CNN chief fact-checker Daniel Dale is not pleased with Senator and National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Tim Scott. On Wednesday, Dale penned an article attacking Scott for a “misleading” ad that “snipped key context” from a Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed speech, but Dale’s criticism seems to be that Republicans didn’t put an entire paragraph from that speech in their 30-second ad.
Dale lamented, “The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s online ad has generated attention and criticism for using the full legal name of El-Sayed, a Muslim former public health official who is running in Michigan against Republican former congressman Mike Rogers. But the ad is also notable for how, like Scott, it uses a misleadingly snipped ‘dangerous’ comment to bolster its case that El-Sayed is a radical.”
He further attacked Scott for a recent interview he did, “In the CNN interview on Sunday, Scott claimed of El-Sayed: ‘He says he’s the most dangerous candidate you can find. He’s right. We should trust his words, not ours.’
Dale then decried how the video shows “features a one-second video clip of El-Sayed shouting, ‘I’m pretty damn dangerous’ – immediately before turning to an attack on El-Sayed’s stance toward the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the early 2010s.”
If you actually watch the ad, the part about the Muslim Brotherhood is voiced by a narrator which clearly indicates it wasn’t from the same speech.
Dale seems to believe that the NRSC should have given El-Sayed 179 words of free air time, which is what he did:
I’ll just say this. Go ask a child who needed a pair of glasses in Detroit if I’m dangerous. Go ask the folks who could not breathe because of smokestacks spewing out sulfur dioxide if I’m dangerous. Go ask the parents of kids who are going to schools that were leaded if I’m dangerous. Go ask the people flooded in medical debt if I’m dangerous. I think what they’ll tell you is: He’s the best friend you might have if you want government to work for you. I’ll tell you what: If you’re AIPAC, I’m pretty damn dangerous. If you’re Big Pharma, I’m dangerous. If you’re Big Tech and want to put a data center in your backyard, I’m dangerous. If you’re a big bank that wants to collude against us, I am dangerous. If you’re a monopolist who wants to raise our prices, I’m dangerous. If you’re Chuck Schumer, I’m pretty damn dangerous. And I think it’s about damn time we had Democrats who are willing to be dangerous for all the people rigging our policies against us.
It is interesting that the first time El-Sayed added “damn” to “dangerous” was when he was talking about AIPAC and Israel, which would play into the Muslim Brotherhood comments that Dale insists have nothing to do with the original context.
Still, Dale concluded by claiming, “Republicans are entitled to argue that El-Sayed is dangerous and has said dangerous things. But Scott purported to be quoting El-Sayed’s own words, and he didn’t fairly convey those words. The ad didn’t either.”
The idea that Republicans are spreading misinformation because their ad did not explicitly talk about AIPAC or Chuck Schumer is silly. El-Sayed was clearly trying to do the “You can judge a man by his enemies” shtick, so Republicans countered by showing who his allies are. To that end, it is worth noting that Dale never even tried to debunk the ad’s main points about El-Sayed supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, tax increases, being soft on crime, and associating himself with Hasan Piker and refusing to disavow his 9/11 apologia.
