The antagonism between the “mainstream media” and the Trump administration reached a new low last week when the Associated Press hired a “freelancer” -- who turned out to be “a hardcore left-wing activist” -- to attend a “closed press” fund-raiser for the GOP in New Hampshire and falsely report on the event.
Nevertheless, “President Donald Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway told supporters in New Hampshire they should ‘just ignore’ his critics and the incessant chatter about the scandals dogging him,” the “reporter” -- later learned to be Melanie Plenda -- wrote for the AP.
According to an article by Penny Starr, a reporter for the Breitbart News website and a former staff writer for the Cybercast News Service -- the freelancer “has drawn the ire of the GOP in New Hampshire” by sneaking into the event and posting a short story without a byline that was 'grossly inaccurate.'”
Starr noted that the report indicated about 150 people attended the fund-raiser, and they were “largely friendly” to Conway, but some people “withheld applause when Conway let loose with snarky comments about Democrat Hillary Clinton.”
“The Associated Press in New Hampshire appears to be engaged in left-wing activism rather than journalism,” New Hampshire GOP adviser Patrick Hynes told WHUR, Channel 9. “And Melanie Plenda is a left-wing activist, not a journalist.”
“They conspired to sneak this left-wing activist into an event for which they were not credentialed and deliberately misreported on the attendance and the enthusiasm with which Kellyanne Conway was greeted,” Hynes said.
“Republicans across the country should be aware that the AP cannot be trusted to be fair and balanced,” he said.
“Breitbart News has obtained a screenshot of Plenda’s Facebook page from Nov. 10, 2016 -- just days after Donald Trump won the presidential election -- that shows her making an explicit call to action against the then-incoming Trump administration,” Starr stated.
That message read:
OK, no more crying from me. Now is the time for action. We need to remember this feeling, the pain in our hearts, the fire in our bellies, because we need it to fight.
Not with guns and fists but with protests, with our thoughtful words and reasoned arguments, with fact-checking and canvassing for midterm candidates and our votes for the same, for defending and supporting those targeted by our president-elect.
“We need to support the ACLU [the liberal American Civil Liberties Union], we need to run for office, we need to oppose legislation that seeks to hurt and further marginalize, we need to join advocacy groups, we need to not be silent,” Plenda continued.
“There are a lot of us -- roughly more than half the country to be exact -- who said Trump’s vision of the future is not what we want our country to be,” she added.
“We are not powerless,” Plenda continued. “We do not need to roll over or go back to sleep. We don’t need to be obstructionist just for the sake, but we do need to peacefully fight for what is right.”
She concluded by stating: “In that way we will preserve our system of checks and balances and take the teeth out of whatever Trump has planned for the country. Alright. Off I go.”
"The Associated Press,” the Breitbart reporter noted, was once “a venerable news wire service that now apparently hires leftist activists like Plenda to do their bidding on its platform.”
“Basically,” Starr indicated, “everything Plenda wrote in that Facebook post is blatant progressive activism, from recruiting and canvassing specific candidates for office to using media fact-checking processes for their political gain.”
In addition, the statement encourages liberals to begin “opposing legislation to backing various advocacy groups to calling for support for those ‘targeted by’ Trump to publicly backing the ACLU and more.”
Hynes also said that a photo of the crowd posted on Facebook by party activist Michael Biundo shows that more than 400 people attended the event.
“Members of the media were not allowed to attend due to a ‘mutually agreed upon’ decision by the White House and the party,” New Hampshire Republican Chairwoman Jeanie Forrester told WMUR.
In addition, the AP issued a two-sentence statement on the controversy from Lauren Easton, director of media relations for the news organization:
A freelancer covering the NHGOP fund-raiser for AP was outside the event when she was invited in by a woman who appeared to be a part of the event.
AP stands by its reporting.
Plenda’s Linkedin account shows that she works for mostly liberal news outlets, including National Public Radio, the Daily Beast, Salon.com and Politico.
Hopefully, Plenda will get plenty of work from those liberal organizations since she’s unlikely to attend any other events hosted by conservatives and Republicans.
