The panel on CNN’s Outfront got particularly heated tonight over President Donald Trump‘s lies and whether the media should be calling his lies “lies.”
Kate Bolduan spoke with the panel about a number of inaccurate remarks in the President’s tweets today, saying Trump “has trouble with the facts.”
One in particular is a claim from the President that Barack Obama granted citizenship to 2500 Iranians, which appears to be an unfounded claim based on a comment from one Iranian cleric reported on by Fox News.
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni said Trump clearly sees “more upside than downside to telling lies.”
Steve Cortes, a member of the President’s 2020 reelection advisory council, said the media unfairly attacks too many of Trump’s statements as lies.
He actually said, “I’ve learned to believe him because he’s right so often, even when he says something that seems as if it’s hard to believe.”
Bolduan challenged him but Cortes said when you call Trump a liar, “that is a lie in and of itself because you don’t know that it’s a lie––so to call it a lie is a lie.”
Former Clinton advisor Paul Begala argued that Trump’s lying is actually strategic:
“He is trying to kill the truth. He is at war with truth. Why? Because truth is always the enemy of wrongdoers… He’s certainly acting like there are some powerful truths out there about him that he doesn’t want his followers to believe. Those truths likely to come out in the Mueller investigation, for example. So when you go to war with truth like this, which demagogues have done all through history––it’s the first thing they do is attack truth. That’s why he attacks the press. It’s not that he doesn’t like you, Kate. It’s that he doesn’t like truth.”
Bolduan brought up Trump’s attacked on the press as “the enemy of the people.” Cortes shot back that Trump means that about the “fake news,” but as Bolduan noted, “Depending on the day [it] is all press.”
Watch above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
— —
Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
