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Kudos to Jeremy Gorner and Jason Meisner, two hardworking reporters at the Chicago Tribune, who scoured police records to prove that no, contrary to the latest excretions from Donald Trump’s neverending geyser of bullshit, two people were not “shot and killed” during Barack Obama’s farewell speech in his hometown of Chicago on Jan. 10.
But Gorner and Meisner also uncovered something else. Trump spouted his lies in a new interview with ABC News anchor David Muir—but the network didn’t include them in its broadcast on Wednesday night. Rather, they only appeared in a longer transcript that ABC posted on its site, and according to the Tribune, the station still isn’t sharing the video.
Obviously every TV news program has to make editing choices in terms of how it cuts down raw footage before presenting it on the air, but this particular decision merits scrutiny. Why didn’t ABC include this newest falsehood in its broadcast? Did it try to fact-check Trump before dropping this segment? And why won’t it provide video now?
Gun violence is an enormous problem, in Chicago and across the country—but of course, Republicans have no interest in doing anything about it. At the same time, Trump has created an extraordinary challenge for us all by constantly spewing garbage that has no relationship to reality, and it’s hard to keep up. But keep up we must: every lie, every time, especially on an issue of grave importance like this one. There’s no letting Trump off the hook, ever—especially for those who capture Trump’s fabrications on tape.