That didn’t take long.
CNN has already released a statement responding to Donald Trump’s allegation that CNN is “fake news” during his first press conference as president-elect on Wednesday.
“CNN’s decision to publish carefully sourced reporting about the operations of our government is vastly different than BuzzFeed’s decision to publish unsubstantiated memos,” the network said. “The Trump team knows this. They are using BuzzFeed’s decision to deflect from CNN’s reporting, which has been matched by the other major news organizations.”
“We are fully confident in our reporting,” the statement continued. “It represents the core of what the First Amendment protects, informing the people of the inner workings of their government; in this case, briefing materials prepared for President Obama and President-elect Trump last week. We made it clear that we were not publishing any of the details of the 35-page document because we have not corroborated the report’s allegations. Given that members of the Trump transition team have so vocally criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify, specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate.”
Trump scolded the network during his press conference on Wednesday and refused to take a question from CNN’s Jim Acosta.
“Your organization is terrible, don’t be rude,” the president-elect said. “No, I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news.”