Fox News host claims CNN fact-checker 'might have directly contributed' to Trump shooting
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld suggested Tuesday that a CNN fact-checker might have contributed to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
"The Five" co-host suggested the shooting at Butler, Pennsylvania, a little over a month ago might have been encouraged by a remark made by Trump.
And he said it could have been avoided if fact-checkers explained that widely-held opinions of what Trump says aren't actually what he means.
Gutfeld singled out CNN's long-time fact-checker Daniel Dale.
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There are "harmless lies" and "deadly lies," Gutfeld argued, claiming a harmless lie would be Trump exaggerating his crowd sizes.
But a "deadly lie is creating and perpetuating a hoax saying a leader defended Nazis, and that hoax is an umbrella for four years of sanctioned hate," said Gutfeld.
He was referring to a section of Biden's speech at the DNC Monday in which he criticized Trump for saying "there were very fine people on both sides" of a far-right rally in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017.
The understanding is that the two sides are the neo-Nazis and those protesting fascism.
But Gutfeld quibbled with that understanding, denying that's what Trump meant — despite the verbatim comment being captured by Fox News at the time.
And he hit out at fact-checkers for not pouring doubt on Biden's statement that that's what Trump had said.
"And what do the fact-checkers do?" complained Gutfeld. "They don't fact-check that because they'd have to fact-check themselves. That's why Daniel Dale on CNN is such a fraud. He'd rather fact-check a joke than something that put people's lives in danger. And might have directly contributed to an attempted assassination of Trump."
See the video below or at the link here.