Television Station Says Heitkamp Allies Misrepresented Cramer’s Comments on Their Broadcast

The Senate Majority PAC, a group affiliated with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, has been running advertising recently accusing Congressman Kevin Cramer of promoting cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

This is the ad I wrote about recently which was coordinated with talking points disseminated by the Heitkamp campaign.

The claim about Cramer’s position on Social Security and Medicare is sourced to a television interview he did on Fargo-based Valley News Live. But today the folks at Valley News Live say the ad is inaccurate:

One of the claims in the ad made us take notice because it deals with an appearance Cramer made on “Point of View” with Chris Berg on December 19th of 2017. The ad makes the claim that Kevin Cramer said on our broadcast that congress will need to cut social security and Medicare to pay for the Republican tax plan. Cramer didn’t make that claim during our broadcast.

Click through to watch the station’s broadcast report on the inaccuracy.

Online they provide a clip of the interview Cramer did on their station which the Senate Majority PAC refers to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=cfifDwD2pHs

“Valley News Live would have to rate the claim by Senate Majority PAC as inaccurate,” the station reports.

I should point out that the ad sources the claim about Social Security and Medicare both to Valley News Live and WDAY. I broadcast a daily radio show for WDAY, and it seems per the Heitkamp campaign talking points which are the basis for this ad (see below) their source was an appearance Cramer made on my radio show back in December.

Except, during that appearance Cramer didn’t say we should cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for the Trump tax cuts.

Here’s the full audio of the exchange the Heitkamp campaign’s talking points reference. Cramer told a caller we need to keep Medicare and Social Security “for the long haul.”

Again, it’s important to note that this ad was based on talking points disseminated by the Heitkamp campaign through a process that allows political campaigns to get around FEC prohibitions on coordinating with third party groups.

You can see the PDF of the talking points the Heitkamp campaign disseminated. The references to these talking points were scrubbed from the campaign’s website once the PAC’s ad began running, but I preserved screenshots.

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