Thursday on CNN’s wrap-up coverage of President Donald Trump’s July 4 “Salute to America” speech, American Urban Radio Networks’ April Ryan, also a CNN contributor, accused Trump of “trying to recreate” history with the address.
Ryan pointed to several points of the speech in which Trump highlighted American achievements and contrasted those with times she felt he betrayed those moments.
“If you didn’t know better, and the list goes on – I could go on,” she said. “But if you didn’t know better, this president is trying to recreate his history before he celebrated the military. He needed this moment. If you didn’t know better, if you didn’t fact check or go back to what he said or had done about certain issues, it would be a soaring speech. But for someone who covers him day in and day out, and understands some of the issues, and I’m still checking on when he said the ISIS caliphate is 100% gone – we have to check that one as well. There are a lot of things in this speech. It may have been ‘Schoolhouse Rock,’ Trump version, but nonetheless, we still have to fact check. It was his attempt at a soaring moment for history.”
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