Selwyn Duke

“It’s so unhinged we should probably not bother dignifying it with fact-checking.” So said CNN’s Jake Tapper, reporting on comments radio giant Michael Savage made about the Ebola crisis. But if Tapper had done some fact-checking, fewer people would now believe as fact that he checked his credibility at the newsroom door.

On a Tuesday CNN segment titled “Dangers of Ebola: Myths and misconceptions,” Tapper claimed that Savage was broadcasting “wild conspiracy theories,” accusing the host of alleging that Barack Obama was purposely trying to spread the disease among Americans.

“[C]onservative talk-radio host Michael Savage, who has one of the biggest radio audiences in the country, has even been suggesting that this is all some Obama plot to purposely infect the nation,” said Tapper. He then played audio of the host saying on the Savage Nation radio program, “There’s not a sane reason to take 4,000 troops and send them into a hot Ebola zone without expecting at least one of them to come back with Ebola, unless you want to infect the nation with Ebola.” This is when the newsman concluded with, “It’s hard to even know where to start with that one, the idea that the president wants to infect soldiers and then Americans? It’s so unhinged, we should probably not bother dignifying it with fact-checking.”

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