President Trump went on a tear against CNN yesterday, tweeting “CNN is being torn apart from within based on their being caught in a major lie and refusing to admit the mistake. Sloppy Carl Bernstein, a man who lives in the past and thinks like a degenerate fool, making up story after story, is being laughed at all over the country! Fake News.”
This refers to CNN’s much prized Russia collusion “scoop” from July, where some people said, citing Michael Cohen, that President Trump knew about the much overblown Trump Tower Meeting some Russians had with Donald Jr., which amounted to nothing and was a colossal waste of time. The first red flag was this part: “To be clear, these sources said Cohen does not have evidence, such as audio recordings, to corroborate his claim, but he is willing to attest to his account.” The second part, and this is where it gets funny, the anonymous source CNN used is none other than Lanny Davis, former Clinton attorney and the man representing Cohen, who plead guilty to bank and tax fraud charges.
CNN is being torn apart from within based on their being caught in a major lie and refusing to admit the mistake. Sloppy @carlbernstein, a man who lives in the past and thinks like a degenerate fool, making up story after story, is being laughed at all over the country! Fake News
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
Make no mistake, Mr. President, CNN does not lie. We report the news. And we report when people in power tell lies. CNN stands by our reporting and our reporters. There may be many fools in this story but @carlbernstein is not one of them.
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) August 29, 2018
You reported in a story sourced to Lanny Davis that Lanny Davis refused to comment on the story. That was a lie. And not only did you deliberately lie to push an agenda, you have thus far refused to even acknowledge the lie, let alone apologize for it. https://t.co/LR21bPgeu6
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) August 30, 2018
“Contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment,” they reported at the time. Guys—this story is a bust. It’s total garbage. And you’re standing by it because…you’re afraid. Is that it? You’re getting towel slapped right now—and you deserve it. You would get another richly deserved belt to the face for retracting or correcting the story, but it’s the right thing to do. CNN seems to rather hide under the bed. I guess I would as well if I were caught being dishonest regarding "contacting" our own anonymous source for comment and saying that he, or she, declined to comment.
With due respect to Carl Bernstein, it still needs to be explained by one of the three Cohen/Trump Tower story authors how Lanny Davis was presented as someone declining comment while serving as a primary anonymous source in the same story. We can all agree that misled readers. https://t.co/CGIyVx7gEp
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) August 30, 2018
The communications arm of the news network replied to Trump’s tweet last night:
Make no mistake, Mr. President, CNN does not lie. We report the news. And we report when people in power tell lies. CNN stands by our reporting and our reporters. There may be many fools in this story but Carl Bernstein is not one of them
Yeah, this is why no one trusts the elite media. This is what Lanny Davis said after being exposed as the source, in which he backpedals on everything (via Buzzfeed):
Attorney Lanny Davis says he was an anonymous source in a July CNN story that reported his client, Michael Cohen, had privately claimed that President Trump had advance knowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting between his son and Russians — contradicting Davis's own words on CNN's air last week.
In the story, Cohen was reported to claim he had personally witnessed Donald Trump Jr. informing then-candidate Trump about the June 2016 meeting. Such a claim from Cohen would directly contradict Trump’s statements about his knowledge of the meeting, where Russians were set to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton.
CNN’s July 26 story has come under fresh scrutiny in recent days after Davis acknowledged he had served as an anonymous source for multiple news outlets who were seeking to confirm the CNN article in the hours after it published. Davis has backed away from the story in recent days, telling the Washington Post that he is not certain if the claim is accurate, and that he could not independently corroborate it.
Last week, Davis told Anderson Cooper, “I think the reporting of the story got mixed up in the course of a criminal investigation. We were not the source of the story.”
On Monday evening, Davis told BuzzFeed News that he regrets both his role as an anonymous source and his subsequent denial of his own involvement.
Davis told BuzzFeed News that he did, in fact, speak anonymously to CNN for its story, which cited “sources with knowledge” — meaning more than one person.
“I made a mistake,” Davis said. Regarding his comments about a month later to Cooper, he added, “I did not mean to be cute.”
After Davis publicly backtracked from the claims, the New York Post and the Washington Post outed him as their confirming source and published apologies from Davis, a lawyer and communications expert who became well known for his work for Bill Clinton.
We stand by our reporting. So, you’re too good, too arrogant, and too stupid to know a) when you’ve made a major error, possibly one of the worst in this whole non-story of Russian collusion; and b) embarrassed the industry to no end. It’s been over a year and there’s still zero evidence to suggest the Kremlin colluded with the Trump team. None. This we’re too good for corrections attitude is exactly what you’d expect from a liberal anti-Trump network. Maybe if you were good at your jobs, this nonsense wouldn’t happen. I’ve made mistakes. We all have, but on stories like Trump and the Japanese prime minister feeding koi fish that’s almost idiot-proof in terms of botching the reporting of that story. CNN managed to find a way. Does CNN know they will lose a fight with the Trump White House? They’re the 2017 Cleveland Browns in this bout with the president. They will never win, but keep going because Trump making CNN look like straight trash is too good to avoid.