CNN Panelist Claims That Donald Trump Caused Charlottesville Attack
National security officials, Democratic politicians, and media figures frequently list the dreaded scourge of misinformation as one of their top concerns. Mainstream news organizations incessantly warn their readers and viewers that right-wing provocateurs, Republican politicians, and foreign agents are flooding social media with falsehoods. Tech regulators all over the world—from Brazil to the European Union—are using the threat of misinformation as a pretext for censorship. In the U.S., the First Amendment makes it much more difficult for would-be censors to directly criminalize misinformation, though that won’t stop politicians from trying; Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz has already suggested—incorrectly—that misinformation and hate speech are not protected speech.
This claim is itself an example of misinformation, in that it is a false statement; the Supreme Court has steadfastly maintained that hate speech, for example, is protected by the First Amendment. Yet when mainstream Democrats express clearly incorrect statements, they seldom attract the misinformation label. This speaks to the one-sidedness of the concept—a one-sidedness that was perfectly illustrated during a CNN panel on Sunday.
The topic of the panel, ironically, was misinformation. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was interviewing former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about how malicious lies being spread by right-wing actors are eroding trust in U.S. democracy. Blitzer invited several panelists to respond. Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist, chimed in with a comment about former President Donald Trump.
“Let’s remember Charlottesville,” she said. “Let’s remember January 6th. All of those events ended in tragedy and all of those events were spurred on and inspired by the words that came out of the former president’s mouth.”
CNN contributor Scott Jennings, a Republican, then interrupted Cardona to dispute that Trump’s rhetoric caused the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one person was killed and a dozen others injured by a white nationalist. Cardona doubled down, asserting that Trump “went out
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