Trump Ad’s Misleading Use of CNN Interview

A Trump campaign ad misleadingly edits a CNN interview to suggest 2 million people would have died from the novel coronavirus were it not for President Donald Trump’s China travel restrictions.

In the one-minute ad, Wolf Blitzer, anchor of CNN’s “The Situation Room,” is heard asking chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, “Is it accurate that if these steps had not been put in place … it could’ve been 2 million people dead here in the United States?” While Blitzer speaks, the ad shows images of an Air China plane and signs saying airline flights had been canceled. “Yes,” Gupta is shown saying.

The impression is that Trump’s travel restrictions, which went into effect Feb. 2, were responsible for saving those lives.

But the ad edited Blitzer’s question, Blitzer asked, “Well, is it accurate that if these steps had not been put in place, the stay at home orders, the social distancing orders, as the president said yesterday, it could have been 2 million people dead here in the United States?” The ad gives no hint that the question was about social distancing, not travel restrictions.