Media Matters' Eric Boehlert: Trump Gets His Information “From The Deepest Corners Of The 'Alt-Right' Media”

From the March 11 edition of MSNBC's AM Joy:

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NAVEED JAMALI: Joy, look, when it comes to the intelligence community, whether it's law enforcement or the actual IC, the goal when they present the [President's Daily Brief], when they present this information to the president is to do so objectively, not to push the president to go down one route for a policy. So, that is objective, analyzed, intelligence information. You take raw stuff and you say “this is what it's telling us; now, you Mr. President make the decision.” If you're relying on TMZ or Breitbart, those are places that have a very clear bent. They have a clear decision as to how they want a particular policy to go. That's not -- I can't even believe I'm saying this, but that's obviously not objective analysis. That's not how any president should be making this. You should trust the people who have taken an oath to present you unbiased, analyzed information. And if you're not doing that, you're missing a massive part of how you're going to make a decision.

JOY REID (HOST): One of the other things that disturbs me, and I think it should disturb a lot of people, even if they are Republicans who are -- generally want to be supportive of Donald Trump, is that you have Breitbart.com, which is not a news organization -- it's a website that was started by the late Andrew Breitbart to fight Hollywood and what he saw as conspiracies against conservatives -- embedded deeply in the administration. Not just Steve Bannon, who used to run the place, but people like Sebastian Gorka, who used to write for them, even though he has no -- I don't believe he's ever been able to read the Qur'an in the original Arabic because he doesn't read Arabic, but he styles himself as an expert. Breitbart is essentially more embedded in the White House than the CIA or the NSA or the intelligence community.

ERIC BOEHLERT: Which is crazy. Even just a couple of years ago, Breitbart was like a punchline within the conservative media. It was not taken seriously, people at the National Review, people at The Wall Street Journal, they didn't read Breitbart and say “Oh boy, I better follow up this story.” They thought it was a joke. They are embedded in the White House and Trump is getting his stuff from the deepest corners of the “alt-right” media, right? And so, he's taking these typed up -- when he accused Obama of wiretapping, it was Breitbart who typed up this right-wing radio rant, there was no reporting or anything on that. And you know, I just have to say like, conspiracy theory, we might be too kind. Conspiracy theory to me is someone who is kind of in over their head, kind of went down a rabbit hole, can't tell right from wrong. To me, Trump is just this pathological liar, right? And he's shown himself to be that all the time, and for the press the challenge is you have to say that. Journalism is saying what's in front of you every day, and what we see every day is a congenital liar, right? Massive insecurities -- who has adopted his own reality and that really has to be how he's portrayed.

REID: For the media, Tara, the danger is that the media then chases these rabbits down these rabbit holes. That Donald Trump tweets something that, to Eric's point, is literally lifted off of a right-wing radio rant, but he because he's president can turn that not only into policy but into news coverage, and send reporters chasing after whether or not Barack Obama somehow managed to wiretap Trump Tower?

TARA DOWDELL: And that's exactly what he's doing, and what's so dangerous about it is he's mainstreaming many of these conspiracy theories and I think people who are -- people who follow the media, people who read more voraciously, are thinking “oh, no one could possibly believe this.” But I cannot tell you the number of times I've had Democrats ask me if some of these things had merit. And so, I think people need to understand that even if you're a Democrat, if you're not someone who is always in touch with what's going on, you're working a lot, a number of hours, you could be susceptible hearing the repetition of these conspiracy theories and the prevalence of them, you could be susceptible to believing them. And that's dangerous for left-leaning voters or people who would agree with Democratic policy positions. So I think people should take this more seriously than they really are. The other thing I would say about this is, Trump, on the one hand, I do think does espouse to some of these theories because he has a huge ego. So he wants to believe things that stroke that ego. So I think he is susceptible and I think he is being manipulated by people in his administration. I've worked in administrations and there are those people around you who will read your weaknesses if you're a governor or president, they'll read your weaknesses, certain staffers who have their own agenda and they will take those weaknesses and they will reinforce and exploit those weaknesses to advance their agenda. And, I believe that's happening to Donald Trump.

Previously:

The Breitbart Clauses In Trump’s Executive Orders

CNN's Mattingly Highlights Donald Trump Getting “A Lot Of His Information” From Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones

Trump Embraces Fringe Conspiracy That Equates Chuck Schumer Eating Krispy Kreme Donuts With Allegations Trump's Campaign Had Ties To Russia