CNN’s Daniel Dale Knocks Down Frequent Trump ‘Lies’ While Complaining Trump Has ‘Worn Down’ Most Media

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale knocked down some of ex-President Donald Trump’s frequently-told “lies” while complaining that Trump has “worn down” other media outlets through repetition.

Dale rose to prominence cataloging tens of thousands of Trump lies and misleading statements — first with the Toronto Star and then with CNN. Many of those claims are repeated ad nauseam by Trump and his allies, and are often not challenged.

On Tuesday’s edition of CNN News Central, co-anchors Boris Sanchez and Brianna Keilar asked Dale to fact-check some well-worn Trump “lies,” and in the process Dale griped about the media outlets that don’t challenge the repetitive claims in favor of “new stuff”:

SANCHEZ: As the race for the White House gets closer and closer to Election Day, former President Trump is going back to an old playbook. If some of the things he’s saying on the campaign trail sound familiar, that’s because he’s said them before. A new CNN analysis finds that Trump is repeating many of the same false claims he’s made in the past, some as far back as his 2016 presidential campaign.

Listen to this lie he’s repeatedly made about tariffs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We’re taking in billions of dollars from China in the form of tariffs, as you know. We’re charging China tariffs. We’ve never taken in $0.10 from China. Now we’re taking in billions and billions of dollars.

We took in billions and billions of dollars in taxes and tariffs from China. They never gave us $0.10.

I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs from China. Hundreds of billions of dollars, no president ever took in $0.10.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN’s Daniel Dale is with us now. He has the answers here. You’ve been fact-checking Trump for years. Help us break down what we just heard there and also some of the other false statements you’ve uncovered.

DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: So that’s one of those Groundhog Day claims that I’ve been fact-checking on CNN for five-plus years now and previously at other outlets. So it is not true that China pays the tariffs. U.S. importers pay Trump’s tariffs on imported Chinese goods. And study after study has found that American consumers tend to bear the overwhelming majority of the final cost. The importers pass on those costs.

In addition, it’s also not true that no previous president had generated $0.10 from tariffs on China, as Trump has repeatedly said over the years. In fact, the U.S. was generating billions from such tariffs, again, paid by Americans, before Trump even took office. And that is hardly the only claim that Trump has been repeating for years. Listen to this one he’s been saying for six-plus years now about the Veterans Choice health care program.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We passed Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to see a private doctor rather than waiting online for weeks and months to see a doctor. Forty-four years they tried to pass it.

Ohio loves its vets and what we’ve done for our vets, choice and accountability. We got two things they’ve been trying for almost 50 years.

[15:25:00]

Choice – Veterans Choice, how about that? We got that for you.

I created and have VA Choice. They’ve been wanting to do it for 57 years. I got it done, passed in Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DALE: He said it in 2018 – he said it in 2018, he said it in 2020, he said it again last week. CNN viewers are probably sick of me calling it false. It is still false. President Barack Obama was the one who signed the Veterans Choice bill into law in 2014. It was a John McCain-Bernie Sanders bipartisan initiative.

What Trump did sign in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, expanded, modified and made permanent the Choice bill. He could just say that. It was an accomplishment. Instead, he says he got it through Congress. He created it. It is still not true.

KEILAR: Yes, still not true. And as you point out, you said maybe CNN viewers get sick of me calling it false all these times. That’s sort of the strategy, right, Daniel? Is that he says it, says it, says it, these things kind of age even as lies. And the hope is that as he’s adding new lies, people might not be bothered to go fact-check the old ones.

DALE: I think that’s it. You know, news outlets are in the news business, so you might fact-check it the first, second, third, even tenth time he says it. But he said that Veterans Choice stuff more than 150 times. And so eventually, I think most news outlets get worn down. You know, you hear old-fashioned football coaches be like, keep running the ball, keep running the ball. You know, they’re stopping you now, but eventually they’ll get tired.

I think Trump has successfully tired out much of the U.S. media, saying, well, we’ve got a lot of new stuff to cover. This is old stuff. But I think it’s incumbent upon all of us that as long as he is still saying this stuff, we’ve got to fact-check it just as frequently. You know, there might be someone who’s just tuning into politics, someone who didn’t see or fact-check in 2018 or 2020 who’s just tuning in now. And I think we have to continue providing the facts, continue providing the corrections, as long as he persists in making the false claims themselves.

KEILAR: Yes, that’s such a good point. Daniel Dale, thank you for that.

Watch above via CNN News Central.