On Monday’s Breitbart News Daily, Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer looked at the fallout from CNN’s retraction of a false story about President Donald Trump and his associates.
Schweizer congratulated Matt Boyle of Breitbart News for his work in debunking the CNN story, which he said had two especially disturbing aspects.
“The first thing to factor in here is the fact that CNN is admitting that they ran a story that had no factual basis, really, whatsoever,” Schweizer told SiriusXM host Alex Marlow. “They got leaks from anonymous sources. We’re trying to determine precisely who they are, but it seems like it is people from Senate offices. It could be others. It sort of highlights the fact that you’ve got people in the Deep State, where you’ve got people that are feeding stuff to CNN that CNN is not even bothering, apparently, to verify. They’re just running with it, and so it speaks to the problem there.”
“The second problem, though, is this complete lack of balance between pursuing these stories,” he continued. “Look, if you got a tip that an American politician or somebody connected to an American politician is doing deals with the Russians, that’s a legitimate story if you can prove it.”
“The problem is that they don’t pursue those stories as it relates to people on the other side of the aisle. So they’ve run all these speculative pieces about Trump and Team Trump and the Russians and alleged ties, but they haven’t run any stories as it relates to very direct and real ties that people have to the Russians on the other side,” he said.
“Let me give you a very direct example that has not been reported as it relates to this story, Alex,” Schweizer offered. “The base premise of this story that CNN retracted was that an American fund manager on the transition team was having discussions with the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which is a sovereign wealth fund run by the Russian government. Well, it turns out, of course, that this was not true.”
“But remember that name: Russian Direct Investment Fund,” he continued. “They set that up in 2011. Who did they put on the board of the Russian Direct Investment Fund? And who became a fund adviser? The former mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, who is a political confidant of Barack Obama, whose brother at the time was the White House chief of staff.”
“This is not speculation about meetings,” he noted. “He’s listed on the corp documents of this Russian government fund. Did CNN or anybody run a story that related to that? Absolutely not. So even in this small space as it relates to this one sovereign wealth fund, they ran the speculative story, where there is no basis in fact, that they’ve had to retract – but when it comes to real ties with American political figures at the presidential level doing deals with this fund, they don’t even bother to investigate or explore it.”
“I think that just lays out the complete inconsistency that they’ve had in pursuing these stories consistently on both sides,” Schweizer contended.
He noted the media spent “virtually zero” time on these Democratic Russia connections before launching its nonstop coverage of alleged Trump “collusion” with Russia.
“When Clinton Cash came out, we had a front-page story in the New York Times, 4000 words, confirming the Russian uranium story,” Schweizer recalled. “The Washington Post, to their credit, ran a front-page story on the Haiti revelations. The book came out in April, May of 2015. Between then and the election in November of 2016 – so you’re talking about 15, 16 months – I did one show on CNN, Michael Smerconish, Saturday morning. He was tough but fair, and he’s had me on to talk about both sides.”
“Think about this for a second, Alex: So I was on one show on CNN to discuss the revelations in Clinton Cash. When Donald Trump was elected and came into office, and we, I think, fairly raised questions about what were they going to do with his assets. Was he going to disconnect himself from the business? When we put out statements to that effect, and I appeared in the media, I got calls from five CNN shows to come on and talk about these ethical questions as it relates to Trump’s assets,” he said.
“So they had me on one show as it relates to Clinton Cash, which had been confirmed by these other news outlets. When I raised questions about Trump, five shows wanted to have me on to discuss it. That, I think, highlights completely the lack of balance,” said Schweizer.
“Look, CNN is a corporation, and it’s a business. They are trashing their brand by going so aggressively against one side and not the other,” he said. “My feeling is that it is quite fair and legitimate to dig up information if you can confirm it, as it relates to Donald Trump. The problem is that if you’re not doing that on both sides, you end up being seen as a shill and not as a news organization. That’s where they are right now.”
Marlow put the CNN scandal in the context of media narratives in which the press is more interested in promoting certain storylines than impartially reporting events. The focus on narratives leads the media to downplay or ignore stories that just don’t fit – or, as he postulated in this case, invent stories to sustain prized narratives such as the Trump campaign’s “collusion” with Russia.
“Let me make a statement that I think is going to shock a lot of people, but it’s absolutely factually true, and I can attest to it because you and I work together; we talk about these issues: Breitbart has been far tougher on Donald Trump, and questions and concerns about ethical considerations, than CNN has ever been when it comes to ethical considerations of Hillary Clinton,” Schweizer declared.
“Let me say that again because we reported it, and look at the facts: Breitbart has been tougher, and by tougher, I mean highlighting and raising questions and saying we’ve got to watch these ethical considerations for Trump,” he reiterated. “We have been far tougher in that area than CNN ever has been on any of these ethical issues as it relates to Hillary Clinton. All you have to do is look at the record.”
“Look at some of the stories that Breitbart has run, raising questions and concerns early in the administration, and then look at the lack of coverage by CNN on any of these issues – even when the Podesta emails came out and confirmed that the Clinton Foundation had done an internal review and that that internal review found that the Foundation was pay-to-play, that the Foundation was ineffective, that it was basically a slush fund. This was the internal review the Clintons did of their own foundation. CNN didn’t really cover it,” he said.
“It is exactly the selection bias you talked about,” Schweizer told Marlow. “They are going to have to change the ship of state there pretty quickly, or they are going to lose any sense of credibility that people give them for the sort of things they were doing 20 years ago, when they covered Desert Storm in 1991, and people remember them functioning in some sort of respect as a legitimate news organization. They have lost the veneer from the past because of this imbalanced, crazy approach that they’re taking to these issues.”
Peter Schweizer is head of the Government Accountability Institute and author of Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.