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CNN Political Commentator Calls Out Network’s Fact-Checker On Air

CNN political commentator David Urban

CNN political commentator David Urban called out the network’s fact-checker Daniel Dale live on-air on Tuesday regarding the lack of corrections made about alleged false claims by President Joe Biden and officials during the Democratic National Convention (DNC).

One of the claims made by officials of the DNC was that the convention ran behind schedule due to the prolonged applause from the audience, according to NewsNation. Urban called out Dale for not fact-checking those claims, arguing it ran longer than scheduled due to “poor planning.”

“Daniel Dale wasn’t around last night, so I think in terms of fact-checking, just a couple quick fact-checks … ‘The convention didn’t run long because of applause.’ This is factually not correct. It didn’t run long because of applause, it ran long due to poor planning,” Urban said.

CNN political commentator called out network’s fact-checker Daniel Dale live on-air pic.twitter.com/oe2Or7nwkD

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Biden entered the stage at 11:25 p.m. Eastern time and finished at 12:18 a.m., running over 30 minutes behind the DNC’s initial schedule. The convention stacked a number of Democratic officials to speak before him, including former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and First Lady Jill Biden.

Urban also further pushed back against accusations that former President Donald Trump backs the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which the former president has disputed having any association with.

“Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you,” Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita wrote in a statement.

He further fact-checked some Democrats’ claims that Trump plans to sign a national ban on abortion and Biden’s false claim that Trump said there were “very fine people” on “many sides” during the Charlottesville riot in 2017. Snopes corrected its own record in June, pointing out that Trump said white nationalists and Neo-Nazis should be “condemned totally.”

“Those kinds of things are sort of marred from a factual perspective,” Urban said. “I think those should be fact-checked along the way because they just weren’t true.”

Dale only fact-checked Biden on economic data rather than mentioning his other false claims, including the Charlottesville attacks, in a Monday night segment. He wrote an article on Tuesday correcting the record on some of Biden’s claims regarding the number of people with health insurance, a national abortion ban and the taxing of billionaires.