Steve Schmidt: Fox News conspiracy theories turning into official investigations is "banana republic

[babylonsister]

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/11/14/steve-schmidt-fox-news-conspiracy-theories-turning-official-investigations-banana-republicanism/218559


Steve Schmidt: Fox News conspiracy theories turning into official investigations is "banana republicanism"

Republican Steve Schmidt: What Congress and the DOJ are doing with Fox News' Uranium One conspiracy theory is "dangerous" for America
Video at link~
November 14, 2017 7:59 PM EST ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF


From the November 14 edition of MSNBC's The Beat with Ari Melber:

STEVE SCHMIDT: Our country is resilient and our institutions are strong, but we should make no mistake that Donald Trump is not just degrading his office with his lack of rectitude and probity, his attacks on the widow of a fallen Green Beret, gold star parents and a hundred other examples.

When we stand, maybe, at the precipice of a moment where a Fox News demand can find its way to the appointment of a special counsel to investigate a conspiracy theory, where it becomes commonplace maybe in this country, to investigate your defeated political opponent, it's a giant leap forward to banana republicanism. It is dangerous.

When you hear his assaults on the concepts of the freedom of press, the First Amendment, when you see Nazis marching in Charlottesville and he talks about the "good people" among them -- all of these things are not normal. They're not healthy. And lastly, there's no democracy anywhere where you see the level of lying like you see out of this administration.

[Pope George Ringo II]

1. I have my differences with Schmidt.

But on several levels, I have to encourage anybody attempting to salvage something of the GOP. Democracy just works better with multiple serious, honest, viable parties all bringing a different perspective to problems and giving voice to different interests. Partisan ambitions aside, the country would be better off if the GOP were a functioning intellectual and moral entity instead of something out of a George Romero film on politics.