CNN’s Brooke Baldwin Calls Ted Cruz Statement ‘B.S.’

CNN ^ | February 3

[Helicondelta]

CNN has accused the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz of making false statements about the network's reporting on the campaign of GOP rival Ben Carson. "Senator Cruz's claims about CNN are false," the network said in a statement Wednesday evening. "At no point did the network indicate Dr. Carson would suspend his campaign."

The network's reporting-that Carson would make a trip to Florida before resuming his campaign-came as voters in Iowa were preparing to make the first solid votes of the 2016 campaign. CNN's statement said "Dr. Carson's staff informed CNN that he would return home to take a 'deep breath' before resuming his activities on the trail. That information was reported accurately by CNN across TV and digital."

[Piranha]

Whose payroll are you on Aria?

[toddausauras]

I’m full of hate? How so?

[toddausauras]

That’s a silly question. Don’t be paranoid.

[Piranha]

Whose payroll are you on fireman15?

[Piranha]

Whose payroll are you on nopardons?

[Piranha]

Whose payroll are you on MrMarbles?

[Piranha]

Whose payroll are you on MagnoliaB?

[FourtySeven]

A picture really is worth a thousand words isn’t it?

Thank you for posting that. I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this “scandal” and that is pictorial proof that the Cruz campaign did NOT “lie” and indeed (foolishly) went off what CNN was reporting at the time.

I’m saving that picture and sending it to the Cruz campaign. Thank God you, or whoever it was, took that picture.

All the Cruz detractors here and elsewhere need to stop with the nonsense.

They should ask themselves one question: who are the ones supporting Trump right now? Karl Rove and CNN, that’s who; Trump supporters need to take that to heart. If they even want to try to honestly claim to be true conservatives.

Maybe they don’t though. Maybe it’s true that Trump’s support is really “blue collar right of center” but not necessarily conservative. If that’s the case then the country is lost already. It’s lost already if there really isn’t a conservative groundswell out there. We are lost already if what this country wants and responds to is just some slick huckster who will tell them what they want to hear at the moment, and turn around to something else a few months (or days) later.

Wake UP people, for the love of all that is true!!

[SPRINK]

I love hom trump people are saying dirty tricks yet have no problem with trump pushing this non story. If you don’t think that’s true ask yourself why isn’t trump skewering Rubio for doing the exact same think.

Then ask yourself why is trump even in this fight.

[VaeVictis]

Yeah, Rush read the CNN statement verbatim yesterday. CNN can put a sock in it as they are the ones who should own this mix up.

[big'ol_freeper]

[LearnsFromMistakes]

I went to my caucus on Monday. There were 7 precincts in the same room. I heard one rumor being passed around before we got started - a candidate was going to show up. Sure enough, Ted Cruz walked in about an hour into the caucus - after 8 or 9 of the candidates had already been given 2 minutes to share why they were supporting their candidate. Some candidate-representatives speeches went a bit long, and we got started a little late because of the high turnout. After the anthem, pledge, an invocation, and the representatives for each candidates spoke, Cruz was given 7 minutes to speak to the roughly 2k people there.

Ted didn’t say anything about Carson, and Carson’s supporter didn’t say anything about false reports. First I heard of this issue was back home when checking things here at FR.

I can’t vouch for ‘all over the state’, but I hung out quite a bit after the vote/counting was done, and I heard zero about this issue.

My understanding of the timeline (all times are ‘ish’):
4:45(I don’t know if iowa/CST time?) tweet from Moody/CNN - reporting Carson returning to Floriday, raising eyebrows
5:30 2 tweets from Moody clarifying stuff
6:30 Rubio supporter tweet says Rubio campaign is alerting precincts
6:45 CNN ‘breaking news’ tv report claims ‘you don’t do this if you want to win’ and stuff like that.
7:00 Cruz staff/rep posts screen capture of CNN report

I don’t know when CNN went back on the air to clarify what they had reported. I don’t know what tweets followed, from who, and I don’t know all of their followers and such...

Cruz apologizes. Carson accepts. Trump and CNN still pointing fingers...CNN still trying to say they had no part in this...they just reported, as breaking news, that Ben was running home to change clothes...really...that is what they are saying...

[chrisnj]

Everybody is ‘interpreting’ this scandal in a way that defends their own chosen candidate.
How do you know that the Cruz team/supporters didn’t subconsciously or intentionally see the message they wanted to see and acted accordingly? You simply blame it entirely on CNN,
AND, CNN simply blames it on team Carson’s own messy ‘message’....
We all think candidates tell people what they want to hear and then do something different once elected - how then do you know that Cruz is not doing the same thing that you are accusing Trump of? Rubio has already proven to be such a candidate (lied his way into the Senate then reversed course..)
I think we all should use our own judgement to weigh the pros and cons and choose the candidate we judge to be the one who will do most good.

