CNN stepped up with a rare media assist for the campaign of Donald J. Trump, when it fact-checked Monday’s address at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) and showed that the senator was not grounded in the truth when she accused Trump of delighting in the 2008 economic meltdown.
Tom Foreman, said Warren, who was a Harvard Law professor before running for Senate in 2012, has repeated made this charge, but he wanted to verify it because she made it at the convention.
“Elizabeth Warren really went after Donald Trump based on the idea that he is an uncaring opportunist, who does not have any interest in anyone else, especially when it came to the housing crisis,” Foreman said.
Warren said in her speech: “Donald Trump said he was excited for the 2008 housing crash that devastated millions of American families, because he thought it would help him scoop up more real estate on the cheap.”
Foreman said there were two occasions in the public record that are the basis for Warren’s charge.
The first was a 2006 interview for an audiobook for students at Trump University, he said. In the interview Trump said: “I sort of hope that it happens because then people, like me, would go in and buy”
The second instance was a 2007 interview with Toronto’s Globe and Mail, where Trump was asked about the possibility of the then-hot real estate market heading for a crash. Trump told the G&M: “I’m excited if it is. I’ve always made more money in bad markets than good markets.”Foreman said both times, Trump was answering a hypothetical question about the future. “He didn’t know what was going to happen in 2008.”
At other occasions, Trump has expressed that he worries about people, who suffer in economic downturns, the CNN correspondent said.
“It was all hypothetical, she painted it as if it was a real reaction to 2008,” he said. “In the end, we have to say our verdict on this is false. He wasn’t talking about that, she took it all out of context.”