CNN panel agrees Sean Spicer can’t be trusted: He already ‘has people comparing him to Baghdad Bob’
If the White House intends to use “alternative facts,” CNN’s Brian Stelter urges the media to shout out the actual facts louder.
In a Monday morning panel on CNN’s “New Day” host Chris Cuomo outright called press secretary Sean Spicer’s numbers about Trump’s crowd size “wrong” and explained that Trump’s White House is now claiming they were given incorrect information.
Media analyst Bill Carter couldn’t believe this was the first thing Trump’s administration chose to do out of the gate.
“I mean he has people comparing him to Baghdad Bob the first day in office, saying, ‘I can’t trust this guy,'” said Carter.
Baghdad Bob is the nickname given to former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, who intentionally distributed false information and propaganda to boost morale among the Iraq army in the early days of the last Iraq War.
Stelter argued that every press secretary and politician spins but that Spicer’s outright false facts are outside the norm and both Stelter and Carter agreed that it was different.
Stelter cited Spicer’s incorrect title for the leader of another country, false information about the setup of the inauguration and even the weather. The White House claimed that it was sunny “when in fact, it was cloudy at the time,” Stelter said.
“There’s a pattern from the top. From the president and from Sean Spicer, not spinning but having completely misstated the facts,” Stelter explained. “But, listen, he may have had this information from the wrong people, that’s a legitimate issue. But I think that speaks to a bigger a problem about this new administration.”
Carter cited Trump’s speech to the CIA in which Trump alleged that the rift between the CIA and Trump was an invention of the press because they put out actual statements that Trump made about intelligence.
Stelter said that the new White House clearly feels they are under siege and Cuomo noted that it was evidenced by the fact that Spicer refused to take questions.
“This just isn’t a debate,” Cuomo said. “A picture tells a thousand words and they’re all true!”
You can see the full video below: