Jon Ossoff Lies So Brazenly About Kelly Loeffler Even CNN Debunks It

 
By Jeff Charles

This one might surprise you. Jon Ossoff, who is running for Senate in Georgia’s runoff elections, managed to tell a lie so absolutely false that CNN actually fact-checked it.

I’m going to write that again.

CNN actually fact-checked a lie told by a Democratic candidate running in one of the most critical races in this election season. Yes, I know we’re all experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance at the moment, but let’s take a look.

Ossoff spoke with Fox News reporter Peter Coocy on Wednesday evening about the upcoming election. During the exchange, Doocy asked if Ossoff had “any concern that the allegations of wrongdoing by Rev. Warnock could possibly be a drag on the Democratic ticket.”

Ossoff responded, stating deceptively that Sen. Kelly Loeffler campaigned with a member of the Ku Klux Klan. “[H]ere’s the bottom line, Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman,” Ossoff lied. “Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman,” he repeated, “and so she is stooping to these vicious personal attacks to distract from the fact that she’s been campaigning with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

He later tweeted the footage on his Twitter account, repeating the lie. The video has gone viral.

FOX News walked up rolling live, and I appreciated the free air time!

Also, Kelly Loeffler campaigned with a klansman. pic.twitter.com/ZlmO0xoFvr

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) December 31, 2020

Now, we’re all used to Democrats lying about Republicans when it comes to racism, but this particular falsehood was even too ludicrous for CNN to support. The activist media outlet published an article on Thursday obliterating Ossoff’s deceptive claims about Loeffler.

From CNN:

Facts First: This is false. A former member of the KKK took a photo with Loeffler while she was campaigning earlier this month. Loeffler’s campaign said the senator did not know who the man was and would have removed him from the event had she known. This is not, at all, the same as ‘campaigning with a klansman,’ as Ossoff claimed. Politicians often take pictures with people they don’t know.

The picture, which was taken at a December 11 campaign event, shows the senator posing with Chester Doles, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. He was imprisoned in the ’90s for assaulting a black man in Maryland.

Two days later, Loeffler’s campaign sharply condemned the former KKK member. “Kelly had no idea who that was, and if she had she would have kicked him out immediately because we condemn in the most vociferous terms everything that he stands for.”

At the time, CNN reported that there was “no evidence she recognized Doles or sought his support.”

Ossoff’s campaign, desperate to hold on to the candidate’s easily-debunked lie, sent CNN a Huffington Post article showing pictures of Loeffler with other right-wing figures. But even these weren’t enough to make CNN change its position. They wrote:

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