by Christopher Paslay
The purposeful misrepresentation of Trump by the mainstream media is both shameful and dangerous.
In July of 2016, while Hillary Clinton was doing damage control at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia after the world found out she rigged her own primary, Trump said sarcastically during a press conference, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
It was obviously a joke, and Trump said so. But the American media, out to destroy Trump’s candidacy, pretended it wasn’t. The press went bananas, calling Trump a traitor and a spy and demanding that he be tried for treason. It was quite disturbing, the fact that seasoned journalists would suddenly fail to understand sarcasm. But fail to understand it they did.
A similar thing happened in August of 2017. When violence started to escalate during a white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Va., Trump tweeted, “We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Let’s come together as one!” Later, after a 32-year-old female was hit and killed by a white nationalist’s car that ran into counterprotesters, Trump made the following statement: “We condemn in the strongest most possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides.”
Because Trump’s short impromptu response – made during televised remarks about a bill signing already underway – failed to specifically condemn white nationalism, this could only mean one thing: Trump was defending white nationalists, or was perhaps even a white nationalist himself. Again, the media went bonkers with such accusations, even after Trump later clarified his statement by explaining that yes, such hatred from neo-Nazis was wrong. Interestingly, such standards weren’t applied to President Obama when he failed to specifically condemn Islamic extremism in the Fort Hood terrorist attack that killed 13 people; no one in the mainstream media suggested Obama was a Muslim terrorist, or was defending Islamic extremism.
But this was the kind of media Donald Trump was facing when he decided to run for president in June of 2015. A media that was not only careless with their facts and reporting, but a media that was willfully duplicitous in their coverage – a collection of “advocacy” journalists with little integrity, who purposefully misrepresented information for political reasons.
The purposeful misrepresentation of Trump by the mainstream media is both shameful and dangerous. Manipulating information to provoke resentment is like playing with fire. Case in point: Travon Martin.
In February of 2012, a nearly six-foot tall, 17-year-old black kid named Trayvon Martin sucker-punched a five-foot-seven Hispanic man named George Zimmerman because Zimmerman was following him around his development in the rain. After knocking Zimmerman to the ground (whom Martin described as a “creepy-ass cracker”), Martin proceeded to ground-and-pound Zimmerman’s head off the cement mixed martial arts style (according to eye-witnesses at Zimmerman’s trial). But then something unexpected happened: Zimmerman managed to pull out his gun and shoot Martin in the chest.
The media reported the tragedy this way: Racist white man kills black middle school child for carrying a bag of Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea. CNN reported that Zimmerman called Martin a “coon,” but later corrected the story, explaining that Zimmerman simply had said it was “cold.” ABC News reported that there were no visible cuts or lacerations on Zimmerman’s head (based on grainy cellphone footage falsely listed as a “security camera” at the police station), but later retracted the story, as medical evidence showed there were indeed major cuts and bruises on his scalp. And NBC News, using a nonemergency 911 call that was selectively edited by news producers, played an audio to show that the “white-Hispanic” Zimmerman was indeed a racist.
President Obama, being biracial himself, was in the perfect position to be a neutral arbitrator, and could have attempted to unify the country. Instead he took sides, stating, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” and later saying, “I could have been Trayvon,” the latter statement being totally ridiculous; Obama was raised by his affluent white grandparents, and given the best education money could buy. Still, President Obama, along with his advisor on race relations, Al Sharpton (who was caught in 1987 faking a race crime with Tawana Brawley), used the tragedy to galvanize voters for the upcoming election and stoke racial tension, sparking riots and violent protests across many cities in America.
Then there was Michael Brown. In August of 2014, a six-foot-four, 290-pound Michael Brown stole a box of cigarillos and assaulted a store owner. When Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson tried to stop Brown (who was walking down the middle of the street), Brown shoved Officer Wilson back into his patrol car, punched him in the face, and tried to take his gun. The gun went off, hitting Brown in the hand, and Brown ran. When Officer Wilson got out of his car and ordered Brown to stop, the 290-pound man turned around, charged at Wilson, and was ultimately shot and killed.
The media reported the tragedy this way: Racist white cop kills unarmed black man execution style in the street. Soon came the phony phrase “hands up, don’t shoot,” which was based on a completely fabricated version of events. But the media made no attempt to verify any information, and simply ran with the bogus account of the tragedy, prompting Time to put an unrelated picture of a young black male kneeling in the street with his hands up on the cover of their magazine, with the caption, “The Tragedy of Ferguson.”
President Obama, along with his advisor on race relations, Al Sharpton (who never paid restitution for defaming Steven A. Pagones in the Tawana Brawley case until 2001), again used the tragedy to galvanize voters for the upcoming midterm election and stoke racial tension, sparking riots and violent protests in a number of cities across America.
Although the intensity of racial unrest under President Trump pales in comparison to the kind of rage fermented under Obama (remember also the killing of the five Dallas police officers during the Black Lives Matter Rally in 2016), today’s media consistently proclaims Trump’s America is more racist and hateful than ever. Yet besides the violence perpetrated by the hard-left group Antifa – and the annoying activist mobs that pop up after things don’t go the way of the Democrats – there has been no major riot under Trump; not a single city has been destroyed like Baltimore in 2015 or Ferguson in 2014.
Not that the media isn’t trying their damnedest to incite racial unrest and provoke resentment against Trump. The constant reference to Trump’s “family separation policy” on the border is one example (Trump signed an executive order to stop the law that requires minors to be detained separately from adults), and the recent manipulation of Trump’s “go back home” tweets is another.
Here were Trump’s initial tweets concerning The Squad:
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
Although only one member of The Squad wasn’t born in the United States (Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia), this still doesn’t excuse the willful misrepresentation of the tweets by the media. Notice that’s there’s two parts: Trump invites the congresswomen to go back to their home countries, and he also invites them to come back, as well. It’s the second part of the tweet that the media (and the Democrats) conveniently ignore. Trump is basically saying, Put your money where your mouth is. In other words, if you want to constantly criticize the way I do things, let’s see you do better. Go to the broken places where you come from (like Somalia), fix them, and then COME BACK TO AMERICA and tell us how it’s done. That’s what Trump tweeted.
Of course, that’s not how the media is spinning it. The press, in conjunction with The Squad and fellow Democrats, are claiming the tweet was a racist call by Trump for the women to get out of the country and “go back” to where they came from (notice the phrase “go back” is always isolated in quotes and taken out of the context of the rest of the tweet), because they’re not really American, and they’re not really welcome here.
But that’s not at all what Trump meant. And even when he clarified his statement in a press conference, the mainstream media still kept the original spin, proving they care more about maligning Trump than accurate reporting.
This is exactly what is meant by the term fake news. It’s irresponsible, shameful, and very dangerous.
Philly Teachers For Trump 
