MSNBC’s Ben Rhodes: Fox News “is no different than the state media that we see in places like Russia”
Rhodes: “That's the purpose of that kind of alternative state media reality, to ensure that there's no dissent. There's only our version of reality”
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From the June 12, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): It's not often that you get to see the propaganda forming in real time. And the video was available before Kristi Noem's 3 P.M. interview on Fox News was announced or notified with a little box to promote it. And the video shows Senator Alex Padilla saying, quote, "I'm Senator Alex Padilla, I'm Senator Alex Padilla." I don't know what -- who interviewed Kristi Noem, but Kristi Noem tells this lie, quote, "He didn't identify himself." The lie isn't corrected. So, now millions of people -- that network has a huge audience -- heard that lie. What is the role of propaganda and unchecked, uncorrected lies in the media in an autocratic lunge?
BEN RHODES (CONTRIBUTOR): I think if you want to look at an example, it's Russia, right? And then Russia, what you have, if you watch television, all you see is an alternative reality that is not reality. It is the reality that the regime wants you to think is reality. That is what Fox News is. It is no different than the state media that we see in places like Russia.
I'm from Los Angeles. I just got here yesterday. There's no burning of LA to the ground. They've created a complete fiction on television. Running in a loop, the same 4 or 5 images of the same burning car, right? They're going to kind of force down the throats of the people that watch and consume their media or their social media a complete false reality. And that -- it makes it incumbent on us to do whatever we can in our personal communications with our neighbors as well as the platforms that we have to communicate a reality.
I just want to say one other thing, Nicolle. There's a racialized component to this. You know, Alex Padilla is brown, right? And let's just name this too, like, they're going to kind of otherize him in the same way that they're trying to otherize the kind of people that are being rolled up in a lot of these raids, including people who've committed no crimes, including people who may be here illegally. That's where they're starting. But it's not where they're going to end. The end goal is there not to be dissent in this country. And that's the -- to end where I started -- that's the purpose of that kind of alternative state media reality, to ensure that there's no dissent. There's only our version of reality.