Legendary media critic Bob Garfield joined "All In" anchor Chris Hayes on Friday to evaluate the relationship between Donald Trump and the press during the first calendar year of the administration.
"The White House realized quickly that reporters were willing to call out President Trump on his lies right to his face, which is very likely why the president has not held a solo formal news conference in a remarkable 309 days," Hayes suggested. "And while he's given at least twenty interviews with Fox, the president has not sat for an interview with a non-conservative media outlet since he spoke to NBC's Lester Holt in May and opened himself up to charges of obstruction of justice by admitting that he fired James Comey while thinking about the Russia probe."
"Bob, all politicians shave the truth in different ways, all politicians lie sometimes. There's a difference, it seems to me here in this president, in the casualness with which the White House generally regards the truth," Hayes observed. "What do you think?"
"They have a blatant, I would say depraved, disregard for the truth and equally for the First Amendment," Garfield responded. "They lie, lie, lie and then attack the press...and it's something to behold."
Garfield is the cohost with Brooke Gladstone of On the Media on WNYC.
"There's a worry about the sort of creeping authoritarian perspective of this White House, the fake news, the constant undermining of the free press, and then there are others who say this is them just trash talking," Hayes noted. "Which side are you on?"
"It is trash talking. I'm trash talking the Trump regime because they are a disgrace and they live and breathe lies every day, that is their fuel," Garfield replied.
"They are all lies, all the time and it's not just the president," Garfield continued. It is his succession of spokespeople, it is his circle, it is his supporters in the congress and most especially it is the right wing media, led by Fox News, which long-since ceased to even have pretensions of actual journalism."
President Trump has made 1,628 false and misleading claims during his 298 days in office, according to an ongoing database of Trump mistruths curated by The Washington Post.
"It's just a hit team for what we used to call the lunatic fringe," Garfield suggested.
Hayes inquired as to Garfield's views of whether the press was doing a better job covering President Trump than covering candidate Trump.
"The deference has more or less evaporated and the press's willingness to be his tool and his platform has diminished and now they're confronting him, they're being the adversarial press that the founders envisioned," Garfield explained. "I would say the so-called print press, what used to be the print press, is doing a spectacular job reporting on the administration and all of its dimensions, not just the Russia probe, but the dismantling of the structures of government."
"He came to drain the swamp and right now it's a pool party at Caligula's," Garfield quipped.
"The cable news has been kind of typically crappy at it, they're breathless and focused almost entirely on the investigation to the exclusion of the other very real damage that is being done to the democracy," Garfield continued. "That's not entirely true but i think it's largely true. "
"Then of course there's Fox in this separate category all together, of being just sort of an arch propaganda network," Garfield continued.
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