“I know the American story.”
So opens a new Biden ad with those words from the candidate/president. One suspects the Biden campaign staff either doesn’t know (or doesn't care about) the factual American story - not to mention, importantly, the media outlets reporting on the ad.
As Biden’s words roll on, the ad flashes a photo of parading Ku Klux Klan members from the 1920s (next to the words "AMERICA FIRST, One God, One Country, One Flag,"), a brief image of Martin Luther King, Biden and then to Donald Trump, as Biden talks about the forces (good and evil, racist and anti-racist) fighting for the soul of the nation. The commercial’s obvious point is to tie the Klan to Trump.
Yet the media coverage promotes it, like this:
- Mediaite: “Biden Campaign Drops Scathing New Ad After State of the Union Featuring Images of Trump and the KKK”
- Politico: “Coming off of the president’s forceful State of the Union, senior Biden campaign officials on Friday rolled out a $30 million ad buy and new campaign travel stops. The announcements were designed to drive home the aggressive posture Biden is adopting as the general election contest with former President Donald Trump begins.”
- The New York Times: Biden “will begin a $30 million advertising push.”
So what is not said by these outlets in this coverage of that Biden ad that features that Klan photo?
New ad just dropped 🔥 pic.twitter.com/vXJy19jZvc
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 8, 2024
Nowhere in any of this Biden ad media coverage is there a solitary reference to the factual, historical record of the KKK that is displayed in that ad.
So as a reminder of the actual Klan history the media is choosing to ignore in their ad coverage, let’s check in on this description of the Klan from leftist Columbia University historian Eric Foner, who described the Klan as “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” Absent from the media coverage of the ad as well is University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease’s description of the Klan as the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.”
And nowhere in the media coverage of the Biden ad is there a solitary reference to Biden giving the funeral eulogy for the late Senate Democrat Leader Robert Byrd, of West Virginia -- who once was elected as an “Exalted Cyclops” of the Klan.
All of which is to say, it is the Biden campaign that brought up the subject of the Klan in their opening commercial, apparently crazily trying to connect it to Trump. That would be the Trump who decades ago, when mentioned as a possible candidate in 2000 for what was known then as “The Reform Party” said this of the Klan:
The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, …..This is not company I wish to keep.
Yet there is the Biden campaign running a commercial prominently displaying a Klan photo. And not a peep of a reminder from any media outlet that this kick-off Biden campaign ad deliberately turns history upside down. The liberal "fact checkers" tried to say it was false that Biden eulogized a former Klansman!
The real question here? What else coming from the Biden campaign and candidate Biden himself will the media simply ignore because it doesn’t help ole Joe?
Bias by omission on Biden's behalf is everywhere.
