CNN anchor Brianna Keilar tore into both President Donald Trump and Fox News for repeatedly pushing conspiracy theories without ever facing “accountability” when the claims fail to be corroborated, noting that both the president and his favorite outlet just “move on to the next bogus B.S. that they cycle again on repeat.”
Ahead of Thursday night’s dueling town hall forums between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Keilar noted that this only came about because the president refused to participate in a debate that moved to a virtual setting because of his own coronavirus diagnosis.
Noting Trump’s excuse is that he thinks it’s a “waste of time” to debate over the web, Keilar pointed out his hypocrisy on the matter. “He doesn’t like interviewing remotely unless, of course, it is with his pals,” she noted. “The president doesn’t mind at all calling into Fox or appearing remotely with Fox, even though that is exactly what he’d do during a virtual debate. But this is hardly the only excuse he has peddled over the years in regards to debates.”
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The CNN anchor went on to highlight a number of excuses Trump has tossed out recently when complaining about the presidential debates, such as whining about the debate moderators, claiming the debate commission is left-leaning, or grousing that recent changes to the format—following him blatantly flouting the rules—are unfair.
Keilar then brought up Trump’s penchant for conspiracies, notably his baseless claims that his microphone was sabotaged during a 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton or that Biden was taking performance-enhancing drugs prior to this year’s first presidential debate.
“Of course, that is not fact-based, and it’s absurd,” she explained. “But it’s also par for his course. And before his first debate, President Trump and his favorite channel even pushed the old earpiece myth.”
The CNN host went ahead and aired footage of Fox News anchors credulously reporting the Trump campaign’s claim that Biden and his team pulled out of an agreement to have a third-party check for listening devices, prompting Team Trump to suggest that Biden would be using a hidden earpiece during the debate.
“It is a cynical, cynical strategy,” she said. “The president and his allies push and push conspiracy theories and misinformation. They repeat them ad nauseam so that millions of viewers just end up adopting it as fact.”
Keilar wrapped up the segment by airing clips of Fox News hosts straight-up saying that Biden would be the one to drop out of debates due to either his inability to cognitively handle them or his fear of Trump.
“But what’s funny about the president and his enabling propagandists at Fox, when it’s time to pay up, when they are proven to be wrong, there is no accountability, there is no apology,” the outspoken anchor declared. “They just drop it like their absurd predictions never even happened. And then they move on to the next bogus B.S.”
“They cycle on repeat. The irony here, though, it is not Biden who refused to show up to a debate. It is Trump,” Keilar concluded.
