Marc Levine, a Democrat, is calling the bizarre legislation the “Pravda Act of 2017.”
Appearing on Carlson’s show on Monday, Levine demanded that students “need to understand Russian interference in the 2016 election and its impacts on foreign policy.” The assemblyman compared the unproven claims to the War of 1812, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Marshall Plan, arguing that these events help children in America to “understand where American leadership has come from.”
His argument was swiftly taken apart by Carlson, however, who pointed out that Levine is seeking to insert propaganda into history books.
“The War of 1812 was 200 years ago, the Marshall Plan was 70 years ago, we have an advantage. We sort of get it now. We have perspective,” Carlson countered. “We have no perspective on what happened (in 2016), and basically what you’re suggesting is adding propaganda from a politician into textbooks, and why should I be in favor of that?”
“No, what you’re doing is trying to get losers to write the history books,” Carlson responded. “I just want the historians to write the history books.”
There is no conclusive publicly-available evidence to validate the claims that Russia, or third-party agents acting under orders from the Kremlin, hacked the US election.
Following a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the issue, Republican Senator Ted Cruz dismissed the claims of Russian interference, telling a scrum of reporters that the Democratic Party is trying to delegitimize election results by blaming Russia for their heavy losses. He stated that there is no evidence that Russian interference impacted the election.
Two separate bills have also been introduced by Democratic lawmakers in California to fight “fake news,” in a move indicating that the legislators do not trust constituents to be able to discern truth on their own.
The first, introduced by Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, would require schools to teach students how to differentiate between “real” and “fake” news.
"Recently, we have seen the corrupting effects of a deliberate propaganda campaign driven by fake news," Gomez said in a statement. "When fake news is repeated, it becomes difficult for the public to discern what's real. These attempts to mislead readers pose a direct threat to our democracy."
The second, introduced by California Senator Bill Dodd would require the board of education to develop a framework for a "media literacy" curriculum.
“The rise of fake and misleading news is deeply concerning. Even more concerning is the lack of education provided to ensure people can distinguish what is fact and what’s not,” Dodd said in a statement.
