CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins laughed along with fact-checker Daniel Dale at the volume of repeated “lies” in former President Donald Trump’s latest courthouse rant.
Although Trump and his defense team filed silently past shouting reporters Wednesday morning without stopping, Trump made an appearance to rant at the press after Judge Juan Merchan completed his instructions and the jury began to deliberate.
On Wednesday’s edition of CNN’s branded coverage of the trial, Collins followed up Trump’s rant by tossing to Dale for a fact check. They both laughed as they noted the many times Dale had already debunked Trump’s falsehoods, and then knocked them down again:
KAITLAN COLLINS: As I mentioned. Daniel Dale, I don’t know. You’ve checked all of these before, I believe. I don’t think any of these will be new to you.I know you and I have been on together several times to fact check the claim about people emptying their insane asylums, countries, and sending them to the United States, which I know there’s no basis for.Also, his claims, wrongly, that President Biden is the one driving this, when, of course, he was indicted by a jury of his peers here. And it is the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who brought this case.DANIEL DALE: Yeah. You barely need me anymore. (laughs) You got these facts down. Everything you said is correct.KAITLAN COLLINS: (laughs)
.DANIEL DALE: He also referred to to fake elections in this country, a vaguer than usual reference to his false claims, his lies that the 2020 election was rigged.We have entirely legitimate elections in this country, including the 2020 election he lost.He also used this figure — he’s had 15, 16, 17 million people being let in, over the border under Joe Biden. Those are wildly exaggerated figures.We were under 10 million so-called encounters. That includes many millions who were sent back, under title 42, after they were encountered. So not all of them were let in.And I think a point of clarification, he said something true. He said that judge, had donated to President Biden, to Joe Biden’s campaign. That is true. But I think it’s important to note that the amount of the donation was $15. So just a point of fact there.KAITLAN COLLINS: Well. And that’s why whenever he claimed, he said the judge is so conflicted that he, quote, “can’t breathe” was his quote.I mean, that has been something that that Trump has long claimed during this trial. I should note, as someone who’s been in that jury room or in that courthouse, that courtroom, watching this, the judge often, strives at great lengths to be fair to both sides here, both the prosecution and the defense. And also this has gone through a process where he was asked if he was too conflicted to to preside over this, and he was told no.DANIEL DALE: Yeah. And Kaitlan, I there’s one more thing I should mention. He said that we, that that the Trump side, his defense had a leading election expert and the judge just refused to allow him to testify.That is not what happened. What happened was the judge, as is common, limited the scope of the possible testimony that this expert could have offered.And then Trump’s defense said, okay, we’re just not going to call him at all.So they could have called him to talk about various matters. Maybe it would have helped them. The judge did not completely reject this possible witness. And the Trump, Trump’s team instead made its own call not to have him up there on the stand.KAITLAN COLLINS: Yeah, that’s an important one. It was the defense who decided not to call Bradley Smith to the witness stand. Daniel Dale, thank you for that.
Watch above via CNN’s branded coverage of the Stormy Daniels hush money-election interference trial.