CNN host Chris Cuomo said Monday that it’s not always necessary to fact check Democratic politicians because “they are not lying the way [President Donald] Trump does.”
Cuomo was discussing the Republican National Convention with colleague Don Lemon when he suggested Trump and the GOP speakers were offering little but falsehoods.
“Everything that’s bad is your fault,” Cuomo said in reference to alleged Republican finger-pointing. “Everything that’s not going well on my watch, you are either lying about or you’re engineering, somehow, on the sneaky side,” Cuomo said on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time.” (RELATED: Eric Metaxas, Chris Cuomo Clash Over Christian Support For Trump)
“And again, well, who are people going to believe? We’ll see who makes the better case. And yeah, you can fact check it to death. We could fact check this convention all night. People were saying you didn’t fact check the Democrats. They are not lying the way Trump does.”
CNN fact checker Daniel Dale has previously said that there is “no equivalence” between Democrats and Trump when it comes to lying.
Although both hosts agreed that both parties “engage” in lying, Cuomo noted of the president: “Nobody lies the way this man does, has, and will, that I’ve ever seen in politics. So he’s lying to you.”
Although Cuomo found Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s “personal story compelling,” he said was “very careful about what he didn’t mention” and suggested the senator had not supported Trump in 2016.
Cuomo suggested few politicians had ever been so viscerally attacked by others in their own party the way that Trump has.
“This guy is a lying demon, who is going to Hell: that’s what [Republican South Carolina Sen.] Lindsey Graham called him. You know, [Republican Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz called him a pathological liar and a person of no morality. You know, these people knew who Trump was. And now, they’re pretending it’s okay. It’s a tough sell.” (RELATED: CNN’s Cuomo Says Antifa Fights For ‘A Good Cause’)
President Donald Trump speaks on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Charlotte Convention Center on Aug. 24, 2020 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Jessica Koscielniak – Pool/Getty Images)
Lemon said that “Graham called him racist and a lot more things,” adding that “a lot of other people” had been severe critics of Trump as a presidential candidate and “who are now his best friend.”
Cuomo has previously called Trump an “autocrat” in conversation with Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, although the CNN host described the president’s 2020 State of the Union address as something that “celebrated what the country is about.”