixon had no aversion to sending his press secretary to tell falsehoods. But to send him out to tell a falsehood he knew was a lie, he didn’t go that far. Also, while President Nixon tried similar things, he never went as far as to say, “Well, we have alternate facts.” He was too smart to say that’s sayable. In my own personal opinion, while it may be a short-term gain for new President trump and his spokesman to talk about alternate facts, I think that even all but the most committed Trump supporters would say, “This is, first of all, not worthy of the President of the United States. But secondly, while it may have some short-term gain, medium and long-run, this is a losing game.
Rather continued:
Some things are provably not true. I’m dancing around the word “lie.” You can call it a falsehood; you can call it a lie, but some things are demonstrably untrue. Such things as three to five million votes went to Hillary Clinton or somewhere on the other side. There is no evidence whatever to support this. The president and his spokesman saying and taking great offense to anybody who says otherwise, that they had the largest inauguration crowd both in person and in television in the history of inaugurations. Untrue. Now their argument is the press has a negative narrative; the press secretary yesterday referred to this. There is some truth to the negative narrative in general covering presidents; it applied to President Obama and it’ll apply to past President Trump.
He concluded:
Here’s the central point folks. When the spokesman for the president, and when the president himself, but the spokesman most recently, talks about alternate facts – alternate facts – whether you like President Trump or don’t like him or haven’t made up your mind about him, this, folks is ridiculous.
Of course, Rather was not averse to taking a false story and running with it when he was targeting George W. Bush in his run for the presidency, even blustering that the documents in question were “fake, but accurate.”
But when there’s a GOP administration to target, you can be sure Rather is lurking there somewhere.