That moment when the Speaker of the House says "You think I'm going to sit here and comment on the daily tweets?"
Of the President-elect?
Of his own party?
Good on Heidi Przybyla, USA TODAY's Senior Political Reporter, for actually doing her job and reporting on what "fake news" actually is:
And she went on the air with this information, and pointed out that Paul Ryan can't avoid responsibility for what his happening in his own party.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN HOST: Let's read that [Flynn, Jr. tweet] because this is about the Pizzagate issue, the fake news story that led that person with a gun into the restaurant. "Until Pizzagate is proven to be false, it will remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many *coincidences* tied to it." This is his chief of staff working for and employed by the Trump transition team.
HEIDI PRZYBYLA, USA TODAY: You ask yourself, how can he possibly get away with tweeting this, and then standing by it and digging in. And I think this is basically at this point magnifying what is a really broader systemic problem of accountability here in Washington.
[NOTE: it's not a both sides problem of accountability. She continues...]
Now you talked about both parties being concerned about fake news. That's probably true. But the autopsies show that the overwhelming majority of the fake news structure is targeted at Democrats. So that is why when you see leaders like Paul Ryan who are asked, for example, about Donald Trump himself tweeting out fake news about millions of illegal voters, which is completely unproven, and he does not push back, instead he says, "Well, he won, so let's move on", that is where you see that you have a real problem that we are not in -- we're in a -- we are in a post-truth world if folks like Paul Ryan won't set the facts straight. Going back to 2008, for example, John McCain had a moment, the noble man moment, where he was asked whether -- or he was -- a voter stated that the president is Muslim and he said, "No, ma'am." We're not seeing Republican leaders step up like that on these issues.
POPPY HARLOW: That's a very interesting analogy, because I remember that so vividly.
Both. Sides. Don't.
