CNN’s report taking aim at a Trump administration immigration official and his history of rhetoric left out a key piece of information.
Andrew Kaczynski presented his criticism of Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in a report which failed to mention that Cuccinelli was once a paid contributor on CNN.
The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi first noted Kaczynski’s selective memory lapse over the weekend following publication of the CNN report.
Missing from this story: That Cuccinelli was a paid @cnn talking head until May, when he joined the Trump Administration. https://t.co/oUM3SDE4wX
— Paul Farhi (@farhip) August 17, 2019
Kaczynski focused his report on the immigration official’s history, beginning his article by noting that Cuccinelli helped found State Legislators for Legal Immigration in 2007, a group which described undocumented immigrants as “foreign invaders” who are responsible for “serious infectious diseases, drug running, gang violence, human trafficking, terrorism.”
The article went on to note the “extreme rhetoric ” the group used and that “Cuccinelli has continued to use in recent years, and that has been adopted by President Donald Trump and other Republicans.”
The senior editor and founding member of CNN’s KFile delved into Cuccinelli’s political commentary in the past as well as more recent headline-grabbing remarks such as those on the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty.
Cuccinelli trips up critics angry over his Statue of Liberty poem ‘tweak’ https://t.co/w8ByzBdqOM
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) August 14, 2019
Cuccinelli became a target for the left’s outrage after he appeared on CNN and defended comments on the iconic poem which he said was about “people coming from Europe.”
“Don’t change the facts. You’re twisting this like everybody else on the left has done all day today,” Cuccinelli countered host Erin Burnett’s criticism, saying, “that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class.”
Kaczynski’s argued that Cuccinelli’s views were “in line with what he expressed more than a decade ago as a state legislator in Virginia, when he was one of the first state lawmakers to join State Legislators for Legal Immigration, and detailed how he supposedly turned the term “invasion” into “standard rhetoric.”
“The group has grown steadily less active,” Kaczynski wrote of State Legislators for Legal Immigration. “But Cuccinelli’s rhetoric has remained largely the same since 2007.”
While Kaczynski presented plenty of examples of this rhetoric he faulted the ICE official of using, he never once let readers know that the former Virginia attorney general was paid to be a pro-Trump commentator on CNN during this same time period.
To clarify: @KFILE’s story on Cuccinelli, and a TV segment about it on @CNN this afternoon, don’t mention that CNN employed Cuccinelli until May.
— Paul Farhi (@farhip) August 17, 2019
Cuccinelli, who served as an advisor to Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, was reported to be leaving CNN in May for the Trump administration position, a network spokesman confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. Yet Kaczynski’s screed against the immigration official never even alluded to his recent CNN connection.
Why would you think it isn’t mentioned?
— Mark Loftus (@sparky6vi6) August 17, 2019
No idea.
— Paul Farhi (@farhip) August 17, 2019
Can’t wait to see what KFILE has on David Urban, Steve Cortes, Ben Ferguson, et al, but we’ll have to wait until CNN stops paying them. https://t.co/C9YOYmXoIG
— Bill Geerhart (@CONELRAD6401240) August 18, 2019
DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW
Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!
Frieda@bizpacreview.com
Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
Comment
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.
