Quoting the last para from above:
Romero also told the network that Sen. Britt got multiple elements of her story wrong. She was trafficked by a pimp who worked to force vulnerable girls into prostitution, Romero said, not Mexican drug cartels. She was also never trafficked inside the U.S.; while Britt did not explicitly say Romero had been trafficked in the U.S., some viewers may have got that impression from the senator’s phrase: “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a Third World country; this is the United States of America.”
This is where the otherwise well-written article chickens out. I listened to Britt self-righteously explaining that she was "careful" never to say that this crime took place in the USA, or that it was a result of Biden's policies.
Just. No. When you juxtapose a vignette of any kind with any description of policy, you are tying the two together. It's not a question of "some viewers may have got that impression." The intent of the words was to give viewers that impression. This is what deceptive writing/speaking is all about. The fact that you claim you've covered your ass by leaving out certain linking language is just more deceit. I don't expect "most viewers" to get this, but news editors should. What the above should say is something like:
While Britt's wording avoided the overt lie that Romero was trafficked in the US, this is a rhetorical dodge, and it is clear that she intended her viewers to draw that conclusion.
I hate it when news people, who are language and communications experts just as surely as the lawyers are, play dumb when a politician or anyone else does this. "Some viewers" just sets up readers to think that it was only a foolish few who got the wrong idea.
I've had more than one discussion about whether or not those reprehensible MGA Justices on the SC "lied" about overturning Roe. Of course they lied! What is a lie? I suggest that a lie is intention rather than syntax. Their intention was to deceive while preserving rhetorical loopholes through which they could later squirm.
One of the factoids tucked in the corner of my poor brain in which I preserve the bon mots of my despicable Congresswoman, who has never, ever, acknowledged that Biden was and is our duly and fairly elected president. What she said was, "I congratulate Biden on his inauguration." Cute, isn't is. Preserving that "I never SAID he won!" moment.