11-24-2015, 05:31 PM
This may or may not work an interesting read though.
IT’S HARD TO know who is stretching the truth more these days, Donald Trump or the reporters covering his increasingly bizarre campaign.
Last week, Trump supposedly called for a national database to register all Muslims in America, a reprehensible and unconstitutional idea. Except he didn’t.
Yahoo reporter Hunter Walker asked Trump if he favored registering Muslims in a database. Trump steamrolled over the question, gave a rambling answer about having “to look at a lot of things closely” and pivoted to the need to articulate radical Islamic terrorism as our enemy. The story quickly morphed from “Trump won’t rule out Muslim registry” to “Trump would register all Muslims.” Rival candidates in both parties denounced the comments. Trump both denied he said it, but confused the issue by conflating all Muslims with incoming refugees.
Trump’s blustery interview style pays so little attention to the questions being posed that it’s often hard to know what exactly he’s supporting or opposing. For a truth-telling tough guy, he lets reporters lead him down dark alleys full of hypotheticals and bad ideas. His own proposals are so thin on details that supporters or opponents can project whatever good or bad ideas they imagine.
On Saturday, Trump spun another confusing yarn, which the press exaggerated even further.
Recounting events from 9/11, Trump claimed that American Muslims cheered the collapse of the World Trade Center.
“I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, when thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down,” Trump told a rally in Birmingham, Ala. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler pounced, writing that while there were reports of Muslims overseas celebrating the attack on America, there was “nothing that we can find involving the Arab populations of New Jersey.”
Which is strange, since Kessler apparently didn’t bother checking his own paper, which reported on Sept. 18, 2001, that Jersey City police questioned “a number of people” who allegedly celebrated the attacks on rooftops from across the river.
Here, Trump not only took as fact a single item published without any supporting evidence, but massively exaggerated the number of people involved, and put himself as an eye witness. That should be shocking enough to warrant a story, but Kessler couldn’t be bothered to find the kernel of evidence behind the trumped up claim.
At that same Birmingham rally, CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond tweeted that a black protester “was shoved, tackled, punched & kicked”, though the video he posted fails to show any such violence. Mercutio Southall Jr., who the Washington Post reports has a history of being arrested at political protests, disrupted the rally, and was eventually taken out of the room by Trump supporters and security.
The cellphone footage I’ve seen shows that Southall is exaggerating his treatment, and that he seemed to be instigating physical contact. I’m open to the idea that someone else in the crowd started the shoving. But the story was too good, and media outlets repeated as fact that Trump supporters had attacked a protester. Maybe that’s what happened, but I haven’t seen anything to back Southall’s account. Protesters who try to shout down candidates at political rallies are counterproductive. They help the very candidates they oppose, engendering sympathy from a crowd that showed up to hear what the candidate had to say. Trump has helped himself in such situations before. Instead, he kept digging, saying Sunday that “maybe he should have been roughed up” for disrupting the rally.
Good grief. The press blamed Trump supporters for beating up a protester, which may not have even happened, and instead of denouncing such behavior, Trump endorsed it.
It’s not that Trump is trying to lie. He just doesn’t care enough to learn the truth. Instead of sharing half-baked stories on Facebook, Trump puts them in his speeches. He recently retweeted specious crime data that originated from a white supremacist group.
I doubt Trump knew where the numbers came from. He didn’t care enough to check.
There’s no credibility to anything Trump says. And it must be contagious. You can’t believe anything from the reporters covering Trump either.
.
Grant Bosse is the Editorial Page Editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader.
IT’S HARD TO know who is stretching the truth more these days, Donald Trump or the reporters covering his increasingly bizarre campaign.
Last week, Trump supposedly called for a national database to register all Muslims in America, a reprehensible and unconstitutional idea. Except he didn’t.
Yahoo reporter Hunter Walker asked Trump if he favored registering Muslims in a database. Trump steamrolled over the question, gave a rambling answer about having “to look at a lot of things closely” and pivoted to the need to articulate radical Islamic terrorism as our enemy. The story quickly morphed from “Trump won’t rule out Muslim registry” to “Trump would register all Muslims.” Rival candidates in both parties denounced the comments. Trump both denied he said it, but confused the issue by conflating all Muslims with incoming refugees.
Trump’s blustery interview style pays so little attention to the questions being posed that it’s often hard to know what exactly he’s supporting or opposing. For a truth-telling tough guy, he lets reporters lead him down dark alleys full of hypotheticals and bad ideas. His own proposals are so thin on details that supporters or opponents can project whatever good or bad ideas they imagine.
On Saturday, Trump spun another confusing yarn, which the press exaggerated even further.
Recounting events from 9/11, Trump claimed that American Muslims cheered the collapse of the World Trade Center.
“I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, when thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down,” Trump told a rally in Birmingham, Ala. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler pounced, writing that while there were reports of Muslims overseas celebrating the attack on America, there was “nothing that we can find involving the Arab populations of New Jersey.”
Which is strange, since Kessler apparently didn’t bother checking his own paper, which reported on Sept. 18, 2001, that Jersey City police questioned “a number of people” who allegedly celebrated the attacks on rooftops from across the river.
Here, Trump not only took as fact a single item published without any supporting evidence, but massively exaggerated the number of people involved, and put himself as an eye witness. That should be shocking enough to warrant a story, but Kessler couldn’t be bothered to find the kernel of evidence behind the trumped up claim.
At that same Birmingham rally, CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond tweeted that a black protester “was shoved, tackled, punched & kicked”, though the video he posted fails to show any such violence. Mercutio Southall Jr., who the Washington Post reports has a history of being arrested at political protests, disrupted the rally, and was eventually taken out of the room by Trump supporters and security.
The cellphone footage I’ve seen shows that Southall is exaggerating his treatment, and that he seemed to be instigating physical contact. I’m open to the idea that someone else in the crowd started the shoving. But the story was too good, and media outlets repeated as fact that Trump supporters had attacked a protester. Maybe that’s what happened, but I haven’t seen anything to back Southall’s account. Protesters who try to shout down candidates at political rallies are counterproductive. They help the very candidates they oppose, engendering sympathy from a crowd that showed up to hear what the candidate had to say. Trump has helped himself in such situations before. Instead, he kept digging, saying Sunday that “maybe he should have been roughed up” for disrupting the rally.
Good grief. The press blamed Trump supporters for beating up a protester, which may not have even happened, and instead of denouncing such behavior, Trump endorsed it.
It’s not that Trump is trying to lie. He just doesn’t care enough to learn the truth. Instead of sharing half-baked stories on Facebook, Trump puts them in his speeches. He recently retweeted specious crime data that originated from a white supremacist group.
I doubt Trump knew where the numbers came from. He didn’t care enough to check.
There’s no credibility to anything Trump says. And it must be contagious. You can’t believe anything from the reporters covering Trump either.
.
Grant Bosse is the Editorial Page Editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.