Central-Illinoisand_beyond: CNN is Really Upset With This Trump Campaign Ad

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

CNN is Really Upset With This Trump Campaign Ad

The Trump campaign is out with an ad that has CNN going mad – though to be fair, there are few things Trump can do that don’t have the network’s pundits apoplectic.

On Sunday the campaign debuted a new ad titled “American Comeback,” which documents Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s an important narrative to get out, because had you listened only to most mainstream networks you’d be under the impression that he had done absolutely nothing.

As the Washington Examiner’s Mike Brest reports:

It includes a snippet of a segment from The Situation Room involving Wolf Blitzer and the network’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, from March 30.

In the ad, Blitzer asks Gupta, “Is it accurate that if these steps had not been put in place … it could have been 2 million people dead here in the United States?” Gupta then can be heard answering affirmatively while the screen progressed to promote the president’s travel ban from China as a crucial move in the fight to contain the virus.

However, the ad omitted a part of Blitzer’s question, which the network took exception with.The question in its entirety was, “Well, is it accurate that if these steps had not been put in place, the stay-at-home orders, the social distancing orders, as the president said yesterday, it could have been 2 million people dead here in the United States?”

Gupta’s answer was also cut short as his entire response was, “I mean, you know, these are all models, Wolf. It’s a little tough to say, but, you know, if you talk about something that is spreading, you know, very robustly throughout a community, you know, two to three times more contagious than flu, and up to 10 times, perhaps even more than that, more deadly than flu, then yes.”

As a result, Rick D. McMurtry, the associate general counsel for Warner Media, sent the Trump campaign a cease and desist letter over the ad, which argued that the ad misleadingly had the network showering praise on Trump’s travel ban (which everyone agrees worked) instead of social distancing measures.

But the Trump campaign isn’t backing down. According to Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh, “No discussion of efforts to prevent American deaths from the coronavirus can be had without the understanding that President Trump restricted travel from China in January. Based on that alone, the ad is accurate.”

Give it a watch below: