CNN Fact-Checker Daniel Dale Debunks False Trump Claims From Fox News Town Hall
CNN fact checker Daniel Dale debunked two claims by former President Donald Trump during his Wednesday night town hall in Pennsylvania hosted by Fox News.
Trump sat down with Sean Hannity for an hour and ran through many of his normal talking points in an interview that CNN host Abby Phillip remarked “sounded a lot like a Trump rally.”
Bringing Dale on air, Phillip focused on two claims made by Trump, rolling back the tape from the Fox News event.
In the first clip, Trump claimed that during his presidency, Iran was “broke” and “didn’t have the money” to sponsor terror groups Hamas or Hezbollah.
“We went for years without any blowups. We had no World Trade Center blow up… we had no radical Islamic terror,” he said.
Dale interjected:
I say there are two claims they are and they’re both false. So first this claim that Iran did not have money for Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups during his presidency. That’s wrong. As his own administration acknowledged in 2020, Iran continued funding these terror groups throughout his presidency, although it did reduce funding, experts say, when it came under sanctions pressure from Trump.
And then the second claim that we had no radical Islamic terror is also wrong. There were terror attacks by Islamic extremists under Trump. There was one that Trump repeatedly lamented during his presidency. It was the attack that killed eight people on the west side highway in New York. The DOJ alleged it was carried out in support of ISIS. And then, of course, there was a 2019 attack by an extremist member of the Saudi military on a US Military facility that killed three US Navy sailors. The DOJ alleges that that was carried out by a jihadist who was a long time associate of an Al-Qaeda group.
In a further clip, Trump claimed that during the CNN interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate the Democratic nominee had “notes”, insinuating that she had been told in advance what she’d be asked. Trump added that “nobody” in the mainstream media wants to cover the fact that Harris “knew the questions.”
Dale pointed out that these were, in fact, interviewer Dana Bash’s notes.
Nobody wants to cover it because it did not happen. Vice president Harris did not have notes in her interview with Dana Bash. You can look at images, photos, videos from that interview if you’re skeptical, there is nothing on the table right in front of her. All that’s there are Dana Bash’s notes. You’ll notice those pieces of paper facing Dana Bash, not Vice President Harris. And of course, Vice President Harris was not given the questions in advance.
Watch above on CNN.
