The Commoner Call (8/20/18)
During an intense interview with Brian Stelter on CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday (8/19) morning retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and former Fox News analyst Ralph Peters laid bare the danger and damage of both Donald Trump and his former employer to the United States.
“He is not interested in understanding our government,” Peters said of Trump . “He believes the Constitution is a menu from which he can choose only the most electable items.”
“The evil twin of that, I believe as a former Russia analyst for most of my career I’m convinced that the president of the United States is enthralled to Vladimir Putin,” the retired intel officer continued. “There’s no other way to explain his behavior. And he perfectly fits the profile of the kind of people the Russians target.”
Peters added, “This is a distinctly un-American president who doesn’t seem to like America very much. I never could have foreseen this Orwellian situation.”
No more hedging, hemming and hawing
Acknowledging his direct talk might be upsetting to some, Peters said, “What we need is people who will speak honestly and not worry about who it offends. I’m just sick and tired of people hedging and hemming and hawing. This is a president of the United States who is a danger to the Republic… We all need to do our parts.”
Pointing out that Peters had described Fox News as a destructive propaganda machine when he resigned earlier this year, Stelter asked for his current assessment of the netwok’s coverage.
“I left Fox because as a former military officer who took an oath to the Constitution, I could not be part of a channel that, to me, was assaulting the Constitution, the constitutional order, the rule of law,” Peters noted. “Fox isn’t immoral, it’s amoral. It was opportunistic. Trump was just a gift to Fox and Fox, in turn, is a gift to Trump. It’s a closed loop. And so people that only listen to Fox have an utterly skewed view of reality.”
Describing Trump’s diehard loyalsts as “couch-potato anarchists”, Peters observed, “They want vengeance and Trump is brilliant at that. He’s told his core supporters, ‘You’re not to blame for the mistakes you made. You’re not to blame for your failures. It’s them. It’s the minorities. It’s immigrants. It’s fake news. It’s the deep state.’”
When Stelter asked about his view of his former colleagues at Fox News and their role in propping up and promoting every Trump tweet and action Peters said, “The polite word is ‘prostitutes’, so, we’ll just leave it at that. I don’t want to be the go-to guy for Fox bashing forever. But what Fox is doing is causing real harm to our country right now.”