So it wasn’t true. It was…a lie.
As NB's own Tim Graham has noted, The Washington Post has fessed up that a story it ran on a conversation between then-President Trump and a Georgia election official was…ah….incorrect.
Actually The Post story was more than incorrect. It was flat out false, replete with a made-up out of whole cloth, entirely fictitious “quote” from Trump. Here’s the correction in full: Correction:
“Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator. The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. [Anonymous sources are not always reliable!]
Trump did not tell the investigator to “find the fraud” or say she would be “a national hero” if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find “dishonesty” there. He also told her that she had “the most important job in the country right now.” A story about the recording can be found here. The headline and text of this story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump.”
Over at The Federalist, Mark Hemingway had this to say:
“In sum: The Washington Post anonymously printed fabricated quotes they knew were from a second-hand source in the office of a political enemy, couldn’t confirm the quotes with additional sourcing, still attributed them to the sitting president of the United States, used those quotes as a basis to speculate the president committed a crime, and the Democratic party would later repeatedly cite the bogus article when attempting to impeach Trump for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’
But wait! It gets much worse. Several other major media outlets — including NBC, ABC, USA Today, PBS, and CNN — ‘confirmed’ the fabricated quotes from the Post’s anonymous source by, get this, citing their own anonymous sources.”
All right. Stop here and follow on to the horrific massacre at the massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia. The assault made by one Robert Aaron Long. The attack killed nine. Several of the victims, although not all, were Asians. In a blink Fox was reporting this:
Liberals blame Trump, Republicans and racism for Atlanta shootings, before police determine motive
Authorities suspect ‘sexual addiction’ could have been actual motive
There was also this further defining Fox headline and report:
Atlanta shooting suspect tells police attacks not racially motivated, was purportedly driven by sex addiction
Robert Aaron Long, 21, may have 'sex addiction,' authorities said
The story said in part:
"Atlanta massage parlor shooting suspect Robert Aaron Long took ‘responsibility’ for the string of Tuesday night attacks that left eight people dead and another person injured, authorities said Wednesday.
Police officials said the investigation is ongoing, but the events were not believed to have been racially motivated. Instead, they believe Long opened fire because he saw the locations as ‘an outlet for him’ to succumb to purported sex-addiction temptations, Cherokee County Sheriff's Office Capt. Jay Baker said during a news conference.
‘He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as .... a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate,’ Baker said.”
Then there was this from Fox again, as the investigation deepened: "Atlanta shooting suspect attended rehab for sex addiction, felt 'remorse and shame,' former roommates say."
The story began:
“The suspect charged with eight murders after attacks on several Atlanta-area massage parlors had attended rehab for sex addiction and felt extreme guilt about his sexual urges, two former roommates said.”
On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, the hosts and panelists blamed Donald Trump for the Atlanta shooting, regardless of evidence. Guest Kurt Bardella slimed, “Why are we seeing 150% hate crimes against the AAIP community all coincides with the timing of the rhetoric of the Republican Party using terms like China Virus and Kung Flu.”
Co-host host Willie Geist added, "You know, it's another case where President Trump, former-President Trump, never understood the power of his words. It was a throw- away line. He thought maybe it was funny or stirred up his base, but a lot of people who tune into everything he says take it more literally."
The Washington Post debacle and the Atlanta massacre story are wo very different media stories. Or are they?
I would suggest they both exemplify exactly the corruption of the “mainstream” liberal media. The Washington Post story was really about the liberal narrative that Donald Trump is a bad guy, so bad that The Post can even make up utterly bogus quotes to try and make their point. And the reaction of all those liberal media types to the Atlanta story?
The Left finds its political home with the Democrats or as I call them the Party of Race. The party has a very, very long history of using race to energize its political base. From its creation by slave owners to staunch support for slavery, segregation, and now identity politics - everything and everyone is to be judged along the lines of skin color. The Atlanta story was an easy, quite reflexive one for liberals in the media. White guy shoots up massage parlor where Asians were employed? It was a racist hate crime, case closed.
That the Atlanta attack could be something very different -- in this case an attack by a troubled, sex-addicted loner with -- is irrelevant. Who cares about facts when you can play the race card again? (Never discussed is the societal question of just why massage parlors are allowed in Atlanta in the first place, “parlors” that can and apparently have caused a disastrous relationship with the sex-addicted Long.)
What is on vivid display with The Post correction story and the Atlanta massacre story is that facts no longer matter in the liberal media. The liberal media is all about pushing the liberal narrative of the moment to further its agenda. No matter the story, much less the facts, the objective all is the dominance of the liberal narrative. Thus, for the Post, it was a story fabricating Trump quotes to illustrate how bad Trump supposedly is, for the Atlanta story it was insisting the massacre was all about race when, in fact, it appears to be all about sex.
Let’s end with The Federalist’s Molly Hemingway’s description of The Post episode about the Trump phone call. Here's her tweet:
“Our media are so, so, so breathtakingly corrupt. They *always* mischaracterized this call -- in a corrupt and fraudulent way. But to actually make up quotes in service of that? We are so screwed. By our disgustingly corrupt and unaccountable media.”
Exactly right.
Corrupt, unaccountable -- and dangerous as well.
