Ari Melber and Andrew Sullivan battled on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher — when the MSNBC host retaliated to Sullivan’s claim that the network pushes “propaganda all the time.”

Bill Maher had the two as guests on Friday, and the dust-up began as Sullivan argued that America’s political divisions were caused by Democrats becoming increasingly leftist in recent years as a response to Donald Trump. As a result, Sullivan argued, “we are losing the legitimacy of the system and that is the critical thing.”

When you lose that core legitimacy, you lose democracy, that’s where we are really going to lose our democracy, because we don’t believe in it anymore. And you can see that the results of that, the way that this works, is you start disbelieving all the institutions and then you say ‘who do I want?’ And you want a strongman. You want someone to cut all the knots. This is a classic case of how you lose a democracy. And he’s almost certainly going to be there. He’s going to win this election. Almost certainly.

Melber interjected, saying, “I think you make fair points, but you sound a little bit both sides-y.” Sullivan took that as a compliment, and Melber proceeded to make his argument:

There’s absolutely problems with the Democratic Party and the overreaction to Trump. We just spoke about the [Colorado] ballot case and its thinness and we cover that all the on the news. But there’s not equivalence here on the problems you just referred to. There’s not equivalence on political violence, there’s not an equivalence on responding to court cases. Bush v. Gore was very controversial, but there was no violent response and there was not any mainstream response from Democrats about overthrowing the certification. Al Gore actually showed up on January 6th… and certified it.

So there isn’t a bothsidesism to this decay, and what Trump does — and I agree at times he may draw his opponents into messy dumb feuds — but he is the one banking on a cynicism, an attack on democracy, and a complete rejection of the policy democracy that you want because they didn’t even have a platform. So he’s saying, it’s just me. You don’t even know what I’m going to do. Just vote for me. No platform. And you’ve got a whole Republican Party that’s basically codifying that.

Instead of arguing against any of Melber’s points, Sullivan responded by telling him “You know would be good at MSNBC, is if you actually did think about both sides and weigh the arguments and make constructive arguments against that side while respecting them.”

“You don’t do that,” he said. “It’s propaganda all the time!”

Melber cut Sullivan off at that point to remind him of all the times he has spoken with Trump officials and allies on The Beat.

“What you just said described my show,” said Melber. “I had Trump’s lawyer on this week. I’ve had Steve Bannon on my show. I’ve had Trump White House officials.”

The two managed to end the discussion amicably, with Maher sarcastically scolding them.

“Let’s be nice!” Maher said.

Watch above via HBO.

The post ‘It’s Propaganda All the Time!’ Bill Maher Guest Trashes MSNBC in Testy Spat With Ari Melber first appeared on Mediaite.

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