[al_c]

Had to search for it. Local news here in the Dallas area have been showing that CNN clip so I knew it was out there somewhere. I’ll see if I can find a news clip and post it here.

[al_c]

This page, while trying to defend CNN, has a video of CNN reporting about Carson about 1/3 of the way down. Certainly sounds like he was dropping out and that an announcement was coming soon.

[unlearner]

I assume your calling me a noob is in jest because you were already here 7 or 8 years before I joined over a decade ago.

You are right. We do get a lot of this during presidential primaries. (I also was a long time lurker when I signed up 10+ years ago.)

However, this season is particularly nasty. What seems unusual to me is that the candidate with the most consistent conservative ratings is getting lambasted by people who support a candidate with a very questionable track record. Participants of this forum are actually citing the Communist News Network as a reliable source and repeating mantras that have zero basis in reality.

There are a few long-time conservative Free Republic members who do not support Cruz, not because they are blown by the wind but because they really are convinced he is not a natural born citizen or his TPP vote proves he is phony. While I do not agree, I can at least respect that they are sincere.

But we have a large number here who quickly fill up the first page or two of every thread with talking points that have NOTHING to do with conservative policies. A lot of it comes from the far left — groups like Planned Parenthood, and every leftwing voice prominent today.

I am leery of Trump and Carson for two different reasons. Carson impressed me initially. He is an outsider and principled. Unfortunately he is not solidly conservative on a number of issues like 2nd amendment. He also does not seem prepared to deal with the reality of gotcha journalism and would resultantly have a huge uphill battle in the primaries since he will get little or no help from GOPe.

Trump does not have a good track record for conservatism. But he is an outsider, he handles the media very well, he has said a lot of things that needed to be said, and he offends all the right people. On the other hand, he also offends all the wrong people, like when he compared Carson to a pedophile, and when he goes on insubstantial rants about Cruz being “nasty”. But it is Trump’s behavior that is nasty. When Trump denigrates Cruz or Carson, he is insulting a lot of conservatives. He doesn’t need to do that. He needs to save his vitriol for criminals like Hillary along with the hail-Satan, baby murdering perverts on the left. Instead he is already talking about getting along with people like Pelosi and Reid. But he can’t get along with Carson and Cruz? In his words, “BAD”.

So, yeah, it does happen during the election cycle. And I want to counter it and talk sense into people.

Rove’s fingerprints are all over this. He wants an establishment candidate like Bush or Rubio. Both have a proven track record in the negative. Their redeeming qualities are being better than the Communist and the felon who are running Democrat. It looks like Rove is helping a normally testy period on Free Republic to become a circular firing squad for conservatives. Rove and GOPe do not care if they lose the general if outsiders like Cruz, Trump, or Carson get the nomination. So any damage they can inflict on these candidates is a big plus to them. The Dems are basically sitting back and watching while the GOPe and Rove do their dirty work for them.

[TangoLimaSierra]

You keep using logic and good sense to argue with these people. It won't work. They are entrenched in there own mire.

It's getting to where I see who posted before I read their comments. There are a lot of them I ignore. I'm sure Rove is happy.

[Pelham]

It was a ‘lawyer’s answer’.

Technically it comported with the facts, but unless you think that the Cruz campaign made a regular practice of updating everyone on Ben Carson’s travel schedule, the whole point of the exercise was to deceive Iowa caucus voters into believing that Carson was quitting the campaign.

If you don’t think that was the purpose, then please explain why the Cruz staff used their time and resources to advertise another candidate’s intention to stop off at home after the Iowa caucus.

[Amity]

Never considered your husband’s idea that Carson did it on purpose, but the idea intrigues me. Although I’ve been puzzling over what Carson’s up to for some time — that’s like the third announced hiatus. None of them actually came to much — the book tour supposedly wasn’t a complete hiatus, and he was only out a couple of days after his supporter’s car wreck — but at the same time I really get the feeling Carson’s eye is not on the ball.

Why would Carson do it on purpose, though? What’s he trying to accomplish? His hypocrisy in trying to hold Cruz accountable for a supporter’s acts while refusing to be responsible for the report put out by his own people was a major turn off.

[Irenic]

My husband thought he knew it would be announced and speculated over prior to the caucus and he would use it to explain his numbers, as an excuse. We all hate the media anyhow. My mother says Carson hasn’t been serious since his book tour.

I haven’t paid attention to Carson since his Ferguson visit where he seemed to go along with the hands up narrative—that ticked me off. I did start paying attention to him recently, after he went on the Levin show recently. My son likes Carson a LOT. Carson was his choice.