GOP senator's office gets snippy with CNN fact checker after he calls out lie about Biden not thanking the troops

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) earlier this week falsely claimed to CNN's Jake Tapper that President Joe Biden had never thanked the troops who had fought for the United States in the war against terrorism.

While Tapper called out Ernst for making a false claim in real time, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale did some more digging and found out that Ernst's claim "is not even close to true."

Among other things, Dale flagged a speech from this past April in which Biden said he was "immensely grateful for the bravery and backbone that [American soldiers] have shown through nearly two decades of combat deployments."

During a Memorial Day speech, meanwhile Biden directly addressed veterans who fought in the war against terrorism and said, "Over the past 20 years, our volunteer force and our military families have made incredible sacrifices for this country."

Dale emailed Ernst's office to see if they would retract the senator's claim that Biden never thanked or expressed appreciation for American troops.

However, a spokesperon for Ernst told Dale that all of Biden's statements were mere "platitudes" and were not genuine expressions of gratitude.

"Ernst and her office are entitled to argue that Biden's words about the troops have been insufficient or insincere; that's a subjective claim beyond the scope of a fact check," writes Dale. "But on CNN, Ernst asserted something else: that Biden had never uttered such words at all. And that's plain false."