Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” host Brian Stelter compared President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic to the TV series based on the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
Stelter said, “A question that applies to all of us right now, what is the cost of lies? Those are the first words in the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl,” last year’s award-winning dramatization of the nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union. Secrecy, state deception, a Democratic line, those are the themes from ‘Chernobyl’ — they affected many people back then. So the miniseries starts by saying, what is the cost of lies? It is not that we will mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.”
He continued, “The lies are taking a toll in America as President Trump and his aides try to push this narrative that we are seeing great success against the virus, cases are surging across the country. Largely affecting the south, the midwest and western states that were spared earlier.”
He added, “What is the cost of lies? The cost is trust. The cost is a collective truth. And sometimes the cost is human lives. And we have seen that trust violated. We have seen this dangerous downplaying of the pandemic, outright denialism coming from the president and his aides. And it is partly, I only want to say partly, but partly due to the right-wing media machine.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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