MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle interrupted President Trump’s address to the United Nations to deliver a live fact check.

There was one rather glaring problem for a network trying to police the president’s accuracy: The fact check itself was not accurate.

Ruhle was later forced to issue a correction on air, turning the attempted media gotcha into an embarrassment for the network.

Fox News host Trace Gallagher seized on that failure and ripped MS NOW for interrupting Trump only to get its own criticism wrong.

Gallagher said the Fox News Common Sense department was not surprised that MS NOW cut away from Trump’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly.

What surprised the department, he explained, was that the network interrupted the address specifically to fact-check the president.

“And let’s face it, allowing MS to fact-check the president is like allowing the United Nations to fact-check Israel. In other words, when hatred runs deep, facts run awry,” Gallagher said.

He pointed to MS NOW disputing Trump’s claim that he was responsible for ending eight wars.

Gallagher countered that other fact-checkers had said Trump makes a compelling argument that he ended eight wars, putting the network’s supposedly definitive judgment on shakier ground.

Gallagher argued that the network’s analysis had less to do with facts than opinion.

In his telling, MS NOW and Trump simply had a difference of opinion, even as the network presented its interruption as a necessary exercise in fact checking.

The particularly embarrassing part, Gallagher said, was that MS NOW eventually had to check its own work.

The network had characterized Trump’s speech as “riddled with false claims,” only to return to the air and correct one of its own false claims.

“But the amazing thing about the MS fact-check is the fact that MS had to fact-check itself,” Gallagher said.

His blunt reaction to the correction was equally concise: “Oops.”

Gallagher joked that if MS NOW wanted to interrupt Trump’s speech merely to criticize it, the network could have followed CNN’s example and ignored the address altogether.

The criticism centered on the decision to break into the speech rather than wait until Trump finished.

Gallagher later discussed the network’s mistake with LA Mom Magazine’s Shirin Yadegar and Jeff Vaughn.

He said the episode looked especially bad because MS NOW wanted to criticize Trump but managed to botch the criticism and then had to correct itself.

“I mean, the whole thing is you want to criticize the president, and then you screw up the criticism. It’s a bad look when you get the fact, and you have to fact-check yourself!” Gallagher said.

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Yadegar argued that any network committed to objective journalism should apply live fact-checking consistently rather than reserve such treatment for Trump.

She questioned why the president alone received that level of live scrutiny and called the practice activism instead of journalism.

“These gotcha moments that they’re trying to do—if you’re gonna do it, at least make sure you get your facts right,” Yadegar said.

Her criticism went beyond the correction and challenged the network’s selective approach to interrupting political speeches.

Gallagher said networks should air the speech and analyze it after the address concludes.

Cutting away in the middle simply because commentators disagree with the president, he argued, would make it nearly impossible to get through a United Nations speech or other major address.

Vaughn said he did not object to fact-checking itself, but criticized the effort to interrupt Trump and secure the last word.

He described that impulse as an attempt by media figures to control the discussion before the president could finish speaking.

“The media’s full of elitists, and they think that they know better than President Trump or whoever happens to be on the right, right?” Vaughn said.

He concluded that MS NOW’s interruption and failed correction looked “silly and childish.”

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