Media accused of over-hyping Trump-Russia collusion claims
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani demands apology from media; Fox News contributor Jessica Tarlov and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell weigh in.
A new film, “The Plot Against the President,” examines the "slow-moving coup engineered by a coterie of the American establishment elite, targeting not only the president, but the whole country” when Democrats attempted to link President Trump’s campaign to Russia. And who's to blame? Director Amanda Milius says it mostly falls on the media's shoulders for “brainwashing” Americans.
The documentary chronicles Rep. Devin Nunes as he “uncovered the operation” to bring down the Trump, but Milius maintains it’s not a partisan movie.
‘THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT' DOCUMENTARY EXPLORES ATTEMPTS TO LINK TRUMP CAMPAIGN, RUSSIA
“The Plot Against the President” filmmaker Amanda Milius largely blames on the media for “brainwashing” Americans with the Russian collusion narrative.
“It’s really just about this incredible brainwashing that we all had to experience. The mainstream media was just really awful in this whole thing, basically they just discredited themselves,” Milius told Fox News. “The left wing media completely lost their mind and it’s really awful and has national security implications.”
Milius – who previously worked for the Trump administration at both the State Department and the White House – explained that government workers sometimes watch CNN and MSNBC and take the far-left commentators at their word.
“A lot of them go home and they would watch Rachel Maddow say that the president, their boss essentially, is a Russian asset and so, they’re sitting there in a hugely important national security role and they’re like ‘Oh I don’t have to listen to this person or any of his employees because it’s patriotic not to do what they say and not to follow the normal chain of command because Don Lemon told me he’s a Russian asset,’” she said. “That is a huge problem, it’s essentially a coup.”
NUNES: TRANSCRIPTS SHOW RUSSIA INVESTIGATION WAS 'PHONY THE WHOLE TIME'
Milius said “The Plot Against the President” lays out the relationship between the intel agencies, “abusive” law enforcement agencies and elected officials who were all working hand in hand with the media.
“I think the media is the most to blame, but also those people are the most to blame, it kind of leaves it up to the audience to decide,” Milius said, noting that elected officials were feeding media members “incorrect information” to keep the story in the zeitgeist.
“No one believes anything that these people say anymore,” she said. “That’s a really big problem. We’ve basically had in four years, the decay of the media and the institutions that are supposed to keep us safe, that we’re supposed to have this faith in, and basically that’s the biggest damage.”
“The Plot Against the President” is based on Lee Smith’s best-selling 2019 book, “The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History.”
Milius, the daughter of famed screenwriter and outspoken conservative John Milius, had left Hollywood to work for the Trump administration and had no desire to return to filmmaking until she realized her friend Smith’s book provided a unique look at the Russian probe.
DECLASSIFIED TRUMP-RUSSIA PROBE DOCS TO DATE: WHAT TO KNOW
“Lee’s book really focused on character versus documents,” she said. “It’s really important for a movie because, I think, a lot of the reason that it works is you’re not following a document trail, which is incredibly boring and the reason why most people can’t put the dots together, because they have a life to live and you can’t watch every document dump.”
She feels that moviegoers connect to people and Smith’s book paved the way for her film to do just that.
“This was really a unique opportunity to tell the story correctly because it is told through the people that discovered it,” Milius said. “You kind of discover the plot through the eyes of Devin and the people that were actually on the team.”
Milius initially planned to only produce the movie but eventually took matters into her own hands.
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“I didn’t plan on directing it but it became clear that the only way it was going to get done correctly and in time, and the way that I wanted it to happen, was if I just did it myself,” she said.
“The Plot Against the President” features Nunes, Ric Grenell, Rep. Jim Jordan, Donald Trump Jr., Corey Lewandoswki, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Lee Zeldin, Rep. Mike Turner and many more key participants and members of Trump’s inner circle.
“The Plot Against the President” is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Vimeo, MoviesPlus and specialproject.io.