New York Times columnist Charles Blow gave a conservative columnist a stern lecture on telling it like it is after she described Donald Trump’s continuous habit of lying as the president being “imprecise.”

Appearing on CNN’s Reliable Sources with host Brain Stetler, Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway attempted to brush aside reaction to Trump’s stunning accusation that President Barack Obama personally ordered wire taps in Trump Tower as media “hysteria.”

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“It seems that the press always reacts the same way, which is very hysterically to everything that Trump says,” Hemingway explained. “Not that it’s not frustrating to deal with a president who is so imprecise, who says things without proof — that is frustrating. At the same time, I think this constant level of hysteria causes people to either tune out or get hysterical themselves. And that is not a great public service.”

Asked to respond by host Stetler, Blow cut right to the chase.

“We have to dispense with all euphemisms about whether or not he’s using precision in language or not,” Blow remarked. “The president is actually lying, and we have to continuously say that the president is actually lying. That is an assault on the truth itself. It is an assault on the legitimacy of the presidency itself.”

“Another thing you have to it remember is that when we stop believing in the president, that’s not just his credibility that’s being burned through, that’s American credibility,” he continued. “We cannot continue to grade him on some sort of curve where we have to translate and sift through the true parts of what he’s saying from the things he’s saying that are provable and demonstrable lies.”

Later in the segment, Hemingway claimed that all politicians lie and that it would “be nice” to see everyone held to the same standard of truth before she added, “I get that Donald Trump sets people off but we have to keep hold of ourselves.”

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As Stetler attempted to move the conversation on, Blow cut in saying, “You cut me off before, that’s a tremendous amount of deflection, he actually did lie,” as Hemingway rolled her eyes.

“We are reporting on exactly what he said,” Blow lectured her. “He [Trump] did not say that he was responding to reports, which is what Sean Spicer’s statement said after the fact. He did not say that when he was tweeting. He said that Obama himself, not the Obama administration, not the Justice Department officials underneath Obama — that Obama himself had targeted him specifically with wiretaps in Trump Tower.”

“That’s exactly what he said,” Blow continued. “It’s not ‘hysteria.’ Do not try to make that an emotional plea. Everyone is in journalism because what our business is, is truth. Without that, without credibility, we don’t have anything to sell. And when we see that the truth itself is being attacked, we must defend the truth from whomever.”

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Watch the video below via CNN: