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‘SNL’ Trashes Buzzfeed for ‘Fake News’: Stick to Your ‘Memes and Lists’

By Pluralist / January 20, 2019

“The details were so sketchy that even Mueller’s team had to be like, ‘OK, fake news.’”

“Saturday Night Live” joined the public shaming of Buzzfeed News for its report last week that looked at first like a Trump-Russia bombshell ― but now looks more like a dud.

On Thursday, the cat-meme powerhouse reported that Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, which would be a felony and potential grounds for impeachment.

However, on Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued a rare public statement, saying the report was “not accurate,” at least as far as he knew. A source “familiar with Mr. Cohen’s testimony” also said that Cohen never told Mueller that Trump pressured him to lie, according to The New York Times.

The White House followed up on Saturday with a denial of its own.

As “Weekend Update” co-anchor Colin Jost put it, “The details were so sketchy that even Mueller’s team had to be like, ‘OK, fake news.'”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xshG4Mra5tk

“How disappointing was that?” Jost said. “You know how many suburban moms had to retract their group texts to the family saying, ‘We got him!’ The crazy part is that the White House is now celebrating that Mueller disputed this one part of the investigation while there are like 100 other crimes on the table. If you got tested for every STD and your doctor said, ‘The good news is you don’t have chlamydia,’ you wouldn’t say, ‘That’s all I need to hear, no condoms for this guy!'”

“Look, BuzzFeed, we all think it’s great that you want to help,” co-anchor Michael Che added. “But this is not what we need from you. Y’all are BuzzFeed, you do memes and lists.”

Che compared the situation to everyone’s aunt who has roaches and every Thanksgiving asks what she should bring and you say ice.

“You bring the ice because we don’t want to be picking ‘raisins’ out of the turkey. That’s you, BuzzFeed, you bring the ice. As Dr. King once said, ‘Don’t go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes you are used to,'” Che said.

“There’s no shame in that, we all play a role. Look, sometimes kids come up to me and they’ll say, ‘Michael Che, I get all my news from you.’ And I say, ‘Don’t do that. I bring the ice.'”

Beyond the jabs by Mueller and SNL, Buzzfeed ― which also controversially published the Trump-Russia dossier last year ― has been roughed up by commentators across the political spectrum. Even CNN’s chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, a vehement Trump critic, said the reporting “reinforces every bad stereotype about the news media.”

It didn’t help that the two investigative reporters behind the story offered mixed messages about their sourcing in TV appearances Friday. Jason Leopold, who has made inaccurate claims about sources before, told MSNBC Friday, “We have seen documents.”

Meanwhile, Anthony Cormier answered the same question from CNN by saying, “No, I’ve not seen it personally.” He said he was relying on the accounts of the two federal law enforcement officials cited in the report.

Still, Buzzfeed has stood by its reporting. Cormier told CNN Sunday, “I have further confirmation that this is right. We are being told to stand our ground. Our reporting is going to be borne out to be accurate, and we’re 100 percent behind it.”

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Pluralist

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