CNN said Thursday it will not air two Trump campaign ads because they include “demonstrably false” claims and disparage their journalists, The Washington Post reports.
CNN rejected an ad that the Trump campaign published on Facebook, falsely accusing former Vice President Joe Biden of corruption in Ukraine. The ad falsely claims that Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion to fire the prosecutor looking into “his son’s company.” In fact, the company was not his son’s and his son joined the board of the firm years after the prosecutor in question stopped investigating the firm.
The ad goes on to accuse CNN hosts and reporters of serving as the Democrats’ “lap dogs.”
CNN said in a statement that “in addition to disparaging CNN and its journalists, the ad makes assertions that have been proven demonstrably false by various news outlets, including CNN.”
The other ad accused Democrats of a “cup” and claimed that their impeachment effort was an attempt to “undo the election regardless of facts.”
CNN said it rejected that ad because of claims that suggested that the whistleblower complaint against him that were debunked by his own administration.
“In addition, it is inaccurate to use the word ‘coup’ to describe a constitutionally prescribed legal process,” CNN said.
Trump campaign complains:
Campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told the Washington Post that the claims were accurate because they were “reviewed by counsel.”
Murtaugh complained that CNN was a “Democrat public relations firm” that “spends all day protecting Joe Biden.”
In fact, the claims that Trump and Rudy Giuliani have been pushing have been roundly debunked by every major news outlet. Fox News’ own legal analyst has called Trump’s pressure on Ukraine an “impeachable offense.”
Facebook has no problem with the ads:
While CNN won’t air the ads, Facebook, where the ads will reach many more people, said it has no problem with the videos.
“A Facebook spokesperson, however, told Popular Information that the ad does not violate Facebook's policies because political ads are ineligible for fact-checking,” Popular Information reported. “The old rules prohibited all ads that contained ‘false’ and ‘misleading’ content and made no mention of the fact-checking program. The new rules are limited to claims that are ‘debunked by third-party fact checkers.” Moreover, Facebook says ‘political figures’ are exempt from even that narrow restriction. It's open season.”
