After the evening news broadcasts rushed to hype an unconfirmed Washington Post report based off of anonymous sources Monday night, ABC was eager to tout the story as “the most significant and dangerous mistake of the Trump presidency” on Tuesday morning’s Good Morning America.
Anchor George Stephanopoulos began by gushing, “Let’s explain what’s at stake right now,” before leading into what The Post report alleged. Noting that what Trump might’ve revealed could “jeopardize” a crucial source on the fight against ISIS, Stephanopoulos stated ominously, “If true, it could be the most significant and dangerous mistake of the Trump presidency.”
“If true” became the qualifying phrase, peppered throughout GMA’s report. Unfortunately, that uncertainty didn’t stop the ABC anchors and reporters from hyping the report with as much emotion and loaded words as if it was already proven to be true.
ABC’s Senior White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega first reported on the “fallout” from The Post’s report. Vega noted that while President Trump was “legally allowed” to reveal classified information, that still could “risk critical intelligence sharing agreements” and “jeopardize the source of that information.”
“This morning, the White House in damage control mode,” Vega touted, before ABC played a clip of National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster denouncing The Post’s report.
Even though McMaster said that Trump didn’t disclose anything that wasn’t “already publicly known,” Vega continued hyping the absolute worst case scenario, only adding credulity into her report when it was used to discount the Trump Administration’s denials. "But McMaster did not directly address the key finding of that report, that the president shared highly classified information that could compromise a key source of intelligence on ISIS," Vega noted.
She ended her report by claiming that the timing of this report “could not be worse for this administration” as it came after the White House's “bungled firing of the FBI Director.”
“This is a White House in chaos right now,” Vega urged.
ABC, like CBS did last night, also brought up Trump’s past rebuke of Hillary Clinton sharing classified information over her private e-mail server. But while the networks are running head over heels with this Post story, despite it being based off of “anonymous sources,” the networks were reluctant to report on Clinton’s bombshell report from a named, official government source confirming that she shared classified information. As NewsBusters’ Nick Fondacaro pointed out last night:
It’s quite telling that they would eat up the claims from anonymous sources when it’s highly damaging to the Trump administration, but ignore an official letter from a government inspector general when in the middle of a campaign to get Clinton elected.
