It appears that the folks at CNN just can’t help themselves. In their various and sundry attacks on President-elect Trump, the news organization has used fabrication, exaggeration, and selective editing to make it appear that he said or did this or that, when the accurate record disagrees with what the liberal network reports.
Case in point: the network ran an article after Trump’s press conference under the headline, “Trump: ‘I think it was Russia,’” that said:
President-elect Donald Trump said for the first time Wednesday he believes Russia was responsible for hacking ahead of the election but contemptuously rejected allegations that Moscow mounted a campaign to compromise him.
The article went on to say:
“I think it was Russia,” Trump said. Putin “should not be doing it. He won’t be doing it. Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I am leading it than when other people have led it.”
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The words inside the quotation marks are accurate, but the context is not. The reader would naturally assume based upon CNN’s report that Trump said “I think it was Russia,” and then elaborated, “Putin should not be doing it,” when in fact the two quotes were by no means connected and were extracted from different parts of the press conference. In the YouTube video of the conference published by ABC News, the first quote above comes at the 15:20 mark and the next quote comes at the 1:00:39 mark. In the 45 minutes in-between, Trump said a lot about the subject that CNN simply chose to ignore. If CNN’s selective editing did not change the meaning, then the juxtaposition of these two quotes would not have been a big deal. But as we shall see, the meaning was changed.
Here is a tip for CNN: Any text taken out of context is a pretext.
Here are the two parts of the press conference that CNN cherry-picked and amalgamated to get the “damning admission” the network published as if it were the whole:
As far as hacking, I think it was Russia. But I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people. And I — I can say that you know when — when we lost 22 million names and everything else that was hacked recently, they didn’t make a big deal out of that. That was something that was extraordinary. That was probably China.
And:
He [Putin] shouldn’t be doing it. He won’t be doing it. Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I’m leading than when other people have led it. You will see that. Russia will respect our country more. He shouldn’t have done it. I don’t believe that he will be doing it more now.
We have to work something out, but it’s not just Russia. Take a look at what’s happened. You don’t report it the same way; 22 million accounts were hacked in this country by China. And that’s because we have no defense. That’s because we’re run by people that don’t know what they’re doing.
Russia will have far greater respect for our country when I’m leading it and I believe and I hope — maybe it won’t happen, it’s possible. But I won’t be giving a little reset button like Hillary. Here, press this piece of plastic. A guy looked at her like what is she doing? There’s no reset button. We’re either going to get along or we’re not. I hope we get along, but if we don’t, that’s possible too.
But Russia and other countries — and other countries, including China, which has taken total advantage of us economically, totally advantage of us in the South China Sea by building their massive fortress, total. Russia, China, Japan, Mexico, all countries will respect us far more, far more than they do under past administrations.
Given that each part of the patchwork “quote” that CNN published was from the portions of the press conference where Trump’s emphasis was on the fact that the United States is routinely hacked by foreign powers, it is beyond belief that the network did not realize the context. It seems that this was a deliberate effort on the part of CNN to ignore the context and make it appear that Trump was reversing his previous position.
The greatest evidence of this comes from the question and answer that led into the second part of CNN’s hybrid “quote.” A reporter began his question with the statement, “Mr. President-elect, you said, just now, that you believe Russia indeed was responsible for the hacking of the DNC and Jon Podesta’s e-mails, et cetera,” at which point Trump interrupted with, “All right, but you know what, it could have been others also.” The reporter continued, “But why did you spend weeks undermining U.S. intelligence community before simply getting the facts and then making a public statement?” Trump’s answer — which we addressed in a previous article — again focused on the failure of the intelligence community do do its job because — as a community — intelligence is itself responsible for leaks to the media.
