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Carlson opened with Haab by asking him if it was correct that CNN asked him what he wanted to ask on the stage and then rewrote his question.
“Yes, sir. So what had happened was four days ago I had gotten contacted by a lady named Carrie Stevenson from CNN. She had asked me originally to just write a speech. It was going to be at the town hall, the BB&T Center. So I agreed. I felt like it would be the right thing to do, be able to go speak my part as well as open eyes to a few things that I thought can make this situation a little better.”
Haab then said he got an email back from Stevenson and she asked for more questions instead of a speech.
“So I gave her my questions and then … I made contact with her. And she had asked if I had just asked her one question. So what they had actually done was wrote out a question for me because in my interview with CNN, I had talked about arming the teachers, if they were willing to arm themselves in the school to carry on campus.”
Haab said his question was rewritten.
“So, I have that question here if you would like me to ask it for you,” Haab, who then decided not to attend the town hall, told Carlson.
Carlson told Haab that CNN’s actions seem dishonest.
“It definitely did. That’s kind of why I didn’t go,” Haab said. “Originally, I had thought that it was going to be more of my own question and my own say and then it turned out to be more of just a script. And, she had actually said that over the phone that I needed to stick to the script.”
But now it turns out that the email he and his father provided to prove his case was falsified and doctored to smear CNN.
Colton went on the claim that no one at the Town Hall actually wrote their own question, not that he would know that — he just assumed — because he claimed that CNN had scripted his question for him. Except that Mediaite has copies of the email they provided FOX as well as the original email that was provided by CNN which proves that Colton is a liar.
Following Haab’s appearance on Fox News, Mediaite obtained copies of the original email exchange between Colton Haab, Colton’s father Glenn, and Stevenson. The first one, dated Feb. 21 and sent at 12:10 AM, shows Colton submitting a number of questions he’d like to ask at the event:
This is followed by an email to Glenn from Stevenson, sent later that day at 5:46 PM, referencing that she had previously spoken on the phone with Colton and she was asking that he stick to just the one question “that he submitted,” which was then written in full.
Glenn replied shortly after, in an email sent at 5:53 PM, telling Stevenson they “are not actors nor do we read from a script,” adding that he knows Stevenson only wants Colton to “read this one short question” but that they “are not the right people for your town hall meeting.”
Comparatively, the emails provided to Huffington Post and Fox News show one very big difference. In the email purportedly from Stevenson provided by the Haab family, the second paragraph is changed from the original email provided to Mediaite. The email provided to the Huffington Post reads: “This is what Colton and I discussed on the phone. He needs to stick to this.”
Below is a copy of the doctored email that was sent to the Huffington Post:
An additional email exchange provided by Fox News to CNN and inquiring for comment shows the same language.
The change leaves out the important context from the original email, which included “that he submitted,” making clear that the question came from Colton.
According to a CNN source, after Colton sent over his list of questions he wanted to ask at the town hall, Stevenson spoke on the phone with the student to decide on which question he’d use. The framing language for the question that was emailed over later came verbatim from a Fox & Friends interview Colton had done that helped draw CNN’s attention to him.
Prior to Stevenson sending Colton’s father the email asking that Colton “stick” to the question that he submitted, the source noted that Glenn had been in touch with Stevenson telling her that Colton would like to be given an opportunity to say more. At one point, Glenn emailed over a multi-page speech that was laced with questions and comments that Colton would prefer to read instead, thus prompting Stevenson’s email requesting Colton stay with the one question.
CNN had simply asked Haab to keep things to just one question, one which he himself had submitted not a speech because there were many other people who wanted a chance to speak or ask questions. Haab’s father responded to this request, which was essentially to respect others by not hogging up all the time by claiming “we’re not actors” and then provided a copy of the CNN email that omits the fact that question was one that he had submitted himself.
After this Haab refused to attend the Town Hall, then went on Fox News to accuse all the other persons from Stoneman Douglas of allowing themselves to be “CNN scripted puppets.”
This is a sad and disgusting lie concocted by a kid and his dad who simply wants to grandstand over what happened to his friends at Stoneman Douglas, and deserves to be thrown on the trash pile of sick conspiracy theories such as the claim that some students at Douglas are “crisis actors”, that they are the pawns of George Soros the Left Wing and the FBI, that they “Hate America”, they “Hate Freedom” and gun violence is really the “fault of the main stream media” that Fox, the NRA and other Ammosexuals have vomited up to distract from their being complicit in the ongoing gun deaths of over 33,000 Americans every year.
They tried to promote a conspiracy theory to smear CNN and they got caught.