first of all, the press has trouble dealing with a president who lies. and there has been a great debate. who lies so repeatedly. frequently. relentlessly and really as a matter of strategy. on a consistent basis, trying to undermine people s sense that anything else than what he tells them can be relied upon. that is the ultimate goal here. i think the press has gone further clearly with this president than ever before. some in the new york times have a big debate about using the word lie. but you do run into limits. the president says something and in the conventional news structure, that is news and the headline is not always possible. there s an instinct to say well, the president said it. you ve got to repeat it. i don t know if that works anymore. absolutely right. absolutely right. we ve seen it even to the point of fact checking, the president is talking, obviously the first white house i covered was ronald reagan. the thought that like we would be doing that 35 yea
about the pizza gate issue, the fake news story that led that person with a gun into the restaurant. until pizza gate is proven to be false. it will remain a story. they ve forgotten poe des stay e-mails and the coincidences. this is his chief of staff and working for and employed by the trump transition team. you ask yourself, how can he possibly get away with tweeting this, and then standing by it and digging in. and i think this is basically at this point magnifying what is a really broader systemic problem of accountability here in washington. now you talked about both parties being concerned about fake news. that s probably true. the autopsies show that the overwhelming majority of the fake news structure is targeted at democrats. so that is why when you see leaders like paul ryan who are asked, for example, about donald trump himself tweeting out fake