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Daniel Dale Has No Need to Correct Democrats on CNN, and the AP Wants to Fund Healthcare...Elsewhere

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Oct 16, 2025
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

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 Body Checking the Fact-Checkers – CNN

  • Apparently, Mr. Dale was watching the Maple Leafs game.

Last night on CNN, they held a town hall with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It was rather noticeable that Daniel Dale, the resident fact-checker who springs onto the airwaves when a Republican makes an errant utterance, was nowhere to be seen.

There was Bernie Sanders, declaring that Twitter was owned by Amazon Titan Jeff Bezos. (Fact Check: ENTIRELY FALSE)

Then there was AOC decrying the rapacious actions of a corporation ruining the environment. She claimed that a company named Deloitte is wantonly polluting our waters, and we see “rivers were on fire.”

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Deloitte is an accounting company, so no one is sure what she is talking about, and we would like to see Mr. Dale describe the last time a river has been on fire. We are more than certain had President Trump spoken like this, Danny would be delivering another earnest fact-check, but for this fiasco that played out on CNN, he has fallen silent.

News Avoidance Syndrome – VARIOUS OUTLETS

  • We take this to mean it is not going well for one side.

If it appears that there is a noticeable lack of hysteria in the media over the government shutdown, you are not alone in that thinking. Considering all of the effort at the start of the closure to blame this on the Republicans, one would think that the ongoing closures would lead to only MORE shrieking.

Instead, we have seen a tamping down of the coverage, which would be a clear indicator that this is not reflecting well on the Democrats.

Demo-lition Project – CNN

  • We won’t watch it for free, but THIS will be a smashing success!

The official announcement has come out: On October 28, CNN unveils its subscription model, one you can purchase with a monthly or yearly plan.

Brian Stelter claims there are many watching this rollout, but he seems misguided about the widespread interest. Given the network has now failed twice at a streaming format for its content, what he is describing is a rash of media rubber-necking over this new attempt.

BlueAnon – MSNBC

  • So now gerrymandering is bad again, since red states look to be better at it?

Remember when criticizing elections was considered bad, and questioning the integrity of our election process was anti-American? Well, those concerns fall by the wayside once it looks like the GOP has a better chance of winning the midterms.

Jen Psaki rides in with concerns that the Supreme Court is threatening our democracy (yes, again!) because it is supposedly allowing GOP-run states to gerrymander in a certain fashion, based on a Louisiana case. Funny, it was not so long ago that Gov. Gavin Newsom, looking to pass a new law allowing him to further gerrymander California, was being praised in the press. Today, it can lead to a “rigged” election if it helps the Republicans.

Gilded Reframe – ASSOCIATED PRESS

  • This appears to be a skewed medical priority.

We feel the need to remind the AP that the U.S. government is shut down. We say this because they issued a report about how the shut down of USAID had led to another international calamity. This time it is in the African nation of Lesotho, where apparently AIDS is rampant and we have been financially propping up its relief network in dealing with the disease.

This just seems slightly off-balance, considering what we have been pummeled with in the press just a week ago. So back to the shutdown, where the government is closed all due to the claim that Americans are going to see their healthcare spike to levels we cannot afford.

And yet…we are supposed to continue funding healthcare taking place on the other side of the globe, according to the AP.