CNN is facing backlash for failing to provide a fact check on President Joe Biden’s interview with Erin Burnett last week.
On Monday, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade pointed to a report from the New York Post’s editorial board accusing the president of telling 15 lies in the approximately 17-minute interview with Burnett. Kilmeade accused the media of running a “Biden protection program” by not challenging him.
Kilmeade pointed to lie number 12 from the report where Biden said, “It made no sense in my view to engage in thinking in Iraq they have a nuclear weapon.” A fact-checker brought in may point out that Biden voted in favor of the controversial Iraq War when he was a senator.
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt brought up the president’s claim that inflation was 9% when he entered office, lie number eight on the Post’s list. As a number of fact-check reports have pointed out, inflation was at 1.4% when the president entered office. Inflation reached 9% well into Biden’s presidency.
Conservative critics have been targeting CNN and the lack of pushback and context provided around the Biden interview.
“And of course, CNN makes sure its pious fact-checker is nowhere to be found afterward…” Fox News contributor Joe Concha tweeted in reaction to a clip of Biden’s inflation claim.
“Isn’t CNN the network that prides itself on the truth? Isn’t CNN the network that won’t carry a speech live by former President Trump because of his ‘misleading claims,'” Fox News host Trace Gallagher said after the interview.
Other claims made by Biden that made the Post’s list include saying Trump “lost more jobs than he created,” which the board provided with the context that Trump was president when a global pandemic hit. They similarly provide the same context to him boasting that he’s created 15 million jobs, pointing out that much of that was people returning to the workforce after vaccines were introduced during the previous administration.
Biden has often touted the 15 million number. He called it a “record” in job creation during his State of the Union address, something a Washington Post analysis found to be “misleading.” Snopes called the 15 million job creation claim a mixture of true and false, also citing the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Monday’s Fox & Friends, Lawrence Jones pointed out the lack of CNN fact checker Daniel Dale to fact check the president after the interview, something he often did with Trump, earning plenty of attention for the near-constant fact checks on the then-president.
“If you notice, Brian, there was no CNN or MSNBC pulling out of the coverage as they do with Donald Trump and saying, ‘listen, in fairness to our audience, we can’t show you this,’ or bring in the analyst, I forgot his name, to fact check every single thing that he said,” Jones said.
“The CNN guy,” Kilmeade offered.
Watch above via Fox News.
