CNN was the sole major cable news network to call President Donald Trump’s controversial tweets “racist” during the press conference by the so-called “Squad” of left-wing Democrats on Monday evening.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) convened a press conference on Capitol Hill to respond to tweets by the president suggesting that they “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”
The “Squad” — nicknamed as such by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — called for President Trump to be impeached, among other demands.
As they did so, the various cable networks carried their remarks live.
MSNBC — the left-wing network — described the press conference as “Congresswomen Respond to Pres. Trump’s Attacks.”
Fox News — the center-right network — described the press conference as “Progressive Democrats Respond to Trump’s Tweets.”
But CNN — supposedly the “facts first” network — described the press conference as “Congresswomen Respond to Trump’s Racist Attacks.”
Earlier in the day, CNN ran a chyron: “Racist Attack: President Trump Denies Racist Tweets Were Racist” (above).
When CNN introduced its motto in 2017, it explained:
Facts are facts.
They aren’t colored by emotion or bias. They are indisputable. There is no alternative to a fact.
Facts explain things. What they are, how they happened. Facts are not interpretations.
Once facts are established, opinions can be formed. And while opinions matter, they don’t change the facts.
That’s why, at CNN, we start with the facts first.
Trump did not refer to race in his tweets, though he incorrectly suggested that the members of the “Squad” were from abroad. (Omar is from Somalia; the others were born in the U.S.)
CNN repeated the “racism” charge in one news story after another. It also repeated the “fine people hoax” about the Charlottesville riots in August 2017, airing only part of the president’s quote without acknowledging that he said the neo-Nazis and white supremacists there should be “condemned totally.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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