CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin told viewers Wednesday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was full of it after he blamed the cable channel for his snafu with Republican rival Ben Carson during the night of the Iowa caucus.
Cruz, who won the GOP caucus in that state on Monday, has come under fire because his campaign wrongly suggested that Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, was quitting the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Cruz dug in his heels on Wednesday, saying that his team simply passed along a CNN story about the status of Carson's campaign.
This is how Cruz said it went down, as transcribed by Politico.
"Our political team passed on a CNN news story that CNN broke," Cruz said. "The news story said that Ben Carson was not continuing from Iowa on to New Hampshire, he was not continuing to South Carolina. Instead he was going home to Florida. That was a news story CNN posted. And our political team passed it on to our supporters."
Baldwin, however, said that Cruz's version of events just isn't accurate.
"I'm going to call out b.s. if I hear b.s.," Baldwin told Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who recently endorsed Cruz for president. "And that was b.s."
CNN actually reported that Carson would travel to Florida after the Iowa caucus instead of directly to New Hampshire or South Carolina. Those are the next two states holding primaries, and both are logical destinations for candidates serious about galvanizing voters. CNN didn't report that Carson was withdrawing from the race.
"When Senator Cruz, with all due respect, tries to throw my network and CNN under the bus, let me stand up for my colleagues and journalists here in terms of this CNN report that he keeps quoting," Baldwin said.
"We reported it accurately. And here are the facts. Dr. Carson's staff told us that he would return home to Florida to, quote-unquote, take a breath from the campaign before resuming his activities on the campaign trail," said Baldwin. "That accurate report was disseminated on television and CNN digital. And that was that."
Carson has said that Cruz should fire staffers in his campaign for circulating misinformation. Real estate mogul Donald Trump, who finished second to Cruz in Monday's caucus, has gone so far as to accuse Cruz of fraud.
Though Cruz apologized to Carson on Tuesday, a member of the Cruz campaign maintained that they never said Carson was quitting.
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