'The Rachel Maddow Show' reports on the needless deaths Fox News caused by misleading Trump on COVID-19

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on Thursday interviewed CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter about his forthcoming book Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.

Maddow read an excerpt from the book about Fox News personality Sean Hannity.

"Hannity would tell you, off off off the record, that Trump is a batsh*t crazy person," one of his associates says in the book, with another colleague confirming he has repeatedly called Trump "crazy."

"So many sources inside Fox News were pouring their hearts out to me -- this was just in my normal course of work covering media -- they said the channel they used to love and respect had gone off the rails because President Trump slowly but surely took control of the channel. Roger Ailes was fired, died, no one took over, the lack of leadership was most devastating when the pandemic hit American shore. It's as if the president was lulled into false sense of complacency by Fox. He pretended the threat was over and so did the network."

"And as I said in the book, we'll never know how many lives were lost as a result, but terrifying to think the president is so misled by this single network," Stelter explained.

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