© Carlo Allegri / ReutersUS President Donald Trump
CNN's much-heralded, but now-debunked, report had claimed the Trump campaign had secret advance access to hacked DNC emails from Wikileaks. However
, the "most trusted name in news" got the date of an email wrong, which was central to the narrative of their story.President Donald Trump roasted CNN Friday evening during a "Merry Christmas" rally in Pensacola, Florida, for the false report the network corrected earlier in the day.
"CNN apologized a little while ago," Trump said, adding that CNN "
should've been apologizing for the last two years."
CNN's Friday report initially said Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and others from his 2016 campaign team had received an email on
September 4, 2016, with access to Hillary Clinton emails obtained by Wikileaks.
The whistleblower site published those documents online on September 13, so the nine-day advance would seem like quite the scandal. CNN has purported Wikileaks to be an arm of the Kremlin, so finally, was there some allusion to collusion? Not quite, despite the fact that CNN cited multiple unnamed sources for the September 4 date.
Hours later, CNN corrected the findings only after the Washington Post reported that the email was actually sent on September 14, a day after Wikileaks published the Clinton emails for the whole world to see. CNN then claimed it obtained a copy of the email, confirming the Post's reporting. A retraction, rather than a correction, was actually called for, many CNN critics on social media said.
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