These cable news shows need to stop giving airtime to gaslighting Republican Trump apologists. They add nothing to the discussion, and in fact, they generally subtract from it, as hosts and other guests are forced to spend time rebutting their lies rather than informing the viewers about the topic at hand.
Case in point, MSNBC's AM Joy this Sunday, which generally keeps this sort of thing to a minimum. Joy Reid had the weekend off, and Ali Velshi was filling in as guest host, and I don't know whether this was her producers run amok without her there, or whether they would have forced this same guest list on her as well, but the show was filled with one lying Republican after another.
In the segment above, the propagandist was Amy Kremer, the former chair of the AstroTurf, Koch funded Tea Party Express, who is now the founder of two super PACs supporting Donald Trump. So, in other words, she's paid to lie for him. As Tom Boggioni at Raw Story discussed yesterday, Kremer pretty well blew up the panel she was participating in when she made the ridiculous assertion that Trump has never threatened journalists:
Appearing on AM Joy with fill-in host Ali Velshi, Women for Trump founder Amy Kremer was sticking up for the president’s tepid response to the reported death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“Let’s say that the president has said the fake news is the enemy of the people, not the press is an enemy of the people,” Kremer asserted. “When [MSNBC contributor] Dana Millbank said that his words are being used to promote this kind of behavior around the world, killing journalists, that is absurd. And I take offense to that and every American should. Donald Trump has never advocated for any journalist to be harmed or murdered.”
Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks jumped in to mention MSNBC personality Katy Tur, while host Velshi mentioned Trump tweeting a graphic of a CNN reporter getting hit by a train.
Millbank pointed out another tweet from Trump showing a CNN reporter being beaten during a wrestling match.
“No, no. He’s posting memes,” Kremer protested. “People post those all the time. That doesn’t mean he’s going out advocating for the murder of journalists, that’s absurd."
As he noted, later in the segment Malcolm Nance also discussed Katy Tur needing security at a Trump rally after he singled her out. Sadly, they could have given her dozens of more examples of Trump railing against journalists as the "enemy of the people" or calling them "sick people," "fake news" and other names during interviews and during these rallies he's been holding across the country.
During the following panel segment on the show, they brought Kremer back (Why?) and the viewers were treated to her opining about what a scary time it is for Republicans because some witches put a "hex" on Brett Kavanaugh.
Next up, another political operative and former Tea Party director, Jen Kerns, who raised the ire of her fellow panel member, Michelle Bernard, when she defended Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore against charges of pedophilia.
And they weren't done with us yet. Later in the program, they had Velshi arguing economic issues with former Reagan policy advisor, Arthur Laffer, who usually spends his time telling lies about trickle-down economics on Fox, not MSNBC.
I'd like to know what value the producers of AM Joy thought any of these people contributed to their program. Conflict for the sake of conflict, unchecked lies, and elevating the profiles of Republican propagandists does nothing to inform or enlighten their audience. It's not entertaining watching these people talk over, interrupt and divert the discussion off topic during these political panel discussions.
While the segment above was airing live, I asked our group here at C&L why in the hell Kremer was on television, and one of them said they probably think she's "provocative." It's not "provocative" giving liars for the Trump state airtime. It's propaganda.
