WATCH: TV Host Wrecks Colleague in Stunning On-Air Moment for Pushing the Kremlin’s ‘Worst Kind of Propaganda’

 

An Italian journalist took a flamethrower to his colleague on live TV for, in his view, running interference for the Kremlin with a softball interview of a top spokesperson, and a Russian TV host.

The stunning on-air moment happened Sunday night on Italy’s La7 channel. Italian journalist Alessandro Salusti went after his cohort Massimo Giletti for traveling to Russia and conducting what Salusti deemed to be a very easy interview of Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova and Russian State TV host Vladimir Solovyov.

“I imagined you were going to speak with a top official and you were going to make us proud of our free press,” Salusti said, according to a translation provided by the BBC’s Francis Scarr and confirmed by Reuters. “Instead … I am witnessing total servility to the worst kind of propaganda.”

From there, Salusti proceeded to dismantle his colleague and the entire proceeding in a brutal 90-second rant.

“That palace behind you,” Salusti said, referring to the Kremlin, “…is where the worst crimes against humanity of the 20th and 21st centuries were organized. That palace is full of shit! You should have the courage to say to your hosts there that the palace behind you is a place full of shit! Because from there, communists orchestrated the worst tragedies of the last two centuries. … It makes me upset to see a journalist I respect to be called “child” and an incompetent by an idiot [Zakharova] who doesn’t know what she’s speaking about.”

Salusti proceeded to walk off the broadcast. But not before delivering a massive parting shot.

“I will not be the fig-leaf for these two idiots next to you,” he told Giletti, referring to Zakharova and Solovyov. “Thus, I decide to leave, I refuse my remuneration, and I end my participation in this farce.”

Watch above.

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Joe DePaolo is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Email him here: joed@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter: @joe_depaolo