CNN Anchor Brooke Baldwin Accuses Ted Cruz Of Telling ‘B.S.’ Lies [Video]

CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin called out Ted Cruz on Wednesday for making a “b.s.” statement blaming CNN for a mistake he made regarding the campaign of fellow Republican candidate Ben Carson.

According to the Huffington Post, Ted Cruz’s campaign incorrectly reported that Ben Carson was quitting the presidential race following his loss to Cruz in Monday’s Iowa caucus. When confronted about the falsity, Ted Cruz suggested that he and his team had simply repeated what CNN reported about Ben Carson’s campaign.

“Our political team passed on a CNN news story that CNN broke,” Ted Cruz had said. “The news story said that Ben Carson was not continuing from Iowa on to New Hampshire, he was not continuing to South Carolina. Instead he was going home to Florida. That was a news story CNN posted. And our political team passed it on to our supporters.”

But CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin flat out denied that accusation this week, calling it “b.s.” Baldwin was speaking to Congressman Mark Meadows on the air and told him Ted Cruz made a blatant “b.s.” claim.

Admitting that she gets “fired up” when someone attacks the media or her own news station, Brooke Baldwin made sure that the viewers understood that CNN did not falsely report on Ben Carson’s campaign.

“When Senator Cruz, with all due respect, tries to throw my network and CNN under the bus, let me stand up for my colleagues and journalists here in terms of this CNN report that he keeps quoting,” Brooke Baldwin said. “We reported it accurately. And here are the facts. Dr. Carson’s staff told us that he would return home to Florida to, quote-unquote, take a breath from the campaign before resuming his activities on the campaign trail. That accurate report was disseminated on television and CNN digital. And that was that.”

Mark Meadows, who recently endorsed Ted Cruz for president, seemed tentative to take a side on the issue. He acknowledged that Brooke Baldwin has a tough job as a journalist and that her reputation is solid but didn’t explicitly affirm whether Cruz had made a false statement.

Brooke Baldwin didn’t have a lot of patience for Meadow’s tap dance and interrupted him.

“Forgive me, but I’m going to call out b.s. if I hear b.s., and that was b.s.”

At that point, Congressman Meadows pointed out that she wasn’t hearing “b.s.” from him but told Brooke Baldwin that she could call it out if she wanted to.

.@BrookeBCNN CNN reported that Carson wasn’t campaigning right after Iowa and that’s exactly what we told our team.

— Brian Phillips (@RealBPhil) February 3, 2016

You can watch Brooke Baldwin accuse Ted Cruz of spouting “b.s.” in the video at the top of the page.

Other political candidates seemed to agree with Brooke Baldwin.

Ben Carson didn’t appreciate the so-called “b.s.” spread by Ted Cruz and his campaign. The retired neurosurgeon even suggested that Ted Cruz should fire the staffers responsible for announcing he was dropping out of the race. According to the New Yorker, Carson accused Ted Cruz of spreading “abject lies.”

Republican front runner Donald Trump also used the mistake as an opportunity to harshly criticize Ted Cruz, and accused him of winning the Iowa caucus illegitimately.

“The State of Iowa should disqualify Ted Cruz from the most recent election on the basis that he cheated—a total fraud!”

The Cruz campaign is sticking to the story that Brooke Baldwin rejected, but Cruz did apologize to Ben Carson on Tuesday.

What do you think? Do you agree with Brooke Baldwin? Did Ted Cruz’s campaign make a “b.s.” statement, or was it an honest mistake?

[Image composite includes photos by Jamie McCarthy, Andrew Burton/Getty Images]