NBC’s Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd claimed that President Trump has spent his entire life using disinformation to further his own ambition.
Todd, who is airing a special on political misinformation later this week, discussed the Trump administration’s alleged willingness to lie in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. Peter Wade, the reporter who conducted the interview, specifically referenced former press secretary Sean Spicer’s inaccurate proclamation that Trump’s inauguration crowd was the largest ever.
“I fully admit, listening to you ask that question now, and me giving you the honest answer of, yeah, I guess I really believed they wouldn’t do this,” Todd answered. “Just so absurdly naive in hindsight. Donald Trump’s entire life has been spent using misinformation. His entire life. I’ve spent years studying him now on trying to figure out how did this guy even learn politics?”
The host proceeded to compare his perception of Trump’s willingness to deceive to former Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
“The more you learn, you realize he learned at the feet of a master of deception in Roy Cohn, who learned at the feet of the original master of deception of sort of the modern political era in Joe McCarthy,” he continued. “So I mean, look, if people want to read my answer to your question, ‘Boy, that Chuck Todd was hopelessly naive.’ Yeah, it looks pretty naive.”
