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CNN star Kaitlan Collins is blasted for not pushing back against top Dem's shocking lie about Donald Trump
CNN's Kaitlan Collins received harsh words from conservatives for not challenging Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's disputed claims about Donald Trump.
Collins, one of CNN's emerging stars, interviewed Shapiro on the floor Tuesday night and asked him about Trump's claims that antisemitism led him to be passed over for Harris' running mate.
'Donald Trump has absolutely no credibility to speak on that issue,' Shapiro said. 'He is a person who has acted bigoted, he is a person who spreads hate.'
He then spoke about Trump's reaction to the Charlottesville riot in 2017, saying that Trump's reaction to the neo-Nazis chanting 'Jews will not replace us' was to say 'there are good people on both sides. There were not good people on both sides!'
This claim has been disputed by multiple fact checkers, including Snopes and PolitiFact, who note that Trump was referring to neo-Nazis and white nationalists, but to protesters and counter-protesters addressing the initial reason for the gathering: the removal of a Confederate statue.
CNN 's Kaitlan Collins received harsh words from conservatives for backing down from Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's disputed claims about Donald Trump
The former president's full comments suggest he could have been referring to those who had been protesting peacefully on either side of a debate to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
He said, in the same press conference days after the riot, that neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be 'condemned totally'.
This led many to slam Collins - a veteran of the conservative leaning Daily Caller - for not pushing back on Shapiro's already disputed claims.
John LeFevre wrote: 'Here's Gov. Josh Shapiro knowingly and intentionally repeating the Charlottesville lie to paint Donald Trump as a 'bigot.' @kaitlancollins - who is quick to push back on Republicans - does nothing to correct him. This is not journalism.'
Another social media referenced Collins' appearance on liberal comedian Stephen Colbert's show earlier this week.
'This is why the entire Colbert audience laughed when he said that CNN is 'objective.'
Phillip Terzian added: 'Our journalistic expectations for @kaitlancollins and her employer are inevitably low: It's cable TV. But for how long will this absolute falsehood be tolerated by people pretending to be journalists?'
The story has long dominated politics since that day in 2017, even lending itself to being the origin story for Joe Biden's 2020 presidential run.
This claim has been disputed by multiple fact checkers, including Snopes and PolitiFact, who note that Trump was referring to neo-Nazis and white nationalists, but to protesters and counter-protesters addressing the initial reason for the gathering: the removal of a confederate statue
Trump said, in the same press conference days after the riot, that neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be 'condemned totally'
A reporter had been grilling Trump on whether he would condemn the neo-Nazis who marched with tiki torches and shouting what sounded like 'Jews will not replace us.'
'I think there's blame on both sides. If you look at both sides -- I think there's blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt about it either. And if you reported it accurately, you would say,' Trump said.
The journalist said: 'The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest.'
Then came Trump's infamous reply, 'Excuse me, excuse me. They didn't put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.'
He's since been misquoted on numerous occasions as having directly praised neo-Nazis as 'good' or 'fine' people.
Biden has continued to hammer away at this even after dropping out of the race for president, with the quote becoming Gospel among liberals.
In 2019, Trump praised Lee as 'one of the great generals' on Friday when a reporter asked him to revisit his 2017 views as he left the White House for a speech to the National Rifle Association in Indianapolis. 'People were there protesting the taking down of the monument of Robert E. Lee. Everybody knows that,' he said.
He mentioned the Lee statue in his remarks two years ago, but said there was 'blame on both sides' of the larger clash.
Biden has continued to hammer away at this even after dropping out of the race for president, with the quote becoming Gospel among liberals
'If you reported it accurately, you would say that the neo-Nazis started this thing,' he told reporters at the time in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, but also said the racists 'didn't put themselves down as neo-Nazis.'
'You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides. ... I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of – to them – a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.'
The White House claimed then that Trump's praise was limited to people who showed up in Charlottesville to argue for preserving the Lee statue.
Trump had said: 'I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. They should be condemned totally. You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. The press has treated them absolutely unfairly.'
'You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest. Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me.'
The resulting clashes between white supremacists who organized a rally and counter-protesters ended with a woman's death. Neo-Nazi James Fields was sentenced to life in prison for running over Heather Heyer with his car.