This Jon Oliver piece is a must watch. Please make sure those who want to give Trump a break (or not) see this. Oliver’s video is Jon Stewart on steroids. But he has an important message that we must all follow.
John Oliver’s Trump vs. Truth
Donald Trump spreads a lot of false information thanks to his daily consumption of morning cable news. If only we could sneak some facts into the president’s media diet.
Oliver called Donald Trump a pathological liar. He then made his case using Trump’s own words and various video clips. Most importantly Oliver points out Trump’s map to make his misinformation palatable.
“The end game here is obvious,” Oliver said. “With a completely delegitimize press, you are only going to have one source to get your news from as one congressman happily pointed out. ‘Better to get your news directly from the President. In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth, said Lamar Smith (R-TX).’ Getting your news directly from the leader is basically the philosophy of North Korea. And the notion that our leaders should be able to pass on this truth with impunity should be alarming to absolutely everybody regardless of politics. Republicans should badly want our sense of objective reality to remain intact just in case the Democrats ever find their own appealing reality star to win back the White House.”
Oliver then gives marching orders that we should all follow. He points out that we have already started doing some but must go much further.
“We all need to commit to defending the reality of facts, Oliver said. “But it is going to take work. We have already seen protests, calls to legislators, and lawsuits, are effective ways to drag the administration back to reality. But this needs to go down to a personal level as well. We should make extra efforts on social media to try to verify stories before passing them on, especially if they confirm our preexisting biases. Ask questions of yourself. Like, is this a source I know and recognize? Has anyone fact checked this? Does it link to primary sources? And do those sources match what the story says? And if you see an outlet repeatedly getting things wrong and never correcting it, maybe stop trusting it, whether that outlet is some idiot’s blog or the White House.”
Let us get busy. Resist!
Watch the entire program here.
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