'Divorced from reality': CBS anchor slams Trump after wild day of inaccurate comments

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scott pelley trump

CBS

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley.

CBS News anchor Scott Pelley threw shade at President Donald Trump Monday night, following a day of head-scratching comments from the president and his team.

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"It has been a busy day for presidential statements divorced from reality," Pelley said on Monday's edition of "CBS Evening News."

Pelley pointed to multiple factually suspect claims from earlier in the day.

First on his list was Trump's stunning claim, made in a speech to military leaders in Florida, that media outlets have deliberately not reported incidents of terrorism.

"They have their reasons and you understand that," Trump said, although he failed to provide examples of attacks that went unreported.

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White House spokesman Sean Spicer also declined to provide specifics, telling reporters "there's a lot of instances that have occurred where I don't think that they've gotten the coverage it deserved."

By Monday night, the White House had released a list of 78 incidents it claimed "did not receive adequate attention from Western media sources." The list featured some high-profile, widely-covered incidents, including the recent attacks in Paris, Orlando, and San Bernardino.

Earlier in the day, Trump vented about his approval rating, which according to multiple polls is the lowest ever for a new president.

"Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election," Trump said on Twitter, in another unsubstantiated claim. "Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting."

Pelley connected the comments to equally unfounded claims Trump made last week, including his insistence that as many as 5 million of the votes from November's election were cast illegally. Trump has maintained the supposed illegal votes are responsible for his popular-vote loss to Hillary Clinton, although there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the US.

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"The president's fictitious claims, whether imaginary or fabricated, are now worrying even his backers," Pelley said. "There's not one state election official, Democrat or Republican, who supports that claim."