Ted Cruz decided to join in on the pile-up after conservatives blasted a CNN reporter for an out-of-context quote in Afghanistan, and the CNN Twitter account wasn’t having it.
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Tensions are high regarding everything going on with Afghanistan right now, and both Democrats and Republicans are critical of how the withdrawal of U.S. troops has been playing out. But rather than focusing on the actual issues, Cruz and other Republican politicians honed in on a clip from CNN’s Clarissa Ward in which she noted that the Taliban was “chanting death to America, but they seem friendly at the same time.”
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Taken alone, it seems like a strange statement to make — but that was actually Ward’s point.
The soundbite is part of a larger report from Ward describing what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan, including Taliban fighters hanging around by the U.S. Embassy compound, carrying “American weapons” and insisting they’re there to “maintain law and order.”
“People come up to them to pose for photographs,” Ward said. “They’re just chanting death to America, but they seem friendly at the same time. It’s utterly bizarre.”
But now the right is trying to make it seem as if Ward herself thinks the Taliban are friendly, and is on their side.
“Is there an enemy of America for whom @CNN WON’T cheerlead?” he asked, sharing a clip of the one-sentence line to which Republicans are clinging.
CNN wasn’t interested in Cruz’s attempt to spread misinformation for the nth time in the past several years, and they fired back, using his own history against him.
“Rather than running off to Cancun in tough times, @clarissaward is risking her life to tell the world what’s happening. That’s called bravery,” the account tweeted. “Instead of RTing a conspiracy theorist’s misleading soundbite, perhaps your time would be better spent helping Americans in harm’s way.”
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This is, of course, referencing how Cruz fled Texas in February as a crisis swept across the state, leaving millions of people without power during freezing weather thanks to the state’s power grid failure — something he truly may never live down at this point.
And people frustrated with both Cruz and the way mainstream media has generally handled far right extremists over the past several years were glad to see CNN actually hit back.
Damn, I wish more press orgs pushed back on bad faith arguments like that!
— Daniel
(@Radiumbreon) August 16, 2021
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And some lashed out at Cruz themselves after CNN got the ball rolling.
Others took a moment to explain how reporting works, since Cruz apparently doesn’t get it.
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Of course, Cruz will just keep going, playing to an audience he knows won’t bother fact-checking and will even keep regurgitating his own talking points because they fit a specific agenda, but for those of us who care about facts and context, it was still nice to watch things play out as shamefully for Ted as they always seem to.
*First Published: August 17, 2021, 6:00 am
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