What does it say when a fact-check from a “reputable” news outlet needs to be fact-checked? And what does it say when that same outlet changes their narrative after realizing that the one they originally attempted to paint wasn’t completely true?
This is where we find ourselves with today with CBS News, specifically a story from CBS Minnesota that their national website is using.
Basically, CBS News changed a headline that was claiming former President and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a false claim about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her involvement in promoting a bail fund for criminals during the riotous 2020 ‘Summer of Love.’
In viewing Friday’s Mark Dice YouTube video, the commentator brought up the CBS News article in question’s headline that was dated June 25 at 5:26 p.m. CDT, written by Esme Murphy. The headline originally read, “Trump falsely accuses Harris of donating to Minnesota Freedom Fund, bailing out “dangerous criminals.”
Here’s a screenshot from both the Dice video and a CBS News video in which they haven’t changed the original headline yet, as of this writing:
Remembering that Harris, at the very least, promoted the Minnesota Freedom Fund made me look up her posts on the matter from that time.
Because I don’t trust the establishment to keep those posts up in the lead-up to election, here are screenshots of Harris’ Facebook and then-Twitter (now X) posts promoting the cause:
Fast forward just three hours and 38 minutes later, and CBS News “updated” the article and changed the headline. The new headline reads, “Despite Trump claim and 2020 tweets showing support, Harris never donated to Minnesota Freedom Fund.”
For context, I could not find the original text of the article. But, with the changed headline comes an admission from Murphy that “parts of Trump’s statement are true.”
Related: Dan Bongino: 9 Reasons to Vote for Kamala Harris
Here’s the Trump statement CBS News’ Murphy based the entire changing narrative on (Note: the statement is from Trump's North Carolina campaign rally held on Wednesday.):
“One of the dangerous criminals Kamala helped bail out of jail was Shawn Michael Tillman. You know that name. A repeat offender who, with Harris's help, was set free. He then went on to murder a man on a train platform in St. Paul, Minnesota, shooting him in cold blood six times, lying on the ground.”
In looking at that statement, Trump never said that Harris “donated” to the fund, only that people were set free through the fund “with Harris’s help.” So, the thing that the lefty fact-checkers do to those on the right all the time is the very same thing they’re guilty of here — taking a quote and putting forth an “implication” of said quote and presenting it as a statement, calling it true because it feeds their agenda.
As seen above, Trump’s statement that Harris “helped” criminals get “out of jail” is actually true if we’re going by her very public push for people to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund.
But, it goes deeper than that. Shawn Michael Tillman wasn’t the only criminal “helped” out of jail by Harris and the Minnesota Freedom Fund to end up murdering someone upon their release.
According to Fox 9 - Minneapolis on September 4, 2021, “George Howard was bailed out by the Minnesota Freedom on August 6 [2021], according to court records, after he was arrested on a domestic violence charge. This week, he was arrested again, this time accused of murder in the shooting along I-94 near Dowling Avenue in Minneapolis on August 29 [2021].”
But wait, there’s more. According to a September 2020 report by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF):
Timothy Wayne Columbus, 36, faces up to 30 years in prison for allegedly sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl in 2015, court records show. He was released from a Minneapolis jail in early July on $75,000 bail, according to jail records.
One day after his release, Columbus signed a document asking the court to return any refunded bail to the MFF, indicating that the fund played a role in securing his release from jail, a court document obtained by the DCNF shows.
Minnesota prosecutors provided graphic details of Columbus’s alleged sexual assault of the eight-year-old girl in her mother’s home, records reviewed by the DCNF show.
So while Harris might not have “donated” her own money to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, as confirmed by the fund itself, she did — as Trump actually SAID — help criminals get out of jail to commit more crimes.
To CBS News and CBS News Minnesota…fact check “mostly false.”
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MRC President @BrentBozell joined @charliekirk11 to break down the media and their biased coverage of Kamala Harrishttps://t.co/zURF2cqX6M
— MRCTV (@mrctv) July 26, 2024