ON CNN's New Day, co-host Chris Cuomo warned the media not to try and "normalize" a website like Breitbart.com and said, "Breitbart is not a normal media outlet, it's not a normal conservative outlet. It's a hateful outlet very often."
The CNN show was joined by media critic Brian Stelter, and they discussed the response by Dave Chappelle and SNL over their response to the election of Donald Trump.
The hiring of Breitbart's CEO Steve Bannon into Trump's administration has sent red flags flying everywhere.
Bannon is viewed as an anti-Semite that runs an alt-right website which deals in hate and crazy conspiracy theories.
Stelter said, "And Bannon is the latest example. This is not your ordinary Republican administration. And it seems to me that comedians or writers, like everybody else, is kind of struggling. What do we do with that?"
Chris Cuomo then expressed a very important aspect of the media. I wrote in an earlier post that the media needs to do its job and not worry about critics. Part of that job is to correctly identify the entities they cover.
Cuomo said, " You've got a new word to deal with in media. Normalizing. You had false equivalency, you had false narrative. Now you have normalizing. You know, normalizing, obviously, means making something seem usual when it is unusual."
He continued, "Bannon is a dark arts guy. Breitbart is not a normal media outlet, it's not a normal conservative outlet. It's a hateful outlet very often. That's the truth. People won't want to say it because they don't want the scrutiny. But is the chance conditional for Trump and is he meeting the conditions?
Stelter replied, "So far, no, not meeting the conditions."
Many in the media will try to normalize many aspects of the new Trump presidency, but they will fail.
You can't easily hide the record of a Steve Bannon or Breitbart.
Newt Gingrich even tried to paint Trump as a mainstream conservative, not influenced by the alt right, which is as much a joke as it is insulting.
When Reince Priebus tells you that Bannon is a "generous, hospitable, wise person to work with,” that is meaningless.
We know what he is because he's shown us for years already.
