CNN’s Dana Bash has provoked a backlash after she was caught lying about remarks made during a conversation between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump.
During her show “Inside Politics” on CNN, Bash responded to Sunday night’s chat between Musk and Trump that was livestreamed on X Sunday evening.
The broadcast has so far garnered over one billion views around the world, and counting.
The huge success of the event has led to Democrats and their corporate media allies scrambling to criticize the conversation.
For CNN, however, reporting on the actual conversation between the two powerful figures wasn’t enough.
Instead, Bash played a deceptively edited clip from the livestream and tried to suggest that both Musk and Trump declared that nuclear war is “okay.”
However, Trump and Musk were discussing the risks associated with nuclear energy and noted that it is far safer than people are led to believe.
At no point did they downplay nuclear war as Bash suggested.
The clip that Bash played for CNN viewers contained the following exchange:
MUSK: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re full cities again, so-
TRUMP: Right. Right. Right. That’s great.
MUSK: So, it’s not as scary as people think basically.
After Bash played the clip, she deceitfully told her audience that Musk and Trump were “sort of suggesting that what happened almost 80 years ago next year, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, now it’s okay.”
WATCH:
The remarks from Bash were a blatant distortion of what Musk and Trump were discussing.
During the conversation, Trump was talking about what he believes is the greatest threat to the U.S. and the rest of the world.
He said the threat is “not climate climate” but the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
“And when I talk about ‘I’ll prevent World War III,’ I will,” Trump said.
“But the truth is that you have to because this is no longer army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other.
“This a level of destruction and power that nobody’s ever seen before.”
At that point, Musk noted that the “bad side of nuclear” technology was “nuclear war.”
However, Musk continued by pointing out that there is also a good side to the technology, which is “nuclear electricity generation.”
“People have this fear of nuclear electricity generation, but it’s actually one of the safest forms of electricity generation,” Musk said.
“It’s just a huge misunderstanding.
“And if you look at the injuries and deaths caused by, say …
“I’m not going to try to pick on coal mining, but just any kind of mining operation, and there’s a certain number of injuries and deaths per year.
“When you compare that to nuclear, nuclear is actually way better.
“So it is underrated as an electricity source, and I think it’s something that’s worth reconsidering, but there’s so much regulation that people can’t get it done.”
Musk and Trump both agreed that part of the problem was the branding surrounding the word “nuclear.”
They noted how fear around that word scares people away from embracing it.
Trump then talked about nuclear accidents that happened in Japan at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and in the former Soviet Union at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
He noted that some experts have said that people will not be able to return to live in those areas for thousands of years.
“No, that’s not true,” Musk responded.
“It’s actually not that bad.
“So after Fukushima happened in Japan, people were asking me in California, ‘Are we worried about a nuclear cloud coming from Japan?’
“I’m like, ‘No, that’s crazy. It’s actually … It’s not even dangerous in Fukushima.’
“I actually flew there and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it.
“And I donated a solar-powered system for a water treatment plant.”
Musk continued by explaining how radiation from nuclear incidents clears more quickly than people believe, using the bombings in Japan as examples.
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re full cities again, so it’s really not as scary as people think, basically.”
Bash’s framing of the U.S. using nuclear weapons to end WWII as being somehow morally reprehensible ignores the basic fact that historians, scientists, U.S. military officials, and even Japanese military officers from WWII have acknowledged that dropping the atomic bombs on Japan actually saved lives.
The bombings brought the war to a rapid conclusion instead of prolonging the fighting.
Had the bombings not occurred, the war would have continued and would have included the U.S. invading Japan, leading to millions of people being killed — both American and Japanese.
Bash was slammed online for her deception by a variety of media personalities and even the Trump Campaign.
“Fake news CNN selectively edited President @realDonaldTrump and @elonmusk’s conversation last night to claim they said that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were not a big problem,” Trump said.
“The full context shows they were talking about nuclear energy.
“All the fake news does is lie.”
Political commentator Anton Vuljaj posted on X:
“Whether you like/dislike Trump doesn’t really matter…this is a pretty damning clip of CNN and explains why tens of millions of Americans have lost trust in the media.”
“What a joke,” said media analyst Joe Concha.
“This is terrible,” said journalist Michael Shellenberger.
“It was obvious that @elonmusk was talking about how radiation declines over time.
“Some of the best research comes from Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
“Are you going to correct your misinformation and apologize, @DanaBashCNN?”
The House Republican Conference posted on X:
“CNN is FAKE NEWS.”
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