***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
In a truly ridiculous line of questions during ABC’s This Week on Sunday, fill-in host and White House correspondent Jon Karl badgered National Security Adviser John Bolton about President Trump’s combative relationship with the press and whether it helped Russian President Vladimir Putin crackdown on reporters there.
During the interview, which started off as a discussion about the President meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on Monday, Karl shifted gears to talk about Putin’s relationship with press freedoms. “Vladimir Putin and his government have jailed journalists, there even been accusations that there have been -- they've carried out murders of journalists critical of the Russian state,” Karl prefaced.
Karl proceeded to press Bolton on whether or not Trump contributed “to that authoritarian effort to undermine a free press when we hear him brand legitimate news organizations as fake, legitimate news stories as fake.” “Doesn't that contribute to exactly the kind of undermining of the free press that we see out of Russia,” he demanded to know.
“No, I don't think that has anything to do with it,” the National Security Adviser said, clearly frustrated with the ridiculousness of the question. After reminding Karl that President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Stalin with no pushback from the left, he requested they “try and have some historical perspective here and not act like we have the attention span of fruit flies.”
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