The Acela Media are still abuzz over a controversial segment of former President Donald Trump’s remarks in Durham, New Hampshire, and two of the major evening network newscasts continued to parrot Biden campaign talking points in a scramble to turn Trump into Literally Hitler.
ABC and CBS’s reports were similar on substance. Both dutifully regurgitated the Biden talking points linking Trump’s remarks to Hitler, both lamented the lack of a denunciation from within the GOP primary field that was to their liking. But ABC’s David Muir gives the game away here, revealing the purpose of the “Trump-echoes-Hitler” talking point. Watch as Muir weirdly brags about forcing Trump’s primary opponents to react:
DAVID MUIR: We turn now to the race for the White House and former President Trump campaigning in New Hampshire, again using language echoing Hitler. Tonight, his Republican rivals have been forced to address this, the words being condemned as very dangerous given how they were used in recent history.
Reasonable persons can view Trump’s remarks -when not clipped to start right at the portion most frequently cited in these stories- and determine that the “they” in question are not illegal immigrants, but those who broke the border and enabled the inflow of millions of illegal immigrants into the country:
DONALD TRUMP: You know, when they let, I think the real number’s 15, 16 million people into our country, when they do that- we’ve got a lot of work to do. They're poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they've done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They're coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They're pouring into our country.
Regardless of your interpretation of Trump’s remarks, the full quote looks a lot different than what was represented to the public. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the hysterical overreaction to Trump’s 2015 campaign launch, and the portion of his remarks on immigration, which were spun by the Clinton campaign (and dutifully echoed by the media) as referring to ALL immigrants. Some of those same dynamics are in play here. Time has passed but the game is the same.
It bears noting that News NBC Nightly News chose to avoid the story altogether, perhaps, in order to avoid the appearance of pouncing on a partial quote and joining their colleagues’ narrative.
It also bears noting that CBS Evening News were the only ones to report, to their credit, on the staggering number of apprehensions on the southern border. Given the context of Trump’s remarks, everyone should’ve reported on the ongoing border disaster.
To view the full transcript of the ABC report, click HERE.
To view the full transcript of the CBS report, click HERE.
