CNN’s Brian Stelter unintentionally legitimized President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media’s credibility when he claimed during a panel discussion that the president was “poisoning the American people” and that the American people have been “infected by the poison.”
Stelter, who made the comments while speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, said, “President Trump is poisoning the American people, a subset of the American people that have been infected by the poison, it is getting worse every day and we’re going to reckon with the consequences for decades.”
Stelter then suggested that he hopes that the president is “weak” and that he fails.
“I don’t mean to be the pessimist,” Stelter said. “I actually some days I am very optimistic. I wake up glass half-full a lot of days. And I think Trump’s pretty weak right now and we’re going to get through this, it’s an aberration.”
Stelter claimed that Trump is trying to destroy America’s news organizations because he calls out the media for lying and for spinning stories.
“[This] has never happened in our nation’s history as far as I’m aware,” Stelter said, ignoring the repeated attacks former President Barack Obama made on Fox News.
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