CNN’s Daniel Dale Shreds Trump’s ‘Long-Debunked Lies’ on Latest Supreme Court Rulings

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File

CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale is a frequent recycler of his fact checks, and did so again on Monday in the wake of several rulings from the United States Supreme Court — and some “long-debunked lies” issued in response by President Donald Trump.

The nation’s highest court issued four opinions Monday: Watson v. Republican National Committee (holding that nothing in the federal election laws prohibits a state from counting absentee ballots postmarked on Election Day and received up to five days after), Trump v. Cook (preventing Trump from firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, allowing her to remain in her position while her litigation progresses), Chatrie v. United States (a “geofence warrant” of Google’s location data from cellphones was a search for Fourth Amendment purposes), and Trump v. Slaughter (overturning major restraint on the president’s power to fire FTC commissioner).

Trump gloated over the Slaughter ruling, writing a Truth Social post crowing that the opinion was “greatly increasing Presidential Power at a time when it is most needed!”

He had the opposite reaction to Watson, voicing his displeasure during an Oval Office chat with reporters Monday.

The president had “repeated long-debunked lies” during his remarks, wrote Dale, specifically regarding the Watson ruling and the opinion on birthright citizenship, which will be released on Tuesday.

Dale wrote a “[q]uick fact check of some of his claims”:

1) Falsely claimed mail-in voting is “really dishonest”; it’s a legitimate voting method used by legitimate voters, including Trump himself. to cast legitimate ballots. All evidence shows fraud rates are tiny even though they’re slightly higher than with in-person voting.

2) Falsely described what Jimmy Carter and a Carter-led 2005 commission said about mail-in ballots; Carter didn’t say “you can’t have them” and the commission didn’t say cheating was inevitable when they’re used. Though the commission was skeptical of mail-in voting, it also: highlighted how Oregon was holding successful mail-only elections by introducing key safeguards; offered recommendations for making mail-in voting more secure; said further research was needed on the pros and cons.

3) Falsely claimed of bithright citizenship, “We’re the only nation that does it. No other nation does that birthright citizenship. No one; not even close.” About three dozen countries provide automatic citizenship to people born on their soil, including Canada, Mexico and the majority of South American countries.

4) Claimed, “We’re the only country in the world that does this type of mail-in ballot.” Didn’t explain what he meant by “this type of,” so can’t call this false, but dozens of countries use mail-in ballots, and several wealthy nations, including Canada, the UK, Germany and Switzerland, allow widespread use of them.

In a follow-up tweet, Dale shared two past articles he had written with fact checks of Trump’s previous “false claims” and “lies” about mail-in voting and birthright citizenship.

The Supreme Court also denied Trump’s petition for a writ of certiorari appealing one of the verdicts against him in the lawsuits filed by E. Jean Carroll, denying certiorari without a written opinion. Carroll won two jury verdicts against Trump, one in May 2023 for $5 million and another in January 2024 for $83.3 million. The cases from Carroll’s allegations in a 2019 article that Trump had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump vociferously denied the accusations and launched a series of attacks on Carroll, all leading to her suing him for defamation and a separate civil claim accusing him of rape.

The ex-president’s deposition included several shocking moments, including one where Trump — who had been adamant that Carroll was “not my type” — mistook a photo of her for his second wife, Marla Maples. Trump made multiple attempts to appeal both verdicts and none were successful. Unsurprisingly, he was incensed by Monday’s rejection by the Supreme Court, claimed he had “never met” Carroll and called her lawsuit a “Fake Case.”

Like the other cases, Dale has previously debunked the inaccurate claims and lies Trump has said — and continues to say — about Carroll and the litigation on multiple occasions.

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