"There's No Other Way to Put It": Jonathan Karl, ABC News White House Correspondent, Called Trump a Liar to His Face About Coronavirus Deception
September 15, 2020
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
According to Crooks and Liars, ABC News White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl felt compelled to accuse Trump of lying, given that there are tapes of his revealing to Bob Woodward how dangerous the Coronavirus is, but misleading the American public by saying it would “magically disappear.”
At a “news briefing” last Friday, Karl asked Trump: “"Why did you lie to the American people and why should we trust what you say now?” Trump used his frequent dismissal of reporter’s questions he doesn’t want to answer by truculently calling Karl’s question a “disgrace” (usually he tells female reporters who ask about inconvenient truths that they are asking “nasty” questions) and then moving on to the next question. Trump did precede his chastising Karl by declaring he didn’t lie, that it was a “terrible question,” and that he was just trying to keep America “calm.”
The video clip above is from Brian Stelter’s Sunday CNN show that Karl appeared on. Karl states that the Woodward tapes (particularly the one from February 7) prove that Trump intentionally lied.
The media, in general — with The New York Times as the most egregious example — have steadfastly argued that they can’t call Trump a liar because they can’t prove intent. This has been a disingenuous excuse to maintain a working relationship with the White House, because there have been many incidents revealing that his intent was indeed to lie.
This hesitancy to call Trump a liar has helped enable his “normalization,” when the reality is that the media should be viewing him as a sociopath responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, while he also still holds superspreader rallies. The lie that Karl calls Trump out on is not just in the past tense. Trump continues to let the Coronavirus pandemic rage as he increasingly is assuming control over the virus data, hiring science-deniers and still refusing to use large-scale federal resources to strategically rein it in.
Outside of a few other cases, the White House Press Corps has rarely pressed Trump on his lies, let alone call them out as lies. On August 28, 2019, BuzzFlash posted a commentary about PBS News Reporter Yamiche Alcindor asking Trump why he keeps repeating a “misleading” trope about Obama and Putin. “Why keep repeating what some people would see as a clear lie?” Occasionally, Alcindor (in particular) and others push back, but generally don’t follow through if Trump starts bullying them. Granted, they can do little when Trump cuts them off.
The White House Press Corps should have started boycotting Trump’s “briefings” a long time ago. By not doing so, they have amplified his lies and disinformation and normalized a malignantly deviant individual.
Nonetheless, Karl deserves credit for calling out Trump as a liar, even if he didn’t follow up by tying the lie to Trump’s responsibility for tens of thousands of deaths. One can only hope that more of the White House journalistic “transcribers” will follow in his path.
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