As Tuesday began, the liberal-media site PolitiFact confirmed for their media pals that the Republican National Committee was correct in asserting that not one of the 61 Democratic convention speakers on Monday had breathed the word “ISIS.”
But perhaps since that was identified as an RNC talking point, none of the networks found that worth a full news story. There was no wondering out loud how this kind of an oversight could happen, or what it says about how out of touch the Democrats are in the wake of a very violent year. Imagine if the Republicans failed to say one word about Iraq on the first convention night in 2008, and the Democrats pounced. Would the media really be this “low energy”?
NBC didn’t touch the gaffe on their newscasts. ABC and CBS each covered the news on Tuesday night for less than a minute. CBS reporter Major Garrett let Donald Trump underline the gaffe:
GARRETT: The GOP ticket arrived to enthusiastic VFW applause and used that convention to challenge the Democratic strategy for a modern-day enemy.
TRUMP: We need to change our foreign policy to focus on defeating and destroying ISIS, a word you didn't hear last night at the Democrat convention. You didn't hear it.
GARRETT: Trump then implied Democrats are to blame for the rise of the terror group.
TRUMP: They really established ISIS, because of weakness.
GARRETT: Trump rarely details what strengths he'd use to defeat ISIS. He's advocated more bombing missions and vague plans to seize oil revenues but Trump routinely dances around whether he would order more U.S. troops into combat.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos briefly pushed Vice President Joe Biden on the point:
DAVID MUIR: Donald Trump, tweeting through the first night of the Democratic convention, and today he tweeted this question: Why aren't the Democrats speaking about ISIS? His running mate, Mike pence, was asking the same question tonight, and our George Stephanopoulos sat down with the vice president, asking, why aren't the Democrats talking about ISIS? His running mate, Mike Pence, was asking the same question today, and our GS sat down with the VP, asking why aren’t the Democrats talking about ISIS?
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Mike Pence this morning at the VFW: “It is extraordinary to think that yesterday in Philadelphia, 61 speakers came to the podium and not one of them named ISIS by name. This man, Donald Trump, will name our enemies without apology and he will defeat them.”
JOE BIDEN: [Laughs] We have the single-most significant homeland security of any country in the world. We have the finest special forces in the world and what are they doing? Pence and, uh, Trump? What these guys are doing is breaking up our alliances. These guys don't know what they're talking about.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But are they right when they say, 61 speakers last night, no mention of ISIS? PolitiFact says that's true.
BIDEN: Well, that could be, but there's a lot more speakers to come.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Will you talk about that?
BIDEN: There's a lot more speakers to come. [Stephanopoulos laughs.]
How is that funny? All three network evening newscasts offered full stories on the vicious ISIS beheading of a priest in church during Mass in Rouen, France...which ought to underline the gravity of the omission.
On Wednesday morning’s Fox & Friends, the Republican nominee’s son Eric Trump unleashed on the Democrat gaffe:
ERIC TRUMP: Of all the speakers, of the 61 speakers, there wasn't a single mention of ISIS. Yesterday there was a priest in France, in a church, and a radical Islamic terrorist went in there and they cut off his head. They beheaded a priest in his own church in France! Right? Last week we had Nice. We had the LGBT community get shot up in Orlando. We had San Bernardino. We’ve had all these massive terrorist attacks all over the country and not once during the convention did they even mention the enemy. I mean, it is so distraught. It is such a shame. I mean, how are we going to defeat somebody we can't mention?
