Brian Stelter Preaches: Trump Presidency's 'One Long Class About the Patriarchy'

July 1st, 2019 7:33 AM

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, CNN host Brian Stelter aired a four-minute fraction of his 22-minute podcast interview with author and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who alleges Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room at some point in 1995 or 1996.

He left out this preachy moment from the very end: 

It is always a great time to reevaluate and talk about the relationships between men and women, and power of men in this society. And it does seem like the Trump presidency is one long class about the patriarchy.  To see Hillary Clinton lose, despite winning the popular vote, has unlocked something in this country that is deep -- and it's not over yet, either. 

Well, everyone can guess which side Brian is taking on the rape charge. Carroll erupted several times with "Yes!" like Stelter was a feminist preacher.  

On TV, Stelter set up Carroll with a very negative tweet from Donald Trump Jr called her a "nut job" -- instead of asking her skeptical questions about her wildly controversial claims. (He didn't recall that poor, patriarchy-oppressed Hillary called Monica Lewinsky a "narcissistic Looney Tunes.")

 

 

BRIAN STELTER: Your book includes so much beyond Trump and I promise I'm going to get there in just a minute. But I do want to ask you about a couple of the developments that have happened since the New York magazine cover. There's Donald Trump Jr. saying "Hey, as long as the media keeps giving these nut jobs unfettered air time, they will keep coming, but of course we know that and so does the media. So they're happy to use a truly sick person for for their political gains." [Not an exact match for the tweet on screen.]

E. JEAN CARROLL: This is really -- 

STELTER: He's talking about you.

CARROLL.I know. It's nauseating. It's absolutely nauseating. There's a reason that women hesitate to come forth and tell the truth, a really strong reason. (A) They will be dragged through the mud. (B) They will be dumped on the muckheap of this back and forth. (C) They'll be threatened and (D) They'll put their reputations, very reputations on the line. They'll put their lives on the line and they'll put their livelihoods on the line. There's no reason for me to come forward and put everything on the line -- unless I thought it would help other women. And that's exactly what I'm doing. And I'm not sorry. 

STELTER: Not sorry. 

CARROLL: Not sorry! 

STELTER: Sounds like that's what you want Donald Trump Jr. To know. 

CARROLL: I wouldn't deign to want him to know anything. 

Stelter accepted this, and said he found it believable that Carroll's publisher would push out the rape accusation ten days ahead of Carroll's book so they could "get past" this Trump-rape thing and discuss the rest of the book, which Carroll called a "merry romp."  Stelter cannot apparently imagine what it would be like for someone to call your dad a rapist, and watching everyone in the "Facts First" media repeat it within hours without doing any reporting of their own. 

On the podcast, Stelter did ask Carroll about how the "right wing" was raising a 2012 episode of Law & Order: SVU where a man had a fantasy about raping a woman in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman (the same as her accusation). She said it was an utter coincidence.