On Sunday's Up with David Gura show on MSNBC, during a panel discussion lambasting White House officials like Kellyanne Conway for pushing "lies" and "propaganda" in their press appearances, the show made an on-screen misspelling that seems unlikely to have been an innocent typo as the chyron misquoted Conway as saying President Donald Trump "commended" neo-Nazis.
As the segment lasted just over six minutes, the words on screen switched back and forth to slightly different versions several times, with one version misspelling "condemns" as "commends," completely changing the meaning. The misspelled version was displayed in three stretches totaling just over one and a half minutes as no one corrected the misspelling and brought it back on screen a couple of times.
At 9:39 a.m. Eastern, returning from a commercial break, host Gura informed viewers that Conway had just been appearing as a guest on CNN's State of the Union, hosted by Jake Tapper. Gura referred to the recent attack on a synagogue in California as he recounted:
In light of the shooting in California, President Trump's advisor, Kellyanne Conway, was pressed moments ago about the President's views on white supremacists. CNN's Jake Tapper asked her about Trump's comments after the attacks in Charlottesville when he described "fine people on both sides" of that incident.
After recalling a clip of Conway recounting that President Trump "condemned" white supremacist racism early in his term, followed by a clip of her and Tapper debating Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's ad attacking Trump over Charlottesville, Gura brought back his panel and posed: "We've seen over the last few days, in light of the President doubling down on this in response to a question from a White House reporter, a re-envisioning -- a rewriting of the narrative surrouding what the President said in Charlottesville."
As Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats gave his response in which he complained about the press allowing Conway on television to "spread lies like this," and called her a "propagandist," the words displayed on screen switched to "CONWAY: TRUMP COMMENDED NEO-NAZISM FOLLOWING CHARLOTTESVILLE" -- the total opposite of what she actually stated.
After Shahid's commentary, Danielle Moodie-Mills of Sirius XM's Wolf AF began her commentary by complaining: "I'm just so confused about why we keep talking to these people, right? I don't understand why the press goes to the press briefings ... They listen to (Sarah Huckabee) Sanders stand there and lie, right?"
The words on screen reverted back to the previous display, and then, moments later, returned to the misspelling with the word "commended." As she complained that the press does not ask White House officials "the right questions," Moodie-Mills added:
We're not asking like, "Oh, is the -- maybe the President is a white nationalist -- maybe he's a racist." No, the President of the United States is a white nationalist -- he is a racist. Everything that comes out of his mouth is either xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, or racist, right?
She ended by declaring that Biden "needed to remind the American people how racist the President of the United States is."
After Cristina Beltran of New York University began speaking, the chyron placed her information on screen and then returned to the correct spelling of "condemns."
Gura soon seemed to be channeling his colleagues Al Sharpton and Phillip Menas as he bizarrely suggested that it was not correct to claim that the fight over General Robert E. Lee's statue was the catalyst for the Charlottesville white nationalist rally. Gura:
It's rewriting history as well, and it's disdain and mistreatment of history as well, and you have the President there say, "Oh, this was about a statue -- this was about Robert E. Lee." Now, we have this bubbling conversation among on the alt-right about that's really what was at issue here was an attack on history and on a statue.
As Beltrain argued that such talk was "propaganda," the perhaps intentionally misspelled word "commended" appeared on screen for a third time.
As the segment was winding down, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank recommended that journalists "stop the interview" with Conway when she starts repeating "falsehoods."
