Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) isn’t necessarily a liar. He just lacks “a fundamental understanding of how television works” (see story here).
On Thursday, June 17, 2022, Steube “confidently blared on Twitter that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed CNN to broadcast its Jan. 6 committee hearings coverage from the floor of the Capitol.”
Except he didn’t refer to CNN as “CNN.” He called it “the Communist News Network.” Now that was lying, because nobody is that stupid, and calling everything and everybody “communist” is a standard Republican lie. (If these guys ever met a real communist, they wouldn’t know what to do.) But that’s nitpicking. What we’re interested in here is whether CNN had the effrontery to cover a hearing in the Capitol from inside the Capitol.
That’s what Steube accused them of when ignorantly tweeted, “Pelosi let The Communist News Network build a full TV set where Abraham Lincoln’s desk once stood,” referring to Statuary Hall in the Capitol. See tweet below.
Except they didn’t. They broadcast from a studio with a screenshot of Statuary Hall behind them. Have you ever participated in a Zoom call where you inserted a background? It works sort of like that. This is how you can talk to your friends from the summit of Mount Everest without bothering to climb up there.
Steube clearly believed he had CNN in the pincers of a “Gotcha!” moment, although it’s not clear why he thinks broadcasting news from inside the Capitol, where a lot of news happens, is out of line. But if it really bothered him, one wonders why he didn’t just walk over to Statuary Hall and see for himself what they were up to.
If he had, this is what he would’ve seen:
Was he lying? No, even though Republicans lie prolifically and profusely as a matter of course, this time I think he’s just stupid.