Hillary Clinton urged the American press to “get smarter” on holding President Donald Trump accountable in an exclusive interview with The Guardian Friday.
Citing Trump’s forte of “tweeting and insulting and dominating the news cycles,” Clinton said she believes 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.”
Clinton took aim at CBS for its “60 Minutes” interview with Trump last month that failed to address the bombshell New York Times report on his alleged tax dodging in his family’s real estate empire.
“So at some point, the press has to get smarter because that’s basically how most voters get their information,” Clinton said, despite having “a high regard for 60 Minutes and for Lesley Stahl.”
Clinton then hit back at the notion of “balance” in media coverage.
“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,” Clinton said. “Everybody lies, everybody gilds the lily. It doesn’t really matter. That just opens a door to somebody like [Trump].”
But Clinton’s sharpest criticism was aimed at Fox News for being “superb propaganda.”
“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.”
The Guardian notes that Clinton’s remarks were made shortly before the White House temporarily revoked the press credentials of CNN’s Jim Acosta.
Read the full interview at The Guardian here.
