You gotta love the decided lack of self-awareness at The Washington Post and ABC News. The other day former President Donald J. Trump appeared solo (no Vice President Kamala Harris in sight) at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in Chicago.
The Post starts out its report on his appearance by saying Trump told “a phony story about the ex-governor of Virginia executing a baby after birth.”
Hello? No, he did not. The Post should be able to get this right, since northern Virginia is part of its circulation area, and turning Virginia blue is one of its ongoing political objectives.
Fact: Virginia’s Democrat then-Governor Ralph Northam said this during an interview in 2019 with D.C. radio station WTOP on the subject of an abortion-on-demand bill by state Delegate Kathy Tran.
If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen," Northam said. "The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
There was no mention at all that a delivered infant would be instantly kept alive after birth. Instead, Northam made it plain that while a newly born, very much alive baby, was out of its mother’s womb “a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother” as to whether the baby would be allowed to live.
That is the fact of what Northam said. Instead, the Post told its readers that Trump had told viewers “a phony story about the ex-governor of Virginia executing a baby after birth.”
No, he did not. At the time, the Post channeled Northam's post-gaffe spin: "Northam’s office later made clear the governor was talking about prognosis and medical treatment, not ending the life of a delivered baby."
Then there was this from the same appearance at the NABJ.
Trump, said the Post, made “an absurd claim that he ‘saved’ historically Black colleges and universities.”
Absurd claim?
Here is the Associated Press report on what Trump did on this subject in 2019 as reported at the time he did it. The headline:
Trump signs bill restoring funding for black colleges
The AP story reported it this way, bold print for emphasis supplied:
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a bipartisan bill that will permanently provide more than $250 million a year to the nation’s historically black colleges and universities, along with dozens of other institutions that serve large shares of minority students.
In signing the bill, Trump said historically black schools have ‘never had better champions in the White House.’
“When I took office, I promised to fight for HBCUs, and my administration continues to deliver,” Trump said. “A few months ago, funding for HBCUs was in jeopardy. But the White House and Congress came together and reached a historic agreement.”
Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund, thanked Trump and the thousands of advocates who lobbied Congress to support the bill.
“We enlisted more than 20,000 supporters to write and call their members of Congress,” Lomax said. “This activated army of advocates became the frontline of support for HBCUs, and they won the battle for our institutions.”
The bill restores $255 million in annual funding that lapsed Sept. 30 after Congress failed to renew it. Facing an end to the funding, some schools had started planning for deep cuts, with some telling staff their jobs or programs would be eliminated.”
There it is: a fact in black and white. The AP said at the time that in fact:
Facing an end to the funding, some schools had started planning for deep cuts, with some telling staff their jobs or programs would be eliminated.
Which is not, as the Post would have readers believe, “an absurd claim” from Trump that he had acted to save HBCUs. It is fact. He wasn't alone in saving funding, but he did.
Here’s one more, where the Post got an assist in its tall-tale telling from ABC’s Rachel Scott. The Post reported:
To a Black audience, he yet again bragged he did more for Black people than any president since Abraham Lincoln — earning the instant rejoinder (which he ignored) from ABC News’s Rachel Scott: “Better than President Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act?"
Hello? To say that Scott ignored basic history on LBJ would be to understate. Here was this a few years back on LBJ from no less than former Democrat President Barack Obama:
During his first 20 years in Congress, he opposed every civil rights bill that came up for a vote, once calling the push for federal legislation a farce and a shame.
LBJ biographer Robert Caro, author of a multi-volume LBJ biography, said this of Johnson on civil rights in his best-selling Means of Ascent:
He had been a congressman, beginning in 1937, for eleven years, and for eleven years he had voted against every civil rights bill – against not only legislation aimed at ending the poll tax and segregation in the armed services but even against legislation aimed at ending lynching: a one hundred percent record. …Running for the Senate in 1948, he had assailed President" Harry "Truman’s entire civil rights program (‘an effort to set up a police state’)…Until 1957, in the Senate, as in the House, his record – by that time a twenty-year record – against civil rights had been consistent.
Caro went on:
In 1947, after President Harry S Truman sent Congress proposals against lynching and segregation in interstate transportation, Johnson called the proposed civil rights program a "farce and a sham--an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty.
…In his 1948 speech in Austin kicking off his Senate campaign, Johnson declared he was against Truman’s attempt to end the poll tax because, Johnson said, "it is the province of the state to run its own elections."
In short? Reporter Scott skipped entirely LBJ’s decidedly anti-civil rights, anti-voting rights record to zap Trump. This would be the same Trump who has never once expressed opposition to voting rights of black Americans. Not to mention that long before he ran for president, Trump was honored for his support of civil rights by none other than the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
And oh yes. It would appear the name of this group that Trump volunteered to meet with the other day -- the National Association of Black Journalists -- is misnamed. It would seem, as demonstrated by ABC reporter Scott, that this group in reality is the National Association of Liberal Journalists.
A group where “facts” are decidedly selective when it comes to covering former President Trump. As the Washington Post’s phony coverage of Trump’s appearance decidedly illustrates.
