A recent Gallup poll found that viewers across America “continue to register record-low trust in the mass media,” and for the third straight year, more people have “no trust at all” in the media than “trust it a great deal or fair amount.” Given this consensus of distrust, why, then, would a journalist who fabricated a story about being shot down in a helicopter by a rocket-propelled grenade while on assignment in Iraq in 2003 be selected to lead Amazon Prime Video’s new 2024 election coverage programming?

Brian Williams, heroic war zone and RPG-blast-surviving journalist, was chosen as the lead anchor of the streaming service’s debut into presidential election coverage. For those who might have forgotten, in 2015, at a New York Rangers hockey game, Williams was thanking a retired soldier for protecting him and his camera crew in Iraq in 2003 when (Williams claimed) the helicopter they were riding on was forced to do an emergency landing because it came under enemy fire.