CNN’s Bernstein: Trump’s Lying and Criminality vs. Nixon Is in a ‘League Totally By Himself’

RUSH EXCERPT:

STELTER: “Let’s talk about it with Carl Bernstein, legendary journalist, CNN political analyst, also with me is Margaret Sullivan and David zurowic. Carl, I’m at my wit’s end. Help me out here. What are the strategies that are effective when we’re bombarded by this daily stream of misinformation?”
BERNSTEIN: “I don’t think that you should be at your wit’s end. I think that the press has done a fine job of pointing out that we have a president of the United States who habitually lies and that it is known and demonstrable to all reasonable people who keep up with the news in this country and have an open mind. I think really we can’t be in the business of every minute that the president lies proclaiming liar, liar, pants on fire, but we do a good job of pointing out when significant lies take place and I think we need to point out the really important ones especially, but meanwhile let’s keep as members of the press as real reporters our eye on the big story and try to uncover what’s really happening in this presidency. What is really going on day to day in the meetings that the president has with those around him and what is he saying in those meetings. What is his state of mind? How is he responding to the special prosecutor both emotionally and in terms of the facts? The lies take place as part of the larger story and we need to be putting those two elements together so there is always context to pointing out his lies. Also we now live in a culture that is somewhat a fact-free environment. Social media has accelerated that cultural reality and it’s very hard to have a fact-based debate, but it’s up to us in the press particularly by doing our reporting, our deeper reporting, to make that fact-based debate possible in terms of presenting what the facts are in context and with that, yes, pointing out the president’s lies and also one thing we might be doing, I think would be very helpful, maybe do a history on the air, an hour of it, of presidential truth telling and lying and show the progression, say, from FDR to Donald Trump, and then I think readers, viewers, would have an idea of how extraordinary this president’s lying is. How different.”