Nevermind all the lies that took place during the Clinton and Obama administrations, now that Donald Trump is in office Charlie Rose is fearful that “lying is okay” now.
On Thursday night’s edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose show, the CBS This Morning anchor invited on liberal Senator Al Franken and asked him to pontificate on Trump, as he pressed: “So you think in our culture, and in our political culture, lying is okay now?”
Franken then proceeded to slam Trump as a “a president who doesn’t seem to at all value the truth. And seems to have no shame about saying things that just are factually inaccurate.” Incidentally, Rose never brought up Hillary Clinton’s dishonesty or even her current whining about the e-mail scandal as “fake news” when the two discussed how Clinton could have lost to Trump.
Also, Rose dropped a huge opportunity to make news by refusing to ask Franken about his upcoming appearance with his friend and faux Trump-beheader Kathy Griffin.
The following is the relevant exchange as it was aired on the May 31 edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose show:
CHARLIE ROSE: So you think in our culture, and in our political culture, lying is okay now?
SEN. AL FRANKEN: I guess so because this president...
ROSE: That’s really pathetic, if it’s come to that.
FRANKEN: It’s frightening.
ROSE: Yeah. Frightening is a better word.
FRANKEN: And calling, you know, the mainstream media the enemy of the American people, you know, and you know, saying things like “Hillary Clinton had three to five million illegal immigrants vote for her. Every one of them voted for her.” You know, you know “President Obama tapped my phones.” All these things that are just not true. Just not true. And a president who doesn’t seem to at all value the truth. And seems to have no shame about saying things that just are factually inaccurate, probably factually inaccurate. And it, it’s very – it’s an affront to the American people.
ROSE: What was that phrase though that was used during the campaign, and I have forgotten, I think a columnist coined it, the notion of, you know, the people who, the people who support him [Donald Trump], don’t take him literally, but take him seriously.
FRANKEN: Yeah.
ROSE: And the other people take him literally but not seriously.
FRANKEN: I understand that.
ROSE: And That was the argument made for those people who voted for him. I mean, it was about an image of someone who is going to take and clean the swamp and they knew that he played loose with sort of precise facts.
FRANKEN: Yes, it was almost as if they enjoyed that. That it’s almost like, you know, a movie based on a true story, but you want to elaborate the story and it’s more entertaining. And – or, you know, we don’t for some reason, that’s not a value we have, that someone actually bothers to understand that health care is complicated.
