Daniel Dale Calls Out Trump War Room for Misleading Edit of His Fact Check of Trump

The Trump War Room account posted a video clip of CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale — and then got promptly fact-checked by Dale himself for a misleading edit.

Friday afternoon, CNN News Central anchors Boris Sanchez and Brianna Keilar reported on former President Donald Trump’s rally in Aurora, Colorado, noting that he had previously made “misleading claims about Venezuelan gangs taking over the city” and playing several clips.

Dale was then brought on for one of his typical fact checks.

The source of the claim by Trump was some “condemned apartment buildings that a slum lord said gangs had taken over,” said Dale, and “local lawmakers who amplify those claims and then walked them back” but “then you have Trump, who’s just taking it to 1,000.”

“This is another one of these cases where former President Trump has taken a kernel of truth and spun it into something not even resembling reality anymore,” said Dale. He noted that it was “true” that a specific Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua had “significantly increased its presence in the U.S.” during the Biden-Harris administration, and it did “have a presence in Aurora, Colorado” that had “caused some problems in some apartment buildings in that city.”

The Trump War Room clipped and posted just that one quote about the small “kernel of truth,” and ended the clip as Dale was literally drawing breath to continue with the part that was not true.

Here’s what Dale said in his lengthy fact check:

What is not true is that this gang has done anything even close to “taking over the city.” The Aurora Police Department said last month, they had identified ten known Tren de Aragua members — ten! — in the city. They had arrested eight of them. Even if there are more, they have not yet identified — this is not like some sort of occupying paramilitary force.

It’s also not true that this gang is “in charge” of any apartment buildings. The Republican mayor of Aurora — former Congressman Mike Coffman — initially, he seemed to fuel some of these flames. He went on Fox News, endorsed the claims of a takeover. He quickly walked that back saying that he now agreed with the interim police chief that gangs were not actually in charge of any of these buildings where they’d caused some issues. And then he has gotten more and more forceful in intervening weeks.

So after Trump made a claim in the September presidential debate, suggesting that this gang had taken over the city, taken over apartment complexes, Coffman issued a joint statement — again, a Republican with a Republican member of council — saying, “Please understand that the issues experienced at a select few properties do not apply to the city as a whole or large proportions of it. TDA, Tren de Aragua has not taken over the city. Its presence, in Aurora, is limited to specific properties, all of which the city has been addressing in various ways for months.”

Sanchez pointed out that the video clip that went viral with accusations about gang takeovers was actually from a landlord “who is now being sued by the city for keeping these homes in horrible conditions — they’re effectively slums.”

Dale agreed, noting that many of the tenants of the building featured in a viral clip held a press conference to say that the issues in the building “long precede any gang members here,” acknowledging that there were “some gang members” but “they’re not in charge.”

“The actual issues,” Dale continued, were “the landlord not doing repairs, not getting rid of pests, and so on and so forth.” He added that he had reached out to the landlord for comment but did not get a response.

“I will also note that since this all blew up, the police have focused on these buildings, and on this issue of this gang, and the Associated Press went back and talked to many of the residents,” he continued. “They said more than a dozen residents in the past week said that the threat had ebbed, it had quieted. They spoke to a resident saying, ‘It’s quiet. We can work. The gang members have gone.'”

So despite Trump’s accusations, Dale concluded, “by all accounts on the ground, this is being dealt with by the local police, by the local authorities” and “things seem to be all right.”

Dale called out the misleading edit about eight minutes after the Trump War Room tweet  (the swift response perhaps triggered by the fact that the Trump War Room tagged him).

“Ha!” he wrote. “I notice the Trump campaign did not include the rest of the segment, in which I explained how Trump had ‘taken a kernel of truth and spun it into something not even resembling reality anymore.'” He then included two video clips with his longer remarks.

Watch the clip above via CNN.