Sunday, January 22, 2017

How CNN Helped to Get Donald Trump Elected

This article from CNN  has to be one of the most puerile analyses I've read since I can't remember when. It reads like a 7th grade term paper. It's another attempt to "document" racism in Donald Trump and among his supporters. The method is to somehow make what's happening today the "equivalent" of the Lost Cause histories written by those eeeeeeville Southerners after the Civil War.

I know. I know.

It continues the lying about Trump that has stained reporting about him since he announced his candidacy. For example:
"There are abundant examples of Trump's explicit racist statements. He didn't campaign in dog whistles; he used a bullhorn. He once called Mexican immigrants 'rapists' and proposed a travel ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Even Republican House leader Paul Ryan once said Trump's comment that a federal judge couldn't do his job because of his Mexican heritage was 'the textbook definition of a racist comment.'"
Let's look at these accusations separately.

One --  He once called Mexican immigrants 'rapists.'

He wasn't talking about all "Mexican immigrants" as his comment in full makes perfectly clear.  You may remember this -- he was talking about Mexican immigrants who have "a lot of problems" and bring those problems to the USA. . Let's go back and look at his exact words:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but I have, that most people in the left-media, like these two CNN hacks, never refer to his last sentence, "And some, I assume, are good people." If he didn't mean it, why did he say it? And if he did mean it, why does the media almost uniformly ignore it?

Two -- And what about this?

"He once ... proposed a travel ban on all Muslims entering the United States."
To a lot of people, that made sense at the time  Some of the worst crimes of recent decades, the bloodiest and deadliest, were committed by Muslims who were recently arrived in the USA. Among the general population the interest in the ban was exacerbated by President Obama's insistence on bringing thousands of refugees from war-torn Syria.

The problem with that is it extremely difficult, nay, near impossible to determine who the Syrian refugees were -- whether they were even Syrian.. Records that documented identity had been destroyed in the civil war. And the Obama policy of accepting people who could not establish their identity was a golden opportunity for radical Islamic terrorists, regardless of their home country, to slip ito the United States. The only sure-fire way to keep them out was to keep all Muslims from entering the country.

As weeks passed, and Trump's people gave him new information about the Islamic threat, his stance on the Muslim ban modified. It would be temporary until America developed a way of vetting refugees to keep ISIS and other terrorists out of our country.

Three -- About that Mexican judge....

I am certain leftist no-borders people, along with the Never-Trumpers, saw the wisdom of this approach, but it was just too tempting to use the situation to mis-portray Trump's  motives and paint him as a racist..
"Trump's comment that a federal judge couldn't do his job because of his Mexican heritage was 'the textbook definition of a racist comment.'"
Another deliberately false re-statement. Trump didn't say Judge Curiel couldn't "do his job," but that he could not fairly preside over the case against Trump University because the American-born judge was of Mexican descent. Trump believed Curiel would be negatively influenced against Trump in the case because of the latter's political stance of stopping illegal immigration from Mexico.

The screeching and wailing that rose up from the left was epic ... but, again, it turned out Trump was right. It wasn't just being of "Mexican heritage" that would hinder Curiel's ability to preside fairly over the case. It was also his involvement in Latino legal associations, including one that assisted illegal immigrants from Mexico in preparing legal challenges to deportation.

I guess the left-media folks think that if they reshape reports about Trump, lop off parts of his quotes here, add things he didn't say there, they will convince readers that what they're reporting about Trump is true.

One of the biggest mistakes of the left, however, especially those in the media, is to underestimate the smarts and sense of fair play among conservative or neutral Americans. We can tell when they are warping his words, skewing this stances and flat-out lying about his motives.

That is a huge part of the reason why 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C. is Trump's address now, not Hillary's.