CNN’s Kaitlan Collins received harsh words from conservatives for failing to challenge Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s controversial claims about Donald Trump.
Collins, one of CNN’s rising stars, interviewed Shapiro on Tuesday night and asked him about Trump’s claims that anti-Semitism led to his being passed over as Harris’ running mate.
“Donald Trump has no credibility to speak on this issue,” Shapiro said. “He’s a person who has acted with intolerance, he’s a person who spreads hate.”
He then discussed Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville riots in 2017, saying that Trump’s reaction to neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us” was to say “there are good people on both sides. There weren’t good people on both sides!”
This claim has been challenged by several fact-checkers, including Spies and Political factwho point out that Trump was not referring to neo-Nazis and white nationalists, but to protesters and counter-protesters who were addressing the original reason for the meeting: the removal of a Confederate statue.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins received harsh words from conservatives for retracting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s controversial claims about Donald Trump
The former president’s full remarks suggest he may have been referring to those who had been peacefully protesting on both sides of a debate to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
He said, at the same press conference days after the riot, that neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be “totally condemned.”
This led many to criticise Collins – a veteran of the conservative Daily Caller newspaper – for failing to refute Shapiro’s already controversial claims.
John LeFevre wrote: “Here is Governor Josh Shapiro knowingly and intentionally repeating the Charlottesville lie to paint Donald Trump as a ‘bigot.’ @kaitlancollins, who is quick to respond to Republicans, does nothing to correct it. This is not journalism.”
Another social media site referenced Collins’ appearance on liberal comedian Stephen Colbert’s show earlier this week.
‘That’s why Colbert’s entire audience laughed when he said CNN is ‘objective.’
Phillip Terzian added: “Our journalistic expectations for @kaitlancollins and her employer are inevitably low – it’s cable TV. But how long will this outright falsehood from people posing as journalists be tolerated?”
The story has long dominated politics since that day in 2017, even lending itself to being the origin story of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
This claim has been disputed by several fact-checkers, including Snopes and PolitiFact, who note that Trump was referring not to neo-Nazis and white nationalists, but to protesters and counter-protesters who were addressing the original reason for the rally: the removal of a Confederate statue.
Trump said, at the same press conference days after the riot, that neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be “totally condemned.”
A reporter had been questioning Trump about whether he would condemn neo-Nazis who marched with tiki torches and chanted something 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 that, and you have no doubt about that either. And if it was reported accurately, it would be said,” Trump said.
The journalist said: “Neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest.”
Then came Trump’s infamous response: “Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves in the mix… and there were some very bad people in that group, but there were also some very good people, on both sides.”
Since then, he has been misquoted numerous times for directly praising neo-Nazis as “good” or “excellent” people.
Biden has continued to insist on this even after dropping out of the presidential race, and the quote has become 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 Robert E. Lee monument. Everybody knows that,” he said.
He mentioned the Lee statue in his comments two years ago, but said there was “blame on both sides” in the larger standoff.
Biden has continued to insist on this even after dropping out of the presidential race, and the quote has become gospel among liberals.
“If they were reporting it accurately, they would say neo-Nazis started this,” he told reporters at the time in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, but he also said the racists “don’t identify as neo-Nazis.”
‘There were some very bad people in that group, but there were also some very good people on both sides… I saw the same images as you. There were people in that group who were there to protest the taking down of a statue that was very, very important to them and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to someone else.’
The White House then said Trump’s praise was limited to people who came to Charlottesville to advocate for the preservation of the Lee statue.
Trump had said: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. They should be condemned in their entirety. There were many people in that group other than the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. The press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
“There were a lot of people in that group who were there to protest in an innocent and very legal way. Not all of them were neo-Nazis, believe me.”
Clashes between white supremacists who organised a demonstration and counter-protesters ended with the death of a woman. Neo-Nazi James Fields was sentenced to life in prison for running over Heather Heyer with his car.