(CNSNews.com) - White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany lashed out at the mainstream media on Thursday, saying that they are the ones that need to be fact-checked, not the president.
“On Twitter, shouldn't the president be fact-checked, especially this president who has made so many false and misleading statements that he has put fact-checkers to work across the world? These 18,000 false or misleading statements according to The Washington Post, If there's any president out there that should be fact-checked, a political leader should be fact-checked, isn't it president trump? Aren't you trying to silence fact-checking by going after Twitter like this?” CNN’s Jim Acosta asked.
McEnany responded by pointing out mistakes that the liberal media has made, some of which came from Acosta’s own network.
MCENANY: First, I would say I disagree with all, if not almost all of those assertions that you're making there because if you're going to get into the fact-checking business, there is no one that should be fact-checked more than the mainstream media that has been continually wrong about a number of things.
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.
CNN’s Jim Sciutto - another CNN one - dropped a fictional bombshell in 2018 in July claiming that Michael Cohen would tell federal investigators that the president knew of the Trump Tower meeting, and there were many more, not to just put the onus on CNN there, so if anyone needs to be fact-checked, I think it should be the media.
ACOSTA: There are news outlets that make mistakes from time to time. We own up to those mistakes. We correct those mistakes.
MCENANY: Not always. I have many you guys haven’t owned up to.
ACOSTA: We do on a regular basis. The president never owns up to any of his false or misleading statements or outright lies. You have pledged in this briefing room to never lie to the American people. Are you saying that the president of the United States has never lied to the public before?
MCENANY: I'm around the president. His intent is always to give truthful information to the American people, and you mentioned that the media apologizes for their mistruths. I mean I'm sitting here looking at other headlines."The New York Times" saying they aren’t enough ventilators to cope with the coronavirus. In fact, we had an excess of ventilators we’ve shipped around the world.
Washington Post - U.S. health system is showing why it's not ready for a coronavirus pandemic. We were ready. There’s many more I could get to. On the coronavirus specifically, I could spend the time going through these, but I don’t think that's what the American people want to hear.