Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
On any given day, CNN’s recently rehired propagandist Brian Stelter is gurgling lies to denigrate innocent people or otherwise deceive the public on behalf of Democrats in Washington. But one of his “Reliable Sources” daily newsletters this week was a dirty dump in its own league.
Here are three fat Stelter lies and deceptions from the Wednesday edition of his propaganda tip sheet.
MSNBC’s Squintiest Anchor to Interview Kamala Harris
Without a flicker or irony, Stelter noted in the top half of the letter that the vice president would be doing her first one-on-one national TV interview with a woman who literally just said there’s really no need for one. “This morning,” wrote Stelter, “MSNBC announced that 11pm host and NBC senior business analyst Stephanie Ruhle is sitting down with Harris in Pittsburgh, where the VP is holding an economy-focused campaign event.” At no point did Stelter acknowledge that just five days ago, Ruhle publicly dismissed the idea that there is any urgent need for Kamala, who is running for president of the United States, to subject herself to voter scrutiny through interviews.
New York Times writer Bret Stephens proposed on HBO’s “Real Time” Friday that voters aren’t nearly informed enough on Kamala’s policy positions, to which Ruhle sniffed, “Kamala Harris is not running for perfect, she’s running against Trump … and the kind of threat he is to democracy.” She further said that voters expecting to see Kamala answer questions would only be appropriate “when you move to Nirvana.”
In short, to conduct her first national one-on-one interview, barely a month before Election Day, Kamala has chosen a woman who said there’s no real need for one. That is, by definition, a media controversy, and Brian Stelter deliberately made no mention of it. He’s untrustworthy, as always.
Scrutinizing Glaring Issues With Kamala’s Self-Told Biography Is a “Fixation”
Midway through his propaganda tip sheet, Stelter recalled a CNN TV segment from the previous evening in which he and a colleague, angry notecard reader Kaitlan Collins, scoffed at the idea that anyone might have questions about a story Kamala has made a key part of her biography — the claim she worked at McDonald’s, which isn’t backed up by any documented evidence. “Why is Trump fixated on Harris’s old McDonald’s job,” wrote Stelter, “and insistent that she never really worked there at all?” In the televised segment, he said it was “bewildering” that there’s legitimate doubt about a Harris assertion that is unsupported by evidence. The pair then took turns calling it an “obsession” and “fixation” by Trump, who has mocked the unsubstantiated McDonald’s story at his campaign rallies.
To recap, Stelter sees nothing remarkable about Kamala doing an interview with someone who has said an interview is of no consequence to voters, and he finds it ridiculous to fact-check a story Kamala has repeatedly told to make her alien self seem relatable and humble. Stelter sat there on set with a McDonald’s Happy Meal and a giant soda to further belittle the notion of vetting Kamala’s origin story.
Scrutiny of Kamala’s McDonald’s tale in fact started at The Washington Free Beacon, which last month deeply investigated the subject and found no record or corroboration that Kamala ever worked at the restaurant. Recall that Stelter is a self-identified media reporter.
Stelter Repeats the Media’s “Crime in Decline” Lie
Linking to a report by one of his colleagues, Stelter wrote that it’s “almost entirely ignored by the right-wing media” that new U.S. government data “showed the steepest annual decline in murders in decades.” The CNN.com article was headlined “Did you know violent crime is down? Not if you’re watching right-wing media.” This is the same deceit the national news media have been propagating for months — specifying “violent crime” rather than crime crime.
Violent crime includes assault, rape, homicide, and armed robbery. What that doesn’t include is a lot of other troublesome crimes: carjackings, looting, and theft. The “right-wing media” never said that the problem under the Kamala-Biden administration is exclusive to “violent crime.”
Yes, violent crime sharply increased under Kamala’s leadership, and it has since declined. But all the other aforementioned crime rates remain higher than they were in 2019, the year before Democrats and the media hyped up lockdowns and fanned violent BLM riots across the nation. Some of it remains higher than when Donald Trump left office.
When voters said they were concerned with “crime,” they were talking just as much about the endless internet videos of looting permitted by Democrats as they were about random assaults, also permitted by Democrats. The media, including Stelter, distinguish between the two for the purpose of once again gaslighting voters.
Stelter is a liar.