The “lamestream” media is at it again.
Immediately following a White House roundtable meeting yesterday — where President Donald Trump and a dozen California officials discussed the undocumented immigration challenges facing the most populous state in the nation — C-Span and other media outlets published a select clip of Trump allegedly calling all illegal immigrants “animals.”
{mosads}There is only one problem with that: He did no such thing.
President Trump referred to violent and vicious MS-13 — which is a gang that was started in California — members as animals; however, he never referred to the entire illegal immigrant population as such.
A review of the C-Span video in its entirety reveals that just moments before he said the word “animals,” Trump said the public ought to be concerned about “illegal immigrant criminals, drug dealers, gang members and violent predators” such as rapists and murderers that are among the “most vicious & violent offenders.” During the meeting, he went on to discuss the violent crimes committed by MS-13 members — the notorious gang which has roots in Satanic worship and often requires rape of young girls for its members’ initiations.
The outright distortion of the president’s remarks by the mainstream media is not just unfortunate — it is downright unforgivable.
In an era where “fake news” has been called to the public’s attention, one would think the mainstream media would have learned not to distort the president’s words — especially when there is raw video to verify his words and the context in which he uttered them.
However, it does not appear the media learned anything from the 2016 elections during which they lost so much credibility with the American people.
A Suffolk University/USA Today poll during the final days of the 2016 Presidential election showed that 76 percent of Americans believed that the mainstream media were “in the tank” for Hillary Clinton. Even a majority of Hillary’s own supporters — 51 percent of them — admitted that the media was biased in favor of her. In light of the poll, Trump told “Good Morning America” that the bias against him was “the greatest pile-on in American history.”
An earlier Rasmussen poll also revealed that nearly 70 percent of republicans think the media is too liberal, while only six percent of Americans regardless of party think the media is “very trustworthy.”
Another poll by Gallup — the gold standard of opinion research — showed that although Americans still believe the news media is vital, 45 percent of Americans believe the news media operate with “a great deal” of political bias. Compare that to only 25 percent of Americans who believed such bias existed in 1989.
Another poll by Pew Research Center revealed that a record-high 67 percent of Americans believe that the new media show “a great deal” of “political bias.” Seventy-four percent of self-described “Tea Party Republicans” saw the media as biased, with a surprising 35 percent of Independent voters agreeing.
However, the distortion of President Trump’s remarks on illegal immigration wasn’t just political bias — it has now been proven to be an outright lie to anyone willing to view the video clip in its entirety. The media’s suggestion that the president called an entire class of people a derogatory name goes beyond bias — it is also inflammatory and irresponsible.
As proven by public opinion polling, the American people have come to expect the media to be liberal – but they don’t expect the media to so boldly lie to the American public and to fan the flames of racial discord.
If the mainstream media keeps it up and continues to be caught distorting the truth, it will not only be the punchline of Trump’s next “fake news” joke — it will become a joke entirely, an antiquated entity which no knowledgeable, self-respecting American will ever believe in future years to come.
Jen Kerns has served as a GOP strategist and writer for the U.S. presidential debates for FOX News. She previously served as communications director and spokeswoman for the California Republican Party, the Colorado Recalls over gun control, and the Prop. 8 battle over marriage which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.