Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
CNN anchor Dana Bash offered an unusual and fiery fact check of President Donald Trump on Monday, interjecting during her network's broadcast of the president's Oval Office meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
"I just want to say, for the record, since we heard President Trump say in the Oval Office that CNN hates our country - CNN does not hate our country," Bash told viewers during the "Inside Politics" program Monday afternoon.
Trump repeatedly attacked CNN and its journalists during a press event with Bukele, who has partnered with the administration to hold immigrants deported from the United States in a Salvadoran mega-prison.
Surrounded by high-level officials and journalists, the two leaders sat on armchairs and flattered each other. When Bukele praised his American counterpart for reducing border crossings, Trump pointed into the media section and complained, "The fake news, you know, like CNN over here … doesn't like putting out good numbers, because I think they hate our country, actually."
That caused Bash's interjection from the CNN studio. "I've been here for 32 years, and I see a rhetorical device in him trying to say such a thing," the anchor said.
Trump continued castigating the network during a question-and-answer session that focused on his administration's resistance to orders from the Supreme Court and a federal judge that it facilitate the return of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego GarcĂa, who was mistakenly deported to the Salvadoran prison last month.
The president attacked "low-rated" CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins for a "slanted" question when she asked if Trump would seek Bukele's help securing Abrego GarcĂa's release.
Bukele, in turn, called Abrego GarcĂa a terrorist and said he had no intention of returning him to the United States, where the sheet metal worker has three children and is married to a U.S. citizen.
Collins kept pressing, reminding Trump that he had already promised to abide by Supreme Court rulings.
"Why don't you just say, 'Isn't it wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country?'" Trump shot back. "Why can't you say that? Why do you go over and over - and that's why nobody watches you anymore, you know, you have no credibility."
The White House doubled down on Trump's messaging Tuesday. "CNN's ratings continue to plummet because Americans don't want illegal, criminal terrorists to be kidnapped from their country and returned to the U.S.," White House assistant press secretary Taylor Rogers said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Trump has long been hostile toward media he considers unfavorable, lobbing epithets such as "fake news" and "enemy of the people" at targets such as the New York Times, The Post and CNN. The president also has taken legal action against CNN, alleging defamation and bias and attacking the network's journalists, including Collins and Bash. (CNN declined to comment for this article.)
Bash, who moderated last year's presidential debate between Trump and Joe Biden, has been a particular subject of the president's ire. Trump has called the longtime CNN veteran "nasty" and dishonest, and mocked her name. "She doesn't know how to pronounce it," Trump said at a rally last summer.
"I'm a human being and it's not pleasant," Bash said of Trump's attacks in an interview with Salon last year. "But it honestly makes me more resolute in understanding the impact and the importance of what we do as journalists."
(COMMENT, BELOW)