Although he didn’t say so explicitly, CNN’s Brian Stelter did a great job of demonstrating how Donald Trump’s Twitter tirade against Rep. Elijah Cummings and his Baltimore district were part of a poisonous cycle fueled by Fox News disinformation
Stelter’s overall message in a commentary on CNN's Reliable Sources show yesterday was that the media needs to look beyond Trump’s hate tweets and dig into the “six things going on at the same time.” One of those things is the crucial role that Fox News played.
STELTER: So, to cover Trump's racist tweets, I think you've got to start with those facts. You got to start with where the information came from, you've got to the address why it was coming on Fox, why was Fox doing this segment in the first place and then you've got to address, here, what "The Baltimore Sun" put on the front page.
This is this morning's "Baltimore Sun". It says Cummings is a central figure in the almost daily battle with President Trump over access to document and officials' testimony. That's really the story here, right? That's really what's going on.
Trump trying to knock down an opponent, knock down accountability and finding the segment on Fox, this up and coming conservative commentator to help him do it.
Stelter noted how, before Trump began his rage tweeting, Fox hosted “Republican strategist” Kimberly Klacik on Fox & Friends for the segment that almost certainly inspired him.
In his “Reliable Sources” newsletter last night, Stelter expanded on his reporting on Klacik from earlier in the day.
For Fox, Klacik provided a ready-made segment -- she even supplied her own videos and photos. She portrayed Cummings as a hypocrite: "There is a crisis at the border, but there's also a crisis in Baltimore."
...
Fox has been booking Klacik and calling her a "Republican strategist" since last year. But over the weekend I could find no evidence that she's ever been employed by a campaign. I sent her repeated questions about this, and she did not answer with any specifics. She said "you can call me, 'The woman that cared about Baltimore.'"
After my story was published, she tweeted that she has "worked on 2 campaigns," but didn't say which ones. She also tweeted that she ran for a local GOP position in Baltimore County last year and won. My original info indicated she had lost. We've corrected that in the story.
We can't be sure Klacik was booked because she came with a "ready-made segment" but, as the old saying goes, it couldn't have hurt.
What we do know is that a Republican operative brought her ready-made, Trump-friendly package to Fox & Friends, probably looking to boost her brand, and the show repurposed it as news. Then Trump repurposed it as presidential pronouncement.
Watch Stelter explain the necessary contexts behind Trump’s tweets below, from the July 28, 2019 Reliable Sources.