The homepage for National “Public” Radio was pushing a story today headlined “In candid interviews, National Guard members speak out about D.C. deployment.” Usually, the word “candid” means “anonymous,” as it was in this case. NPR loves granting their special power of anonymity for Trump-haters to speak “candidly."
On Monday’s Morning Edition, anchor Leila Fadel explained: “NPR's Kat Lonsdorf has been speaking with some of them, and they say they're worried that this is a new norm of armed troops patrolling American cities.” Did Kat find any members of the National Guard who supported the president? Well, that wasn’t worth mentioning, and apparently not “newsworthy” in NPR’s judgment.
KAT LONSDORF: I talked separately with three National Guard members who were deployed here in D.C. for several months. All of them are relatively far along in their military careers, each with more than a decade of service. They all spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because they're still serving and are not authorized to speak publicly. One of the reasons we haven't heard much candidly from Guard members during this time is because, especially under this administration, the rules about speaking to the press and the ramifications for breaking those rules have become a lot stricter.
LEILA FADEL: So what did they tell you?
LONSDORF: Well, all three spoke really bluntly about how they didn't buy the justification for the deployment by this administration, which, remember, came after President Trump declared a crime emergency despite a 30-year low in violent crime in the city. They all said that reasoning was confusing to them in the beginning but even more so now, as the deployment has been extended for several years.
One Guard member said, quote, "it feels like the Guard is being exploited, being used for political narratives by the administration." Another told me that he hopes there will be some kind of official reckoning someday about why the Guard is here and whether it was worth it. And another Guard member told me that it, quote, "embarrasses" him to be involved in any way with the deployment.
It's kind of funny for sources evading any accountability for their comments to be demanding a "reckoning." For a counterpoint, NPR presented an incredibly vague summary of a lengthy rebuttal:
LONSDORF: Brigadier General Leland Blanchard II, the interim commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, responded with a lengthy email defending the mission. He said, quote, "whatever individual perspectives the Guard members carry away from their experience, their service and sacrifice deserve our respect."
The anchor asked the reporter what is the “bigger picture here beyond the deployment in DC?
LONSDORF: Obviously, this deployment is within the context of Trump's unprecedented use of the National Guard domestically around the country in the past year. And it has many experts I've been talking to, and these Guard members, worried that this kind of constant patrolling of American cities by armed troops, which is what's happening here in D.C., could become a new norm. One of the Guard members told me he really worries about that and that this is all harming the relationship the National Guard has with the American public.
UNIDENTIFIED GUARD MEMBER: It's going to completely rebrand everything that was noble about the National Guard into being mundane at best and threatening at worst.
One dictionary defines candor this way: "Candor is a noun that means the quality of being open, honest, and sincere in speech or expression. It describes clear and frank communication without hiding the truth." But NPR loves hiding some truth when it's dropping rhetorical bombs on this president.
