CNN and Kellyanne Conway face off in spectacularly fiery interview

Let the spin flow.
 By 
Sasha Lekach
 on 
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Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The tension was building so much, it had to happen. CNN and Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway finally went head-to-head to talk about facts, truth and fake news after a few days of feisty Twitter posts.

CNN's Jake Tapper was fired up during his conversation with Conway on Tuesday afternoon. Despite the cable network's reluctance to bring Conway onto their programs over “serious questions about her credibility,” she talked with Tapper for about 25 minutes and covered everything from Betsy DeVos' secretary of education confirmation to the lack of Trump tweets about the Quebec mosque shooting last month that left six people dead.

Of course Tapper was quick to ask if CNN was fake news. Despite what Trump repeatedly says, Conway said, "I don't think CNN is fake news."

Tapper also brought up Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin's relationship, to which Conway responded the two world leaders aren't "BFFs." She went on to explain that Trump "hardly knows Vladimir Putin."

Another jab from the news host went deep into the administration's tendency to spread misinformation, like incorrect statements about murder rates and media coverage of terrorist attacks. All false, Tapper exclaimed.

"I'm talking about the president of the United States saying things that are not true. Demonstrably not true," Tapper laid out during the conversation. Conway's response glossed over Trump's mis-statements and pointed to the "many things he says that are true that are making a difference in people's lives."

Conway's bogus Bowling Green Massacre also came up. "Let me just say we have a very high respect for the truth and I can only speak for me and I'm sorry that I misspoke," she told Tapper.

If you can keep up with all the spin and convoluted reasoning, here's the full interview. According to the reaction on social media, the showdown did not disappoint.

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Sasha Lekach

Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.

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