As the November election draws closer with each day, it’s becoming more apparent that once patient cable news hosts are growing tired of the blatant lies being told by Donald Trump surrogates when they appear on their air.
Take MSNBC host Craig Melvin, for example. He was interviewing Trump advisor (and perpetual liar) Boris Epshteyn this morning. And it all began when Epshteyn repeated Trump’s lie from last night’s Commander-In-Chief Forum, saying that the terrorist group ISIS was “effectively born” while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, and then adding:
“ISIS was nothing before Hillary Clinton destroyed the Middle East establishment. She destroyed the secular leaders in the Middle East.”
Melvin rightly pointed out that you could also argue ISIS was created during the administration of George W. Bush. To that, Epshteyn remarked:
“No, you cannot. You can say it was a doctrine in the 1920s that was the end of the Middle East, go all the way back to the 1500s. But the real reason that we are where we are is because under Hillary Clinton, the Middle East has been set on fire. And it’s her fault.”
Then Epshteyn had the audacity to claim Trump had never blamed rapes in the military on the fact that men and women are serving together in the military. But Melvin was ready for the Trump minion, telling him:
“That’s not what’s in that [2013] tweet!”
Yes, in 2013, Trump tweeted out this crap:
26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2013
Rather than admit the tweet was wrong, Epshteyn tried to spin it, telling Melvin:
“And you’re not giving the full context of what he said. He respects women inside and outside the military and is 100 percent convinced that what we need to do is change the way that sexual assaults are investigated and prosecuted in the military.”
Epshteyn then offered to stay and continue the discussion even though Melvin had just notified him they were out of time. So Melvin shut down the Trump acolyte by slamming him with this:
“Well, we just don’t have 20 minutes for me to sit here and try and refute everything that you say — that you know probably not to be true.”
Boom! Game, set, match, Craig Melvin. I personally hope we see a lot more of this in the two months that remain before the election. This is what journalists are supposed to do: Speak truth to power and call out bullshitters for their blatant lies.
This article was orignally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org