CNN’s Stelter Doubles Down on Call for Sarah Sanders to Correct False Claim That Reporters Helped Bin Laden

By Rachel DickerAug 6th, 2018, 10:35 am
 

CNN’s Brian Stelter doubled down Monday on his insistence that White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders should apologize for the specious claim that reporters made it more difficult to track down Osama bin Laden in the ’90s.

“[Sanders] still hasn’t admitted that she screwed up when she claimed *last Wednesday* that reporters made it harder to track down Osama bin Laden in the run-up to 9/11,” Stelter wrote.

“This has never happened before,” former Clinton White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart told Stelter on Sunday’s Reliable Sources. “We’ve had great presidents. We’ve had terrible presidents. Republicans and Democrats. We’ve never had anything like this where a president, we have a president who is incapable of telling the truth.”

“The job of the press secretary even with an honest president is very, very hard,” he continued. You’re balancing the interests of the president’s political fortunes and the government with the press and the public’s right to know things.”

“For Sarah Sanders, she’s now gone beyond the point of being in a tough situation with a hard boss,” he later added. “She’s now aiding and abetting the process. The process is designed to undermine the public confidence in the one tool they have to keep the government accountable.”

Lockhart later said that he thought Sanders was being “cowardly” and suggested that if she were brave, she would have handled the situation differently.

“I think the brave thing to do would be to up there in that moment… to say, ‘You know what? The president misspoke. The president sometimes uses hyperbole… The president is frustrated, but the press is not the enemy of the people,'” he said.

Watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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