WATCH: Jake Tapper Schools Sean Spicer on Who’s Using the Word ‘Ban’

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By Daniel J. Solomon February 1, 2017

Jake Tapper, CNN’s chief political correspondent, has been in rare form lately, taking on President Donald Trump’s White House for its embrace of “alternative facts” and attacks on the media. Now he’s fact-checking Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s claim that the media invented the term “ban” to describe the president’s executive orders on immigration and travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

.@jaketapper with a remarkable 2-minute fact-check on @PressSec pic.twitter.com/GGjQ21GMUb

— Nolan D. McCaskill (@NolanDMcCaskill) January 31, 2017

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Tapper pointed out that Trump himself had referred to the actions as a ban in a Twitter post. Spicer too, he observed, has described the administration’s move as a ban in two instances — including in an appearance the night before he berated the media for calling it a “ban.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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