CNN’s Chief National Security Correspondent and former political appointee of President Obama completely misrepresented a quote from NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and then used it to bash Trump.







Here’s the lowdown from DC Examiner’s Becket Adams:

Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of European Command and the NATO supreme allied commander, Europe, did not say this week that he doesn’t believe there’s an effective U.S. response to Russian cyber threats. He said no such thing. Plain and simple. Rather, Gen. Scaparrotti told reporters Thursday, “I don’t believe there’s an effective unification across the interagency, with the energy and the focus that we could attain.” His comment, which was a direct response to a reporter who asked about ongoing Russian-linked cybersecurity threats, is a fairly reasonable and nuanced one. It’s also about what you’d expect from a high-ranking U.S. official. But if you get your news from CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto, you got a far more alarming and startling version of Scaparrotti’s remarks.

Breaking: Top US general in Europe: "I don't believe there is an effective" US response to confront #Russian cyber threats - NATO Supreme Allied CMDR-Europe Scaparrotti — Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) March 8, 2018

Close, but no cigar. Amazingly enough, Sciutto used his erroneous tweet as an opportunity to draw conclusions about the Trump White House’s supposed indifference to the Russian problem. And he did this even after at least one reporter, noted he got the quote wrong.

This has become a consistent answer across US military and intelligence - each commander or director saying very clearly in public President Trump is not leading on the Russia cyber threat. https://t.co/aTDVV1AA4D — Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) March 8, 2018

Wow. There are several things you can say about Trump’s response to Russia meddling in our election, but it really should be based on fact. Completely misquoting (intentionally or not) a top NATO general and then using it to dump on the president is at the very least careless and definitely not cool, especially for a Chief National Security Correspondent. And you know that many will use it to further prove that CNN is agenda based fake news.

Sciutto signed off Twitter for a few days just a couple hours after these tweets, so there’s been no corrections yet. I hope he will admit the error and correct this when he gets back on Twitter.