Claims Trump’s Muslim Ban the Result of Insufficient Coverage of Underreported Attacks
After being banned by CNN for the past few days Kellyanne Conway was invited to speak with Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper Tuesday afternoon. A clearly less combative and more respectful Conway still managed to deliver false information but it was Tapper who won the show.
The anchor of “The Lead” and “State of the Union” point-blank asked Conway, “Are we fake news, Kellyanne?”
“I don’t think CNN is fake news,” Conway, breaking with her boss’ false pronouncement, stated. But immediately, unable to control herself, Conway moved into attack mode.
“I think there are some reports, everywhere, in print, on TV, on radio, in conversation, that are not well researched and are sometimes based on falseness,” Conway, who coined the term “alternative facts” when defending White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and who lied about a “Bowling Green massacre” that never happened, said.
On that Bowling Green massacre lie, Conway claimed she “was misquoting.”
‘I should have said, ‘masterminds,’ and I’ve talked about all that,” she insisted. “But let me just say this on the broader point, we have a high regard for the facts.”
Any claim that the Trump administration has a “high regard for the facts” is provably false.
Tapper also hammered Conway over President Donald Trump’s lie that the media does not report on terror attacks, does not want to, and his suggestion that the press has some sort of an agenda for why they don’t report on terror attacks. The White House Monday evening released a list of 78 terror attacks it claimed were “underreported,” a way of walking back the President’s lie, but every single one had been reported on, many extensively, as Tapper noted.
“Kellyanne, CNN and other media organizations cover terrorism around the world all the time,” Tapper told the White House Counselor. “Saying that we don’t cover terrorism – that’s just false.”
Conway tried to cover for the president, claiming what he meant was terror attacks don’t get enough coverage, but that’s not the decision of the president to make, and by making that claim he is coming dangerously close to disrespecting the First Amendment.Â
“But then she blamed Trump’s likely illegal and unconstitutional Muslim travel ban on what she claims is the lack of network news coverage of terror attacks, which makes zero sense.
“We just can’t allow ourselves to become inured,” Conway said, “to see it as the new normal. If we’re not covering all of the – many different – attacks, that they’re all ISIL inspired attacks, in this case, the ones that he was referring to in the list that was generated, then we want people to realize that’s what leads him to want extreme vetting from seven narrowly-proscribed countries in a very temporary way.”
So, Conway just said that because the president thinks the news media isn’t covering terror attacks enough, he wants his Muslim travel ban.
How does that make any sense?
Moments later, Tapper again slammed Conway for Trump’s lie that the media does not cover these stories because they don’t want to, and because they have some sort of an agenda.
“That’s what he was suggesting,” Tapper said strongly, “and it’s offensive given the fact that CNN and other media organizations have reporters in danger right now in war zones covering ISIS.”
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