White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeatedly shut down CNN reporter Jim Acosta during a press briefing on Thursday over President Donald Trump’s remarks on coronavirus deaths and on the issue of fact-checking.
One of the interactions came when Acosta asked McEnany if Trump should be fact-checked given the fact that he has made false statements before. The question came in response to Twitter applying a fact-check label to a tweet from the president earlier this week about voter fraud.
“There’s no one that should be fact-checked more than the mainstream media that has been continually wrong about a number of things,” McEnany responded. “To give you a list of some of the most egregious ones: that ABC News, in December of 2017, falsely reported that Flynn would testify that the President directed him, during the campaign, to make contact with the Russians. That was false.”
“In 2017, your network, CNN, botched their WikiLeaks email exclusive and were forced to make on-air corrections,” McEnany continued. “CNN’s Jim Sciutto — another CNN one — dropped a fictional bombshell in 2018, July, claiming that Michael Cohen would tell federal investigators that the President knew of the Trump Tower meeting.”
“And there are many more – not to just put the onus on CNN there,” McEnany concluded. “So if anyone needs to be fact-checked, I think it should be the media.”
WATCH: @PressSec @kayleighmcenany highlights some of the most egregious stories the mainstream media has botched over the past couple of years. pic.twitter.com/dHDGyJt7uy
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 28, 2020
The other interaction came when Acosta asked McEnany: “Yesterday, the U.S. hit 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus. That happened at around 6 o’clock yesterday evening. It took until about nine in the morning for the President to recognize that on Twitter. What took him so long?”
“Look, the President recognized that landmark before we even hit it. The President — that was — after all, it was the impetus behind him lowering the flag to half-staff,” McEnany continued. “He did that for several days. And that was an acknowledgment of that number approaching, and he acknowledged it in a tweet this morning.”
Acosta responded, “But we hit 100,000 yesterday evening, and it took 13 hours — some-odd hours to for him to recognize that and tweet about it.”
“And far in advance of that benchmark, as I noted, he lowered the flag to half-staff,” McEnany responded. “The President has said – you know, you mention 100,000, but the President has said, ‘One death is too many.’ He takes this very seriously. He said, before, this is the hardest part of his presidency; it’s something that no one wanted to see happen.”
Jim Acosta is Jim Acostaing again, grandstanding about 100,000 deaths due to coronavirus.
This is what bias looks like.@kayleighmcenany then reminds Acosta, "The president has said one death is too many." pic.twitter.com/UdL1Dl0WvR
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 28, 2020
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