In all, CNN quotes Trump at least nine times in this one article (the difficulty in counting the exact number of quotes is caused by CNN’s proclivity to assemble quotes the way Frankenstein assembled his monster). And yet, in all of that, the liberal mainstream network still seems to have somehow missed what Trump was actually saying, So here is the Cliff’s Notes version for the folks over at CNN:
As far as hacking, I think it was Russia. But I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people. And I — I can say that you know when — when we lost 22 million names and everything else that was hacked recently, they didn’t make a big deal out of that. That was something that was extraordinary. That was probably China.
We had — we had much hacking going on. And one of the things we’re gonna do, we have some of the greatest computer minds anywhere in the world that we’ve assembled. You saw just a sample of it two weeks ago up here where we had the six top people in the world — they were never in the same room together as a group. And we’re gonna put those minds together and we’re going to form a defense.
* * *
And I have to say this also, the Democratic National Committee was totally open to be hacked. They did a very poor job. They could’ve had hacking defense, which we had.
And I will give Reince Priebus credit, because when Reince saw what was happening in the world and with this country, he went out and went to various firms and ordered a very, very strong hacking defense.
And they tried to hack the Republican National Committee and they were unable to break through.
We have to do that for our country. It’s very important.
* * *
Intelligence agencies are vital and very, very important. We are going to be putting in, as you know, Mr. Pompeo and others, you know the Senator Dan Coats. We’re going to be putting in some outstanding people. Within 90 days, they’re going to be coming back to me with a major report on hacking.
I want them to cover this situation. I also want them, however, to cover, maybe most importantly — because we’re hacked by everybody — you know, the United States, our government out of a list of 17 in terms of industries is the worst, it’s number 17, in terms of protection.
If you look at the retail industry, if you look at the banking industry, various industries, out of 17 industries they put this in the category of an industry — the United States is last in terms of protecting, let’s say, hacking defense. Like we had a great hacking defense at the Republican National Committee.
That’s why we weren’t hacked. By the way, we were told that they were trying to hack us, but they weren’t able to hack. And I think I get some credit because I told Reince, and Reince did a phenomenal job, but I said I want strong hacking defense.
The Democratic National Committee didn’t do that. Maybe that’s why the country runs so badly that way. But I will tell you — wait — wait — wait, let me finish. Within 90 days, we will be coming up with a major report on hacking defense, how do we stop this new phenomena — fairly new phenomena because the United States is hacked by everybody.
That includes Russia and China and everybody — everybody. OK.
* * *
All right, but you know what, it [the hacking of the DNC and Clinton campaign] could have been others also [besides Russia].
* * *
He [Putin] shouldn’t be doing it. He won’t be doing it [hacking the U.S.]. Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I’m leading than when other people have led it. You will see that. Russia will respect our country more. He shouldn’t have done it. I don’t believe that he will be doing it more now.
We have to work something out, but it’s not just Russia. Take a look at what’s happened. You don’t report it the same way; 22 million accounts were hacked in this country by China. And that’s because we have no defense. That’s because we’re run by people that don’t know what they’re doing.
Russia will have far greater respect for our country when I’m leading it and I believe and I hope — maybe it won’t happen, it’s possible. But I won’t be giving a little reset button like Hillary. Here, press this piece of plastic. A guy looked at her like what is she doing? There’s no reset button. We’re either going to get along or we’re not. I hope we get along, but if we don’t, that’s possible too.
But Russia and other countries — and other countries, including China, which has taken total advantage of us economically, totally advantage of us in the South China Sea by building their massive fortress, total. Russia, China, Japan, Mexico, all countries will respect us far more, far more than they do under past administrations.
Trump’s message: Russia hacks the United States. China hacks the United States. “Everybody” hacks the United States. And it has to stop. The New American previously reported on the hacks by Russia and China to which President-elect Trump referred. His assertion that these attacks need to stop is correct. CNN could have caught that, if they had been looking at his message in toto, rather than cherry-picking it for the purpose of performing typographical surgery to combine two quotes separated by more than 45 minutes to make him say something he did not say. But perhaps that degree of journalistic integrity is too much to expect from a network whose correspondent and crew were caught on camera a few weeks ago joking about President-elect Trump’s plane crashing.
