Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich Friday shot down a report claiming President Donald Trump directed his then-attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, calling the website's news equivalent to that printed in supermarket tabloids and labeling Cohen as a liar.
"This is an absurdity," Gingrich told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "The news media will take any possible negative about Trump and maximize it whether it's true or not, because it fits their bias and the degree to which they dislike."
Further, Gingrich said it is unbelievable that any president would tell someone to lie to Congress, and "only the modern liberal media would even give it any credit."
BuzzFeed News, while citing two unnamed law enforcement officials, reported Thursday that Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations over a real estate project in Moscow during the 2016 election and that Cohen regularly briefed Trump on the matter.
There always is the possibility that Cohen, during his 70 years of testimony, did say he was told to lie, Gingrich acknowledged, but if that happened it was because he was trying to please investigators and avoid jail time.
But while dismissing BuzzFeed, Gingrich complained about other media outlets, in particular The New York Times.
"The New York Times had a story last week about Trump was a Russian agent as the huge headline," said Gingrich. "You get to paragraph nine they say you know there's actually no factual evidence of any kind...if The New York Times can take trivia and trash and turn it into a page one story why can't BuzzFeed?"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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