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If someone told you that disgraced journalist Dan Rather appeared on a show called “Reliable Sources” to excoriate President for living in a “fantasy land” and to give career advice to a young anti-gun advocate, you might think someone was reading an article from the popular satirical news site The Onion. But it wasn’t a joke! It actually happened on CNN on Sunday.
Host Brian Stelter began the show the way he almost always does: by whining about Trump and questioning his mental fitness. “We've got to provide the proper context for these ridiculous quotes that are out there. Even if President Trump prefers to live in a fantasyland, journalists have to at least try to help him see the reality,” he declared just before introducing Rather. “Joining me now is Dan Rather, former anchor of the CBS Evening News.”
Stelter failed to remind his audience that the reason Rather was the “former anchor of the CBS Evening News,” was because he rode a fake news story about President George W. Bush to the destruction of his career and the network’s credibility. And it’s something he still defends to this day. But that didn’t stop Stelter from asking, “as someone who has been covering presidents for decades, have you seen this kind of fantasy land thinking or behavior before?”
“No. We've certainly seen behavior we didn't like in presidents but we’ve never seen anything like this. This is new and I do think that most people get it,” Rather argued. “That most people understand that they're facing, on a daily basis from the White House and from the President himself, the rough equivalent you're facing a fertilizer spreader in a windstorm.”
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