CNN Catches Trump Staffer In A Lie After She Baselessly Accuses Cruz Of Bribing Delegates
Over the past few months, Donald Trump has taken to calling his GOP opponent Ted Cruz ‘Lyin’ Ted,’ due to the Texas Senator’s dirty campaign tricks and habit of stretching — if not obliterating — the truth. However, it also seems to be a bit of projection, as Trump and his team have fully embraced pathological lying as an effective political strategy.
On Tuesday, the lying caught up to one Trump surrogate. Tana Goertz, a one-time contestant of The Apprentice and now Trump’s Iowa co-chair, appeared on CNN to discuss Tuesday’s New York primary of the tough GOP delegate fight ahead of the July convention. After hosts John Berman and Kate Bolduan asked her about Cruz’s campaign providing to be more effective at rounding up delegates, Goertz flatly accused them of stealing and bribery.
“Oh, no, no, no, not gathering delegates, stealing, lying, and bribing people to become delegates. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear.”
Well, this caught the CNN duo by surprise, and they did a bang-up job of pressing Goertz to reveal specifics. They asked Goertz if she had seen this in action, to which the former reality TV star replied:
“Oh just, you know, bribing people to become a delegate for him and what and what he’ll promise them I do not know because I actually didn’t have a recording device to hear the bribes.”
That is when the cracks started to appear in her story. Berman and Bolduan tag-teamed Goertz at this point, pointing out that while she has claimed to see corruption and bribery, she wasn’t offering any real proof or specifics regarding the types of bribes offered. Goertz started to freak out a bit, claiming that she needed to speak to Donald Trump himself before describing what she had seen, eventually backtracking from her initial position that she had personally witnessed bribery taking place.
CNN contributor and Republican strategist Tara Setmayer straight up called the Trump team “liars” in a tweet sent shortly after the segment:
Unbelievable.Trump surrogate Tana Goertz on @CNN just accused @tedcruz camp of bribing delegates but can’t back it up when questioned. Liars
— Tara Setmayer (@TaraSetmayer) April 19, 2016
Later on in the day, Cruz adviser Ken Cuccinelli called bullshit on the accusation levied on the Cruz camp.
Below is video of the segment, courtesy of Talking Points Memo:
