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Yesterday at the White House, Atlas shrugged.
More specifically, Playboy correspondent Brian Karem told White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee where she could put her neo-fascist talking points about the free press being nothing more than “fake news.”
It was pretty glorious.
Sadly, no one else stuck up for Karem. But it was a glimmering moment of someone, anyone, in the White House press corps standing up to this administration to their face. Though many have complained on the outside, and some have raised questions inside, like CNN’s Jim Acosta, only Karem has stood up and blasted the administration to this degree from the inside with the camera’s rolling.
Huckabee outdid herself yesterday, in terms of bringing America ever-closer to 1933. The Republicans have blasted a free media for decades, principally because the media hold Republicans responsible for their lies. The GOP learned long ago that its actual policies aren’t terribly popular with the public at large (there are only so many billionaire voters). So they lie. And while Donald Trump is the apex of the GOP culture of lies, he didn’t start it — he simply raised deception to an art form.
Of course, in Trump’s case, the lies go much further than a strategy to help the GOP lie machine. Trump comes across as a combination of ignorant, mentally unhinged and autocratic. So when Trump rails against the media it’s in part a sign of his narcissism –how dare anyone criticize me! — but more ominously, he’s also the strongman unhappy that a free society permits dissent at all. There’s a reason Trump refuses to criticize Putin, and has praised the North Korean leader and the Tiananmen Square crackdown. And it’s not because he loves freedom.
Here’s Karem standing up to Huckabee. He starts around 3:30 into the video, but watch the entire thing. It starts with Huckabee making an outrageous attack on the free press. Then Karem jumps in.
And here’s Karem talking to MSNBC afterwards:
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