CNN Anchors Won’t Stop Lying About Something Rashida Tlaib Never Said

The source of the quote corrected Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, but they kept accusing the Palestinian House representative of antisemitism anyway.

By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept

In the last three days, CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have performed a masterclass in journalistic malpractice — better described in this case as “lying.”

Both anchors devoted concerted airtime to accusing Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., of antisemitism based on a comment they attributed to the Palestinian American member of Congress — a comment she never came close to making.

Anyone watching CNN’s “State of the Union” with Tapper on Sunday, or “Inside Politics” with Dana Bash on Monday, would have heard that Tlaib questioned Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s ability to fairly do her job because Nessel is Jewish. Little matter to the primetime journalists that Tlaib’s recent criticism of Nessel did not in any way mention or refer to the attorney general’s Jewish faith or identity.

The lie stems from Tlaib’s comments on Nessel’s decision to prosecute 11 Gaza solidarity protesters from the University of Michigan. The student demonstrators are facing overreaching criminal charges for camping out on their own college campus to protest the funding of Israel’s genocidal war.

“We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest,” Tlaib told the Detroit Metro Times. “We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”