CNN ran fact-check graphics while broadcasting White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s press briefing on Tuesday.
The network aired on-screen “Facts First” graphics highlighting aspects of the government’s climate change report while Sanders discussed the report’s findings.
“Climate change report involved 300 scientists, 12 federal agencies,” the graphic read. “Co-author: not paid for report.”
“Open for review and transparency before publishing,” another CNN graphic read, describing the report.
Sanders during the briefing dismissed the findings of the report from scientists within the Trump administration, which warned of the anticipated consequences of climate change. She claimed that the report was “not based on facts.”
{mosads}“We think that this is the most extreme version and it’s not based on facts,” she said. “It’s not data driven. We’d like to see something that is more data driven. It’s based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.”
Sanders maintained that President Trump is “certainly leading on what matters most in this process” and said the president is being a “leader” on that front.
CNN host Brooke Baldwin elaborated on the on-screen bullet points after Sanders finished the briefing, her first in roughly a month.
“Fact,” Baldwin interjected. “The report four years in the making involved 300 leading climate change scientists in 13 federal agencies. That is the president’s own federal government.”
Baldwin said it was “false” for Sanders to suggest that the climate report was based on only extreme scenarios, saying the analysis ranged from best to worst climate outcomes.
The latest congressionally mandated report, released every four years under the National Climate Assessment, concluded that climate change could cost the U.S. billions of dollars annually within decades if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t dramatically reduced and could worsen environmental disasters like wildfires and flooding.
Social media users on Tuesday applauded CNN, which is a frequent target of the president, for fact-checking the administration’s claims: