White House seizes on another CNN error as Trump intensifies attacks on network

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fired back at CNN on Friday hours after the network had corrected a report that related to the White House, mocking CNN for mixing up a White House aide with a former Obama aide.

“.@CNN this is definitely not @RajShah45 but it is #FakeNews,” Sanders posted a screenshot of CNN’s on-air coverage, which incorrectly portrayed a picture of Rockefeller Foundation President Raj Shah in place of the deputy White House press secretary who shares the same name.

The pictured Shah was administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development under former President Obama. The two are not related.

.@CNN this is definitely not @RajShah45 but it is #FakeNews pic.twitter.com/tS9QBndBw0

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 8, 2017

CNN’s Anderson Cooper addressed the error on-air after being called out by Sanders on Twitter.

“We regret the error,” Cooper told viewers, according to Mediaite.

{mosads}

Sanders’s tweet Friday added to intense criticism from President Trump. At a rally in Florida on Friday night, Trump slammed the network, saying that CNN should have been apologizing “for the last two years” for perceived bias in their news coverage.

On Saturday Trump tweeted the network made a “vicious and intentional mistake” when the network incorrectly reported that Donald Trump Jr. received advance notice about a WikiLeaks release of Democratic information.

“Fake News CNN made a vicious and purposeful mistake yesterday. They were caught red handed, just like lonely Brian Ross at ABC News (who should be immediately fired for his ‘mistake’),” Trump wrote Saturday. “Watch to see if @CNN fires those responsible, or was it just gross incompetence?”

The original CNN report posted Friday incorrectly claimed Trump’s eldest son received a “heads-up” email on Sept. 4, before WikiLeaks had made public a cache of hacked documents containing Democratic information. Other media outlets reported that Trump Jr. and other campaign officials had received the email pointing them to the WikiLeaks documents on Sept. 14, after the documents had already been made public. CNN later corrected its report.

A CNN spokesperson said there will not be disciplinary action against the reporter involved, because the reporter used multiple verified sources, following CNN’s editorial process. CNN said it does not believe there was malicious intent involved.