CNN Guest: Fox News "Invented" Scary Stories About A "Senile President" And CRT ‘Brainwashing Kids"

[Ubiquitous]

CNN commentator and Washington Post syndicated columnist Catherine
Rampell claimed Sunday that Fox News had exaggerated stories about a
“senile president” and Critical Race Theory (CRT) “brainwashing kids” —
among other topics — or worse, had “invented” those stories “out of
whole cloth.”

Rampell joined anchor Brian Stelter on his Sunday morning media show,
“Reliable Sources,” and she claimed that stories like those were
targeted to a specific audience and designed to spike the blood
pressure over issues that weren’t “actually mortal threats.”

Stelter began the segment with a scrolling list of Fox News chyrons,
saying that if one were simply to watch the coverage on that network,
they might get the impression that America had “gone to hell,” and that
the quality of life for most people was just short of unbearable.

“America as an ‘apocalyptic hellscape,’ that was one of the actual
banners,” Stelter continued, arguing that Fox News seemed intent on
painting President Joe Biden’s administration as “a clown car driving
off a cliff.”

CNN’s Oliver Darcy described Fox News’ coverage as an “Instagram
filter,” arguing that the story might be true to start out with but the
presentation is what makes things appear distorted.

“Catherine, when we talk about polls showing most Americans think the
country is on the wrong track, most Americans are filled with doom and
gloom, we need to link it back to the media coverage,” Stelter
continued.

“Obviously they’re getting that messaging from the media they consume.
That set of headlines that you just scrolled through, I could feel my
blood pressure rising just reading those. That’s the goal, right? The
goal of this kind of coverage is to freak people out, to cause them to
live in fear,” Rampell replied.

Rampell went on to suggest that coverage also focused on promoting the
fear of issues that were less likely to be “mortal threats” while
downplaying issues that she believed were more serious.

“Ironically a lot of the fearmongering is about the things that are not
actually mortal threats and then there is ignoring the things that are
mortal threats, you know, COVID isn’t real and climate change isn’t
real,” Rampell added. “I would argue that, to me anyway, those things
are a little scarier or have been scarier at various points in the past
couple years. Instead it’s about the immigrant hoards and a senile
president and Critical Race Theory brainwashing your kids, things that
are if not just exaggerated, are invented out of whole cloth.”

.@crampell to @brianstelter: Fox News’ coverage of the border
crisis “and the senile president and Critical Race Theory
brainwashing your kids, and things that are, you know, if not
just exaggerated, invented out of whole cloth.”
pic.twitter.com/fWbGl51ZV3

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) January 23, 2022

Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin, who has done quite a bit
of on-location reporting on the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border,
responded to the segment with just one word: WOW.

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Let's go Brandon!