Video: CNN reporter swings and misses massively in apparent attempt to soften Claudine Gay's plagiarism scandal

CNN reporter Matt Egan took a big swing and missed massively in an apparent attempt to soften the plagiarism scandal that led to Claudine Gay's resignation Tuesday as Harvard's president.

What are the details?

In a video clip posted to X on Tuesday, Egan appears to go to great lengths to lessen the severity of the accusations against Gay — but in the end, his word choices just seem to come across as spin.

"We should note that Claudine Gay has not been accused of stealing anyone's ideas in any of her writings," Egan said. "She's been accused of sort of more like copying other people's writings without attribution. So it's been more sloppy attribution than stealing anyone's ideas."

How are folks reacting?

As you might imagine, a whole lot of people weren't impressed by Egan's at-bat and know his attempt to recast what Gay is accused of still fits the definition of plagiarism:

• "'Copying other people's writings without attribution' — if only we had a word for this," one commenter grimly joked.
• "Mostly peaceful plagiarism," another user offered, upping the humor ante.
• "Example 9,776,888 why the media cannot be trusted," another commenter observed.
• "A robber can't steal money from you; [a robber] can only take money from you without acknowledging who held the money first," another user said.
• "We're not state-sponsored media, we're sort of copying what the Dems tell us to say, without attribution," another commenter quipped.
• "I was just appropriating the entire makeup shelf at Walgreens without appropriate compensation — stop calling it 'stealing,'" another user jested.

Anything else?

Amid her resignation, Gay — Harvard's first black president — said she was "subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus."

Continuing with that theme, critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi suggested that Gay's downfall was due to racism: "Racist mobs won't stop until they topple all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structures of racism. What these racist mobs are doing should be obvious to any reporter who cares about truth or justice as opposed to conflicts and clicks."

Following Gay's resignation, professor and sociopolitical commentator Marc Lamont Hill said Harvard's next president "MUST be a Black woman."

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