CNN Fact-Checker Flags ‘Most Dangerous Part’ Of Donald Trump’s News Conference
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There was “a lot of lying” from Donald Trump during the press conference the president-elect gave at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday, said CNN fact-checking reporter Daniel Dale.
But one comment stood out as particularly perilous, Dale told colleague Dana Bash.
“I think the most dangerous part was an equivocation,” said Dale. “It wasn’t really a claim, but he was asked whether he thought there was a link between vaccines and autism and he equivocated. He said, ‘Well, we have some brilliant people looking at this,’ and he talked about the increased prevalence of autism diagnoses.”
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Trump said that “right now you have some very brilliant people looking at it” and claimed that there was “something wrong” with a reported rise in autism rates and that “we’re going to find out about it.”
Watch Trump’s comments from the 28-minute mark here:
Dale, though, spelled out his issue with Trump’s comments: “Look, there is no link between vaccines and autism. This notion has been discredited by study after study over decades.”
He continued, “The idea that there is some connection came from a thoroughly discredited, in fact scandalous, fraudulently-altered study in the 1990s that should just be ignored, dismissed, again, because it was fraudulent, and so the idea that, ‘Well, we’re just going to look into this,’ I think is dangerous to consider because the idea is simply wrong.”
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Indeed, the idea that vaccines cause autism has beenrepeatedlydebunked.
Trump, though, has tapped anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who has repeated the rejected claim) to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
Dale also called out Trump’s misleading claims on tariffs and the effect they have on Americans and the returning POTUS’ claim that there was zero inflation during his first term.
Trump’s assertion “over and over” that there were “like, no wars, period, in the world” during his first term was also ”simply not true” and “a rewriting of history,” Dale added.
Watch Dale’s full analysis here: