CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter took apart the right wing bubble that Dear Leader has decided to immerse himself in during his opening monologue this Sunday.
BRIAN STELTER, CNN HOST: But, first, I think we should take a little trip, take a trip with me that man right there. Let's go open a trip to President Trump's fantasyland.
Everything he says, it's rosy. Everything's up, everything's getting better he says even as Robert Mueller's probe is looking worse and worse for his White House. So, before I show what Trump is saying, I want to show you a brand new CNN poll out this morning. It's new approval ratings data showing President Trump at 35 percent.
This matches his record low in CNN's polling and he remains at a historically low level for a president at this point in his presidency. Thirty-five percent.
I want to show that data first before I show you the fantasy land version. This is the spin that's out there courtesy of Judge Jeanine Pirro on Fox News.
Now, here's the thing -- President Trump called into Pirro's show last night and she went over the top in her praise of him. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS HOST: There's a poll that puts you at 50 percent, at CPAC, you're at 93 percent approval rating. You did all this in one year with the economy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STELTER: OK. Did you see what she put on the screen there, that CPAC poll? That was a straw poll taken of the attendees of the annual conservative conference. Now, obviously, most of the people there are very supportive of President Trump. That's not a surprise. That's like asking people at a Yankees game how much they love the Yankees, OK? Even better, OK, it would be asking about the Eagles given that the Eagles won the Super Bowl.
Now, President Trump calls into Pirro's show, he gets all this positive reinforcement, he gets told how his approval ratings are soaring when in fact, let's put that CNN data back up on screen, he's at 35 percent.
Now, you noticed Pirro mentioned some other poll, 50 percent. That's a Rasmussen poll that actually is not strong enough, it's not the kind of poll that CNN even cites because it doesn't meet our standards. It doesn't even call people on cellphones. It only calls landlines.
Anyway, I think this is an example of Trump's fantasyland. He's willing to give an interview to one of his friends who tells him how great he is, where the real data tells a story that's much worse, much more troubling for his White House. We've seen this over and over again recently. The president says one thing in his fantasy land when the facts show otherwise.
This weekend, he's saying that the Democrat memo that's supposed to rebut the Nunes memo, he says the memo is nothing when in fact the Democratic memo made a lot of news. Now, it seems President Trump was watching the coverage of this memo on Fox on Saturday. You could tell because he was basically live tweeting Fox News.
But even when Fox News told him the truth, even when Fox got it right, President Trump got it wrong. I want to show thank you because it's a really stark example of the president misquoting what he's hearing. Here's something that the president tweeted. Let's put his tweet on the screen about Schiff.
He says Congressman Schiff omitted and distorted key facts. You can see there's quote marks, with attribution to Fox News. Now, obviously, Trump goes on to attack Schiff. But the point is, he's quoting Fox News saying that Schiff was distorting key facts. Where did he get that from? I wondered, where was he getting that from?
So, I looked it up. Here is the sound bite from Fox News where he got it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congressman Schiff, he argues the Republican memo omitted and distorted key facts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STELTER: OK. Did you see what just happened there? This is what is kind of remarkable. The Fox News anchor correctly quoted Adam Schiff saying that the Republican memo distorted key facts. So you have Schiff, a Democrat, criticizing the Republican memo. President Trump took five words out of quote, turned the quote around, made it about Schiff.
If I did that in English class, if I did that in English class, I would be given an "F." I would flunk the assignment. But this is what President Trump does all the time. He takes something that he wants to believe and he says that it happened. This is what I mean by a fantasyland.
And we've also been seeing this in the wake of the mass shooting in Florida. It was remarkable to see the president leading these listening sessions at the White House. But now when he's at CPAC, when he's calling into the Pirro show, he's promoting this idea of arming more and more teachers.
Let's take a look at how he framed this discussion at CPAC.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STELTER: This ridiculous rhetoric has to stop. This is part of Trump's fantasyland.
First of all, the national debate about this should be about stopping all shootings, not just school shootings. It shouldn't just be about teachers and students.
Second, this is fantasyland thinking. Let's talk the Las Vegas massacre. There were many officers both at the concert and inside the Mandalay Bay Hotel and yet 58 people still died. 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 fantasy land, journalists have to at least try to help him see the reality.
It's hard to say what's more frightening... whether Trump actually believes most of what he hears on Fox, or the fact that his brainwashed lemmings are right there with him immersed in the same poison.
State run TV tells Dear Leader what he wants to hear, and he loves them for it.
