CNN’s Chris Cuomo doesn’t appear to have done his due diligence. He committed a very bad gaffe last night by using pre-Trump era economic data to bash President Donald Trump’s economy.
Cuomo attacked Trump’s Director of the United States National Economic Council Larry Kudlow for saying that he doesn’t believe there is systemic racism in the U.S. during the June 11 edition of CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time. To bolster his argument, Cuomo fired off a flurry of wealth inequality graphs attempting to prove his “fact” that systemic racism exists in America. He used the graphs to claim the “fundamental divide” between white and black wealth was “as wide now as it was the year Dr. [Martin Luther] King[, Jr.] was shot. So much for Trump's economy being the best ever for black people.”
The problem? All the graphs Cuomo used had data that stopped in 2016, when former President Barack Obama was still in office. The irony is that the chyron for the segment was headlined “The Data Is Clear.” If anything was “clear,” it was that Cuomo’s cherry-picked data had nothing to do with the Trump economy at all.
Watch Cuomo’s gaffe below:
Here’s Cuomo’s statement:
Alright, this isn't believing in something like the tooth fairy. Alright? It's about fact. He is wrong. It's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of fact. And it is fact that you see everywhere you look in black and white. The immediate proof is in the cabinet. Trump has one black cabinet member and one black domestic policy adviser. Kudlow is the president’s economic adviser. So, let's start with the economy. White people make more money than blacks do, period — even if they have the same level of education, even if they're in the same jobs. And in fact, that fundamental divide is as wide now as it was the year Dr. King was shot. So much for Trump's economy being the best ever for black people. Not relatively. And relativity matters.
Founder and President of Luntz Global, American political and communications consultant Frank Luntz was not having it with Cuomo’s misleading segment: “This is complete incompetence. Journalistically and editorially.”
