The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg said Sunday that President Donald Trump had effectively “incited” the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol and that watered-down language lessened the impact.
Goldberg told “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter that President Trump effectively “incited a mob to go sack the Capitol and lynch the vice president,” saying that going forward a “commitment to plain language” would be necessary. (RELATED: ‘Don’t You Dare!’: A Self-Righteous Stelter Upbraided By 30-Year News Veteran In Testy Exchange Over Hunter Biden Emails)
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“And then the next challenge is the language we use in describing it. CNN decided that domestic terrorism was an appropriate phrase to describe what happened on Wednesday,” Stelter began, noting that others had used the term “insurrection” and accusing Fox News of using the term “riots” in an effort to downplay the scenario.
“Well, what we need now is a commitment to plain language,” Goldberg said. “Like when you are describing what happened this week, it probably should be described simply as the president of the United States incited a mob to go sack the Capitol and lynch the vice president, his vice president. I mean, that is a fair way of describing what happened or what could have happened had the mob broken through and got to the vice president or the speaker of the House or other members of the Congress. They were looking for violence.”
Goldberg went on to say that describing things as they actually were would be very important, suggesting that reporters should approach such stories as if they were foreign correspondents even though they were reporting on their own nation’s capital.
“It is easy for us to describe the Arab Spring, the coups in Turkey and other places. But we have to import some of that language into describing what’s going on domestically because that what’s happening domestically,” Goldberg said.