CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin said it was “BS” for Ted Cruz to blame her network for a report his campaign passed around this week, and which Cruz’s campaign used to imply that Ben Carson was exiting the Republican presidential race.
“I’m going to call out BS when I hear BS,” Baldwin said Wednesday after the network cut into Cruz’s press conference.
On Monday, the Cruz campaign team put out on social media and in official campaign alerts to supporters a CNN story saying that Carson was not flying to New Hampshire and South Carolina to continue campaigning. Carson complained that this seemed to imply that Carson was exiting the race, and Cruz’s team said it’s time to coalesce around Cruz’s campaign.
Cruz apologized to Carson, and agreed that his team failed to send around a second CNN story in which Carson clarified he’s not dropping out.
But Cruz on Wednesday defended his decision to send out the CNN story, and rejected the idea that doing that was a “dirty trick,” as Carson has argued.
“Was it a dirty trick to pass on your news story?” Cruz shot back.
CNN soon cut away from the press conference, and Baldwin, who was anchoring the network’s coverage, told viewers that Cruz was trying to “throw my network under the bus.”
“We reported it accurate and here are the facts,” she said. “Dr. Carson’s staff told us that he would return home to Florida to ‘take a break’ from the campaign before resuming his activities on the campaign trail. That accurate report was disseminated on television and CNN digital. And that was that.”
Carson has accepted Cruz’s apology but has said someone on that team should be fired.
