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Trump Adviser Mercedes Schlapp Smears Husband of CNN’s Brianna Keilar, Who is an Active Duty Green Beret

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When CNN’s Brianna Keilar interviewed Trump campaign senior adviser Mercedes Schlapp it quickly turned into a verbal free-for-all as the two women argued over President Donald Trump’s recent flip-flop on mail-in voting. But the argument turned white-hot after Schlapp fired back with an op-ed that criticized Keilar and CNN — and, it turns out, Keilar’s husband. But apparently Schlapp wasn’t acquainted with the facts and Keilar is returning fire, Mediaite reports.

Trump had been stubbornly insisting for weeks that voting by mail created major risks for fraud (he failed to provide evidence for this, but then what else is new?), then suddenly switched things up by saying mail-in votes for Florida were just fine.

Various spokespeople for the president have been trying to portray his abrupt change in a new light, with less than spectacular results, and Keilar was not impressed with what Schlapp had to say. At one point the network anchor even told Schlapp she was “saying a bunch of crap.” And apparently an interview between Schlapp and CNN’s Sandra Smith later that day was also a testy affair. Schlapp, however, didn’t attack her in an op-ed.

Instead, Schlapp took to RealClearPolitics to write her op-ed, slamming CNN and Keilar for “[dismissing] any concerns about the integrity of America’s electoral process,” claiming this is “a danger to our system of democracy.” And she spent a good deal of time complaining about Nevada’s voting by mail law, asserting “it is a system [that] exposes the election to massive voter fraud.

But here’s the part where Schlapp criticized Keilar’s husband and thus angered the CNN host:

“I have dealt with, and socialized with, mainstream journalists in Washington, D.C. for my entire career. Sometimes we agree, often we don’t. But I respect the work the best of them do, and the critical role a free press plays in society. But this episode at CNN, and the host’s continued online harangue, was beyond the pale,” Schlapp wrote. “I was further disturbed to learn that Brianna Keilar’s husband is a ferocious opponent of the president, a former director of the National Security Council under President Obama, and a man who tweets, among other things, that Donald Trump makes him ‘throw up.'”

“A modicum of journalistic integrity would require this disclosure by CNN on the selection of a nonpartisan interviewer, or at least one who commits to a fair and respectful exchange.”

“In truth, the collapse of a fair and spirited journalistic exchange may be as dangerous to democracy as the promotion of unfettered electoral fraud.”

Welp, that commentary didn’t sit well with Keilar, who fired back shortly before 5 p.m. ET that the op-ed is “riddled with lies.” But the “most despicable” part is that Schlapp tried to “character assassinate my husband, an active-duty military officer, and mistaking him for someone else in the process.”

Keilar also said that Schlapp mistook another Twitter account for her husband’s and incorrectly blamed him for it. But that’s not all. She also zinged Schlapp for claiming that her husband is the former director of the National Security Council. Because he hasn’t left that job yet. He’s still serving that role and has even been promoted, Keilar responded on Twitter.

“Get your facts straight,” she warned. “And don’t mess with my family.”

Other notable journalists also noticed Schlapp’s mistake, including The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman and Keilar’s colleague Jake Tapper, who couldn’t help but wonder if Schlapp and RealClearPolitics would “retract and apologize for falsely smearing an active-duty Green Beret.”

It would be nice to see Schlapp apologize, but considering Trump’s treatment of the news media, I’m not holding my breath.

Megan Hamilton
meet the author

Megan has lived in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida and she currently lives in Central America. Living in these places has informed her writing on politics, science, and history. She is currently owned by 15 cats and 3 dogs and regularly owns Trump supporters when she has the opportunity. She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GaiaLibra and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/politicalsaurus

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