In a scathing attack on the biggest fake news organization currently darkening the cable news airwaves, famed attorney Alan Dershowitz said this week that he’s contemplating a lawsuit against CNN for their repeated and relentless propagation of deception.
In an op-ed for Newsmax, Dershowitz said that the network had abandoned any semblance of journalistic ethics in their never-ending search for the magic key that will help bring down the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
The meat of Dershowitz’s attack stems from his stint as an impeachment lawyer for the president. In his presentation before the Senate, Dershowitz told the jury of 100 senators that even if Trump withheld aid from Ukraine based on a mixed motive, this alone would not be sufficient cause for the president’s impeachment. If the primary aim was rooting out corruption, it could not be held against the president that he had a secondary motive of tarring his political opponent.
But on CNN, this was turned upside down; before the end of the day, analysts like Paul Begala were telling viewers that Dershowitz had claimed that Trump was “immune from every criminal act, so long as they could plausibly claim they did it to boost their re-election effort.”
“Some talking heads went so far as to say that I told the Senate that a president could shoot his opponent, or tamper with voting machines, as long as he believed his re-election was in the public interest. Joe Lockhart compared me to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini and said my argument would lead to genocide,” Dershowitz recalled.
Dershowitz said that CNN was not simply guilty of misunderstanding his legal argument against impeachment.
“I was reliably advised that the brass at CNN made a deliberate, calculated decision to edit the video by omitting what I said before and after the words they quoted, for the explicit purpose of misleading their viewers,” he wrote. “This is the functional equivalent of doctoring the recording. They knew exactly what they were doing and they did it with a corrupt motive and malice afterthought. I challenge them to deny it. They won’t, because they know I can prove it.”
Dershowitz said he was thinking about suing the network for their ongoing and malicious smears – not only because it endangered his own reputation but because it would draw a line in the sand for the other targets of CNN’s fake news wrath.
He concluded with a warning to CNN’s viewers: “Know what you are watching: a collection of talking heads, paid to tell CNN’s version of their truth, without anyone checking whether they have crossed the line into half-truths and full-out lies. You have to do your own truth checking. Be skeptical.”
This is good advice when it comes to any news outlet, particularly in these times of #resistance to the president. But it is especially good advice when it comes to CNN, which is the worst offender by far.
Although better advice would probably be to just stop watching that garbage altogether.
