That is what President Trump called the Democratic Party media in a tweet today–a stain on America–and he is right.
Very little discussion of all the purposely false and defamatory stories put out this week by the Fake News Media. They are out of control – correct reporting means nothing to them. Major lies written, then forced to be withdrawn after they are exposed…a stain on America!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2017
It would be a full-time job to keep track of the Democratic Party media’s failed attacks on President Trump and his administration. I wrote about CNN’s latest fiasco here and here. Maybe someone, somewhere, is keeping count of the liberal media’s lies about Trump, but it would be a superhuman task to keep up.
The president’s comment was prompted in part by an absurd tweet by the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel, who was fired by the Post some years ago for his participation in the surreptitious, left-wing JournoList. Weigel rejoined the Post after rehabilitating himself with MSNBC and Slate. I used to say that the Post is the most respectable voice of the Democratic Party, but I am not sure that compliment is still warranted.
Purporting to cover the president’s triumphant rally in Pensacola, Florida, Weigel published a picture of the arena that was partly empty–because it was taken hours before the event began. This tweet by President Trump shows Weigel’s misleading photo along with actual pictures of the event once it was underway. Weigel later admitted that the President was right:
.@DaveWeigel @WashingtonPost put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived @ the venue, w/ thousands of people outside, on their way in. Real photos now shown as I spoke. Packed house, many people unable to get in. Demand apology & retraction from FAKE NEWS WaPo! pic.twitter.com/XAblFGh1ob
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017
These battles between President Trump and Democratic Party reporters are going on almost every day, and Trump is nearly always winning, because reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press and so on are so crazed by Trump’s election that they can’t restrain themselves from lying.
But maybe that is too charitable. Maybe these reporters have been lying for a long time, and we finally have a Republican leader with enough guts to call them on it.
PAUL ADDS: President Trump says the Washington Post should fire Weigel. The Post says:
Dave Weigel relied on an inaccurate image in tweeting about President Trump’s rally in Pensacola. When others pointed out the mistake to Weigel, he quickly deleted the tweet. And when he was later addressed by the president on Twitter, he promptly apologized for it.
I agree that Weigel just made a mistake. He did not put up something he knew was false or misleading. Weigel is smart enough to realize he couldn’t get away that in this instance.
The question, though, is why did he make the mistake. I think it was because he’s engaged in partisan warfare against Trump — just like his paper — and was too eager to seize on something that cast Trump in a bad light.
That’s why the mainstream media’s mistakes almost invariably are ones that make Republicans and/or conservatives look bad. When was the last time you saw a correction by a MSM organ that was less favorable to a Republican or conservative than the erroneous item that required correction?
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