Conservative notes Fox News can 'force feed an alternative reality to about 30 percent of the country'

CNN anchor Don Lemon examined the role of Fox News and how the network's primetime television personalities, "don't have to work with facts."

Lemon played a clip of former President Barack Obama explaining the dynamic during a Tuesday evening speech at Rice University.

"Whether it was [Walter] Cronkite or [David] Brinkley or what have you, there was a common set of facts, a baseline around which both parties had to adapt and respond to," Obama recalled. "And by the time I take office, what you increasingly have is a media environment in which if you are a Fox News viewer, you have an entirely different reality than if you are a New York Times reader."

"How dangerous do you think are these information silos?" Lemon asked. "Do they help someone who wants to spread false information?"

"It's incredibly dangerous what's going on here," replied Max Boot.

Boot is the author of the new book The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right.

"My friend Garry Kasparov said something very interesting as a Russian dissident," Boot continued. "He's seen this in operation in Russia, where [Vladimir] Putin has taken over the country by controlling all the sources of information and basically feeding a propaganda line to the populace."

"Now in this country, thank goodness most of the media is free and independent and we try to tell the truth as best we can," he continued.

"But simply by having control of Fox News and these various social media websites and radio networks, Donald Trump is able to force feed an alternative reality to about 30 percent of the country," Boot explained.

"It's stunning to me to see how so many of Donald Trump's supporters are buying into this absurd and malicious propaganda line that he's feeding to defend himself against this investigation," he noted.

"It is shameless," Lemon agreed.

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