Brian Stelter, one of the CNN hosts who was famously fired when CNN underwent a management change and tried to move away from the nonsense of its Trump days, recently appeared back on his old network for an interview on the eventing of Tuesday, June 11, during which he warned that the media would be “punished” if Trump wins another term.
That came when the former host of “Reliable Sources” was speaking to “CNN NewsNight” host Abby Phillip about a potential Trump victory and about comments made by MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow about what a a second Trump term would be like for members of the media critical of Trump and Trump’s political enemies.
Maddow, as background, said, “I’m worried about the country broadly if we put someone in power who is openly avowing that he plans to build camps to hold millions of people, and to ‘root out’ what he’s described in subhuman terms as his ‘enemy from within.’ Again, history is helpful here. He’s not joking when he says this stuff, and we’ve seen what happens when people take power proclaiming that kind of agenda.”
She continued, “When Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to deploy the U.S. military against civilians on his first day in office, do you think he then rescinds the order on day two? For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he’s planning are only for migrants? So, yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.”
Stelter, commenting on Maddow’s hysterical claims about Trump, said that her comments were in the realm of “speculative non-fiction” and that Trump might try to reliate against the members of the press. “We use the words that Trump and his allies have said, and we use them to talk about the future. Jail, of course, is an extreme part of the spectrum. Imprisonment is an extreme part,” Stelter said.
Continuing, Stelter warned that Trump would try to use all the tools available to him to go after the media, saying, “But think about IRS audits. Think about government pressure on media companies. Think about other forms of government interference. There are a lot of pressure points and frankly, Rachel Maddow is not the only member of the media thinking about this.”
He continued, saying that media company heads are similarly worried about what Trump might do, saying, “I’ve talked to the heads of news organizations, CEOs, and media companies that are thinking this through, not in dramatic fashion, not because they’re afraid of going to jail, but because they want to know what could Trump do to use his power in the second term to punish the media.”
Watch Stelter here:
Stelter isn’t the only one with such worries. Rep. AOC recently claimed that she is worried Trump will throw her in jail, saying, “I mean, it sounds nuts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy threw me in jail. Continuing, she added, ignoring that “lock her up” was about Hillary rather than her, “He’s out of his mind. I mean, he did his whole first campaign around ‘lock her up.’ This is his motto.”
Continuing, she claimed that Trump wants to “round up people” and that he “threatens journalists,” though if she was referring to any specific incident or just using hyperbole to refer to his “fake news” claims was unclear. She said, “I take him at his word when he says that he’s going to round up people. I take him at his word when he threatens journalists. I take him at his word.”
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