CNN Host Trashed For Deceptively Editing Trump-Musk Clip To Make Them Look Like Villains

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Dana Bash
Photo Credit: "Dana Bash" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse.

CNN host Dana Bash faced backlash on Tuesday for allegedly misrepresenting a conversation between former President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the owner of X.

The pair’s wide-ranging Monday night discussion on the social media platform briefly touched on nuclear energy, which Bash deceptively edited on her show the next day.

Bash opened a segment on “Inside Politics” with a brief soundbite that deceivingly suggested that Trump and Musk were dismissive about the devastation caused by nuclear weapons.

She primed panelists on the episode by stating, “I want to play one exchange that was kind of classic. Well, there were a lot of exchanges that were classic Donald Trump, but this one really stuck out to us.”

That’s when she played a 10-second audio clip from the two-hour live stream. “Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re, they’re like full cities again,” Musk began.

Trump replied, “Right, well, that’s great.” Musk went on, “So, it’s really not something that, you know…” Before Trump cut in to repeat, “That’s great.”

Musk then concluded, “So it’s, it’s not as scary as people think basically.”

After the clip was over, Bash alleged that the pair was trying to downplay the impact of nuclear bombs.

“That was more Elon Musk than Donald Trump talking about, sort of suggesting that what happened almost 80 years ago, 80 years ago next year, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, now it’s okay, um, trying to kind of blow off the impact of that,” she remarked.

The unedited audio, however, shows Trump and Musk were actually discussing nuclear energy, not bombs.

Musk praised nuclear energy as “one of the safest forms of electricity generation” and mentioned widespread misunderstandings about it due to its name. He also argued that government regulations have kept it from reaching its full potential.

Trump humorously suggested rebranding nuclear energy to improve its public image, saying, “Maybe they’ll have to change the name! The name is the rough thing.”

“There are some areas, like when you see what happened… We’ll have to rebrand it,” he added. “We’ll have to give it a nickname. We’ll name it after you or something.”

Trump also referenced historical nuclear disasters, noting exaggerated claims about long-term land uninhabitability.

“When you see what happened in Japan, where they say, ‘You won’t be able to go on the land for about 3,000 years,’ did you ever see that?” He remarked.

“And in Russia, where they had the problem. Where they had a lot of bad things happen. And they have a problem,” Trump referenced the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

“And they say in 2,000 years, people will start to occupy the land again. You know, you realize it’s pretty bad,” he noted.

Musk countered, “It’s actually not that bad, like, after Fukushima happened in Japan, people were asking me in California, you know, are we worried about the nuclear plant in Japan. I’m like, no, that’s crazy. It’s actually, it’s not even dangerous in Fukushima.”

He even shared a story about visiting Fukushima post-disaster and eating local produce to demonstrate its safety.

Trump quipped that the Tesla CEO hadn’t “been feeling so well lately,” which was right before the clip Bash played of the pair talking about how Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were nuked during WWII, had recovered to become “full cities again.”

Following her commentary on the misleading clip, Bash eventually acknowledged that they were talking about nuclear energy.

“They did have substantive conversations about it, and what Trump said – well, first of all, I want you to react to this,” she told the panelists.

“What Trump was talking about there was that nuclear energy has a branding problem. He’s not wrong.”

Despite the lackluster clarification, the Trump campaign blasted Bash for trying to skew the conversation through editing.

“Fake news CNN selectively edited President @realDonaldTrump and @elonmusk’s conversation last night to claim they said that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were not a big problem,” Trump War Room posted.

“The full context shows they were talking about nuclear energy. All the fake news does is lie.”

In a twist of irony, Bash recently dismissed complaints from Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), about media misrepresentation of the former president.

During a Sunday morning appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Vance had said, “I imagine a lot of folks who are thinking about voting for Donald Trump in 2024, maybe they’ve bought into the media lies about him.”

“Think for yourself. Look at what he actually said. And I think you’ll find that he’s, one, a very engaging guy, but, two, was a very good president,” he added.

“There aren’t media lies. We play him, and we let him speak for himself. And so people are getting exactly what the…” Bash shot back.

Vance had interjected, “I’m not accusing you of lying, Dana. You know I like you, but the media lies from time to time about Donald Trump.”

She conceded, “I know you’re not. But people — people hear him for himself.”

Bash’s coworker, anchor Kaitlan Collins, and late-night host Stephen Colbert were shocked on Monday night when the audience cackled over his assertion that CNN was “objective” when reporting the news.

Collins was explaining to Colbert about how Trump has “been thrown” since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris became his successor.

“He knew his attack lines on President Biden. He really has struggled with how to go after someone who’s twenty years younger than him, who is a different gender, a different race… it’s kind of been this moment where he has not been able to coalesce around a single attack line,” she claimed.

“I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is,” Colbert remarked about the network.

They were both shocked when the audience burst out into raucous laughter over his statement.

“No, I know, CNN makes a, uh, I know this…” he sputtered out as they continued to howl.

“Was that supposed to be a laugh line?” Collins asked in bewilderment.

“Ah, it wasn’t supposed to be, but…I guess it is,” Colbert answered in clear shock.

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