There was a bit of a dust-up between the Cruz and Carson campaigns in Iowa. On caucus night, Cruz’s campaign sent out a message to supporters telling them that “CNN is reporting Ben Carson will stop campaigning after Iowa” and urging them to tell other caucusgoers this news, and it soon spread from there. This, of course, made it sound as if Ben Carson was dropping out. The Carson campaign was understandably peeved, and Cruz publicly apologized for his campaign soon after Iowa.
At the debate Saturday, Cruz was again asked about the incident and he again apologized but also took the opportunity to explain what had happened. What Cruz said was pretty straightforward, yet for reasons I can’t begin to understand, PolitiFact’s reading of Cruz’s remarks last night is completely unfair: “Ted Cruz falsely says CNN first said Ben Carson was ‘taking a break from campaigning.'”
This is not a difficult matter to parse. Here’s what Cruz said at the debate:
Sure enough at around 6:30 Iowa time, CNN reported on air that Carson was going to “take a break” from campaigning, and the chyron on CNN said “CAMPAIGN: CARSON TO TAKE A BREAK AFTER IOWA.” They also sent out a tweet saying Carson “plans to take a break”:
After the #IAcaucus, @RealBenCarson plans to take a break from campaigning https://t.co/hTJA5XI7NN https://t.co/GqExX4ujv2
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 2, 2016
Further, discussing the news on air, CNN’s Jake Tapper said of Carson’s decision to take a break, “If you want to signal to your supporters that you want it, that you’re hungry for it, that you want them to get out and campaign, you’ve got to be out there doing it too. And he’s not doing it. It’s very unusual.” Tapper also observed, “almost every single candidate” would go straight to New Hampshire. CNN’s Dana Bash responded to Tapper saying, “If you want to be president of the United States, you don’t go home to Florida.”
How on earth does this square with PolitiFact’s headline and ruling that what Cruz said was false? Substantively this is nonsense. Here’s the conclusion from PolitiFact:
I fail to see how any of this contradicts what Cruz is saying. Cruz is obviously saying his campaign reported a bit of news in a way that was misleading to the point that the news got out of control and lent itself to inaccurate interpretations. It’s what he’s been consistently saying for a week. If that wasn’t the clear implication, he’d have no need to apologize.
As for saying that CNN “simultaneously” reported that Carson would continue campaigning, that’s technically true and CNN didn’t unfairly report the details of Carson’s decision. However, it’s also true CNN did not dwell on this and played up Carson’s “unusual” decision not to go straight to New Hampshire. While it doesn’t excuse the mistake, it’s easy to see how a frenzied campaign on caucus night could have misread the report without it being malicious.
As for PolitiFact’s headline—again, “Ted Cruz falsely says CNN first said Ben Carson was ‘taking a break from campaigning'”—that is flat out mendacious. CNN did first say Carson was taking a break.
Cruz has repeatedly apologized for this over the last week, and you have to be especially dense or willfully hostile to read insincerity into his remarks at the debate. If PolitiFact is capable of being as honorable as Cruz, it’s now their turn to apologize to him.
