By now you have probably seen a plethora of stories in the Mainstream Media that Donald Trump wants special ID badges for Muslims. One little problem here. Trump never actually said this. One "tell" that this story is false is that there is no video of Trump saying this. The best the MSM can come up with is one with Trump answering questions about border security. The word "badges" never crossed his lips. The other tell is the very selective use of quotes in which only a portion of a sentence in which Trump supposedly called for badges for Muslims is in quotation marks. Snopes Fact Check does an excellent job of destroying this fake story which we shall review but first let us take a look at an example very selective and highly misleading quotes by ABC News:
Donald Trump Would 'Certainly Implement' a Registry of Muslims
Notice what is NOT in the quotes? The word "Muslims." Why because Trump never said it. All ABC News and the rest of the MSM did was wildly infer that was what he said even though he NEVER said it. Yeah, take "certainly implement" which Trump said and add your own "Registry of Muslims" and suddenly you can FALSELY charge Trump with having Nazi ideas. Here is more absurd inferrence stretching by ABC News:
Donald Trump wants to track Muslims in the United States in a database -- an idea that has drawn comparisons to Nazi Germany.
"I would certainly implement that, absolutely," Trump told NBC News at a campaign stop in Iowa on Thursday.
What is "that?" ABC would have you believe it is tracking of Muslims in a database even though Trump didn't say THAT.
Snopes Fact Check rated as False the charge that Trump called for Muslims to wear identifying badges. Here are some of the details of their analysis:
On 19 November 2015 web site The Hill published an article titled "Trump won't rule out database, special ID for Muslims in US," which reported on an interview given by Donald Trump after a series of terror attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015:
“Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy,” he added. “We’re going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
Trump would not rule out warrantless searches in his plans for increased surveillance of the nation’s Muslims, Yahoo reported Thursday.
He also remained open toward registering U.S. Muslims in a database or giving them special identification identifying their faith, the news outlet added.
“We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump continued. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Snopes Fact Check correctly describes Trump's responses which were in no way as reported by the MSM:
In the context of that interview, it's important to note that Trump's responses were non-committal. Furthermore, they were clearly in response to leading questions for which the actual phrasing wasn't even provided:
Here is more of the really poor agenda driven "journalism" from Yahoo News:
But Trump ... has concerns about the larger Muslim community here in the U.S., he said.
Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures.
“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule ... certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
Finally the damning conclusion from Snopes Fact Check:
Precisely how such a question was presented to Trump was not elaborated upon in the printed text of the interview, nor was what his exact response (not "rul[ing] it out") entailed. Moreover, the portions involving quotes were so exceptionally vague ("do things that we never did before," "certain things will be done") and full of obfuscation, it was impossible to discern even vaguely what Trump referenced. (The mandate of badges for Muslims was quite a leap by any measure.)
While it appeared Trump fielded a question about enhanced surveillance for Muslims and mosques, in no reasonable interpretation of the material provided did he himself suggest that followers of Islam should wear Holocaust-like badges as in Nazi Germany. That assertion appeared to be one fronted by the interviewer, and not fairly attributable to Donald Trump. It's true that Trump espoused a position many would deem objectionable or offensive in the little he did say, but the controversy hinged largely on words he didn't appear to have said.
This probably won't be the last time the MSM engages in extreme deception to smear Trump so don't be surprised by yet more sliming by imaginary inference in the future. Today Rush Limbaugh talked at length about this specific subject and has promised to post his analysis on his website. When that information is available, this blog will update with the link.
UPDATE: He is the link to the transcript of Rush Limbaugh's discussion of this topic today. It is lengthy but if you missed his broadcast, it is a must read as an important analysis of MSM deception.
