Speaking on Tuesday, March 18, two hosts on MSNBC had to issue an on-air retraction of an utter lie that they told the day before about Tulsi Gabbard, the Democrat-turned-Republican who is much-hated by the security state establishment and is now the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) for the Trump Administration.
That retraction involved a claim that both MSNBC hosts, Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi, had made on Monday, the 17th. On Tuesday, each had to correct their network’s erroneous and potentially slanderous misinformation about Tulsi, who they claimed had said that President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were “very good friends.”
The false MSNBC claim was first made by MSNBC personality Jonathan Capehart, who did so while interviewing MSNBC international affairs analyst Michael McFaul. He, while hosting MSNBC’s “The Last Word” on Monday, asked McFaul, “Gabbard is saying out loud that U.S. and Russia relations are a shared mission. How dangerous is that?”
Issuing a retraction for her network during her show on Tuesday, Ruhle first explained the context in which the comment occurred, saying, “Last night we reported on excerpts of an interview between the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and an Indian TV news network in which she said that Trump was good friends with a world leader.”
Continuing, she noted that MSNBC had lied about what Gabbard said without even bothering to listen to the full interview or think about the context of it, saying, We said that world leader was Vladimir Putin. But the full interview shows that Gabbard was referring to Trump and Indian Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi. Cleared that up.”
Also issuing a retraction was Ali Velshi, who was filling in for her usual fellow host Lawrence O’Donnell. She, commenting on the same statement made completely falsely by MSNBC, said, “Now, we said that world leader was Vladimir Putin, but the full interview was subsequently released, and it showed that Gabbard was referring to Donald Trump and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi.” Watch the incident here:
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The Associated Press had made a similar claim about Tulsi’s comments, also claiming that she had said Trump and Putin are good friends. That led to a great deal of backlash online. For example, Alexa Henning, Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, slammed the AP, writing, “The @AP is total trash. DNI
@TulsiGabbard was referring to PM Modi & President Trump and this is the headline they publish. This is why no one trusts the maliciously incompetent and purposefully bias media. If this isn’t a clear example of pushing a solely political narrative, then nothing is.”
Another poster on X slammed the media personalities who pushed the lie about Gabbard and Trump as “sick people.” That poster said, “These despicable lunatics are really sick people. The lies. The hate. MSNBC hosts forced to make on-air corrections to erroneous reports about Tulsi Gabbard
Associated Press also retracted its story about Gabbard this week.”
Still another poster on X noted that the AP had to retract its claim and that you would think a news service would at least check its stories. That poster said, “AP caught red-handed making false claims about Gabbard — forced to retract story . . . You would think that a news service would fact-check their stories before sending them out to the world…or perhaps the lie was the intended narrative they wanted the world to see.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video