Twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has taken a break before launching her unofficial 2020 campaign tour to chat with the Guardian about the fake news propaganda she perceives on Fox News.
She also claims that the U. S. media needs to “get smarter” in its response to President Trump and Republicans.
Hillary Clinton has criticised the US media over its coverage of Donald Trump, calling on the press to “get smarter” about holding to account a president who is a master of diversion and distraction.In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Clinton also offered a stinging rebuke of the Republican party’s base, saying it had become enthralled by the president’s “insults and attacks and entertainment and spectacle”.“The Republican party has collapsed in the face of Trump,” she said.Clinton also criticised Trump’s repeated attacks on the press, behaviour she suggested had echoes of authoritarian and fascist political leaders who erode faith in facts and evidence. She said Trump had proved himself skilled at “tweeting and insulting and dominating the news cycles” and said he was too often left unchallenged by the press.“I believe that where we are now in the political cycle is that the press does not know how to cover these candidates who are setting themselves on fire every day, who are masters of diversion and distraction,” she said.. . . . “So at some point, the press has to get smarter because that’s basically how most voters get their information,” she said, adding that often the quest for “balance” resulted in facts being relegated in favour of opinion.“If you’re into both-side-ism – so, you know, on the one hand this, and on the other hand that – really there’s no factual basis, there’s no evidence, there’s no record. Everybody lies, everybody gilds the lily. It doesn’t really matter. That just opens a door to somebody like him.”
Additionally, Clinton announced that Fox News is “superb propaganda” and “a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump and the Republican party.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Clinton absolutely lit up Fox News — referring to the network as “a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump and the Republican party now.”“You watch Fox News, it’s always, ‘Something terrible is about to happen’, ‘Something terrible did happen’, ‘These people are doing all these awful things,’” Clinton said. “It is totally divorced from reality, but it is superb propaganda. I don’t know the best way to puncture that. You have to hope that reality catches up with politics and entertainment at some point.”
Reaction on Twitter was immediate and pointed.
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