Michael Moore: Trump Is ‘Godfather Of Fake News,’ Urges Journalists To Support ‘Truth-Tellers’
Filmmaker Michael Moore said he finds President-elect Donald Trump’s calling CNN “fake news” completely ironic, considering that the billionaire has been key in spreading quite a bit of fake news himself in the past decade. Moore went even further, labeling Trump the “Godfather of fake news” and pointing out that he was one of the founders of fake news when it became prevalent during the Obama administration.
Fox News Insider reported this week that documentary filmmaker Michael Moore was outspoken about Donald Trump’s verbal attack against CNN during a press conference earlier in the week where he vilified the news network for reporting a story about allegations that the Russians had a dossier of questionable activities regarding certain alleged sexual escapades Trump had with Russian prostitutes. Moore, appearing on MSNBC’s All In, said that Trump should shoulder much of the blame himself for the prevalence of counterfeit news reporting.
“Fake news? He was one of the founders of that in the Obama era,” he said, citing as an example Donald Trump’s heavily publicized crusade against President Barack Obama, claiming that the Hawaiian-born president was actually a native of Kenya. Trump personally challenged the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate, going so far as to send investigators to Hawaii to supposedly dig up evidence of the so-called spurious document. Nothing came of investigation, even though Trump publicly claimed that his sleuths had found condemning information against Obama.
“He is the godfather of this decade’s fake news.”
Trump touched off a firestorm of ridicule, indignation, and outrage, not to mention generating a strange rallying of rivals, after he verbally attacked CNN on Wednesday by yelling “You are fake news” at CNN correspondent Jim Acosta. Trump then refused to allow the journalist a question at the president-elect’s first press conference since the election.
The accusation and refusal came, as recounted by a separate Fox News Insider report, after Trump answered a question regarding his Twitter post where he asked, “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” He named Buzzfeed, the website that first published the story about the compromising Russian dossier on Trump, in his answer, calling it a “failing piece of garbage,” then turned on CNN for covering the Buzzfeed story about certain unverified salacious allegations that also alleged Trump had deep ties with the Russians and that people in his campaign had contact with Russian operatives.
It was then that Jim Acosta attempted to ask a question, but Trump refused to allow him to get out more than a couple of words, cutting him off several times.
At one point, Acosta persevered, “Since you’re attacking us can you give us a question? Since you are attacking our news organization can you give us a chance?”
Trump responded, “Not you, your organization is terrible.” He then told Acosta to be quiet. “She’s asking a question, don’t be rude.”
Acosta spoke no more during the press conference.
Moore called Trump’s performance “masterful.”
Moore said, “Take those same words you just showed – ‘You are fake news’ – put those words in Nixon’s mouth… it would have sounded like the paranoid that Nixon was. Put those words in George W. Bush’s mouth… it would have sounded defensive and like a little boy. This guy pulls that off. And he pulls it off over and over and over again.”
The Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary director called on all news organizations to continue to report on controversial topics, even if it resulted in Trump yelling at them. “This is crazy time,” he said.
Moore went on CNN later and doubled down on his assertion that Donald Trump is a fake news purveyor himself. He told anchor Don Lemon, “It’s amazing that the inventor of this decade’s main fake news story, that our president [Obama] was not born in the United States, could be pointing at a CNN reporter and accusing him of fake news. I mean, he talks like a 12-year-old.”
He also doubled down on his call for reporters to stand unified against a coming Trump administration that has shown — as a campaign — that it handles the truth with little respect.
“All journalists must at this time realize they’re all in the same boat, and this is a president who’s going to attack the truth-tellers. Everyone has to have everyone else’s back.”
Michael Moore pointed out Trump’s horrendous showing on the Politifact site, where statements of the soon-to-be president have been overwhelmingly colored by falsehood. Politifact, the St. Petersburg Times‘ Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking arm, found that of the 347 Trump statements tracked to date for their veracity, 292 (86 percent) were rated half true — or if one prefers, half false — or worse.
Besides giving “birtherism” his support, Trump was also very vocal in pushing the fake news stories that Obama never attended Columbia University, the fake news that Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was too ill to serve as president, relaying the conspiracy theory that Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s father was part of a plot to kill President John F. Kennedy, suggesting that the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murder, and promoting several other reports, according to Alternet, that have been found to be baseless.
[Featured Image by Sarah Rice/Getty Images]
