A Republican lawmaker from Tennessee in the state's House of Representatives introduced a resolution to recognize CNN and the Washington Post as fake news outlets. Micah Van Huss, representing Tennessee House District 6, filed the proposal to the state's General Assembly on Wednesday.
“We recognize that fake news outlets suggest ideas without directly making accusations so that they can claim innocence from their ivory towers,” Van Huss wrote in the resolution.
Van Huss referred to a WaPo article from 3 October 2019, in which an editor wrote: "[US] President Donald J. Trump has cast a spell on the Republican Party and suggested that Trumpism is cult-like”.
He also cited a CNN host who suggested on 24 November that “Trump supporters belong to a cult and that our president is using mind control”.
“It is fascinating to see this latest 'cult-of-Trump' meme coming from the left, because they are the true masters of deploying mobs to demand total conformity and compliance with their agenda,” the lawmaker wrote.
The lawmaker argued that the US mainstream media is “in a panic” because Trump “has opened the eyes of many average Americans who are tired of politics”.
A Van Huss rival in the 2020 election for Tennessee State House District 6, Brad Batt, slammed him for not focusing on “real work”, arguing that the resolution is “an absolute waste of everyone's time and taxpayer money”.
“I still just cannot believe that instead of actually getting real work done our State Rep sat down and typed out an actual two-page resolution decrying CNN and WAPO as ‘Fake News,’” Batt wrote on social media.
The Washington Post and CNN have not commented on Van Huss’s accusations.
Trump has repeatedly accused various US media organizations that print stories he does not like as being "fake news" that only serves the interests of his opponents.