Bourgeois media resorting to sleight-of-hand to put Trump in the White House

Tweet

There have already been many media surveys that have shown that the most racist US presidential candidate of the 21st century, Donald Trump, has received an overwhelming coverage advantage from the bourgeois media. Now we are starting to see a willingness to play fast and loose with the facts and even use sleight-of-hand to favor Trump that goes beyond Fox News. In the Democratic debate on Saturday, Hillary Clinton made the statement that:

"We also need to make sure that the really discriminatory messages that Trump is sending around the world don't fall on receptive ears. He is becoming ISIS's best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists."

People knowledgeable about the subject matter will conclude this statement is true based on logical deduction: Are there videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims? Check! Could these videos be useful recruiting tools for ISIS? Check! Is ISIS a media savvy organization that uses videos from western media for recruitment? Check!

Somethings just go without saying, which is why no one is asking Miss Colombia if she was disappointed to find out that Steve Harvey's naming her Miss Universe was a mistake. Of course she was disappointed! That goes without saying. That is why we didn't wake up to headlines like this:

No evidence Miss Colombia disappointed by blunder
But this is how they are spinning Clinton's statement of the obvious fact that Trump's well publicized racism towards Muslims is great propaganda material for the Islamic extremist argument that the West is engaged in a war against Islam:

No evidence for Hillary Clinton's claim that ISIS is using videos of Donald Trump as recruiting tool
That is the headline for the PolitiFact article that I took the above Clinton quote from. This headline questions whether the statement that Trump's anti-Muslim comments make a great recruiting tool for Daesh is true because they haven't found any proof. My answer to that is: Look a little harder or wait a little longer because that statement is self-evident to anyone familiar with Daesh's recruitment methods.

This is bad enough, but ABC News has taken it one step further by employing a bit of sleight-of-hand in their manipulation of this story. I first heard about this controversy on ABC's Good Morning America show this morning. Their coverage of this controversy led with Trump's demand for an apology, has a video clip of Clinton at the debate saying "They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists." [0:40 in this video] Then the ABC narrator says "Clinton's campaign unable to prove such a video exists." This is how and when the sleight-of-hand shift is made. Clinton made the claim that videos of Trump had been used by ISIS, she didn't say they had used them in one of their videos. This is an elaboration that ABC has added so they can demand that Clinton produce this video which she never claimed existed. You can see how they do the same thing in this posting on their website:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made up her claim that ISIS uses videos of him to recruit new members, said Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

"Knowing the Clintons and knowing Hillary, she made it up," Trump said today on ABC's "This Week." During Saturday's Democratic debate, Clinton said ISIS is "going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”

Trump said many fact checkers have "vetted" the claim of Trump being used in ISIS videos and have proven it to be false.

ABC News has adopted Trump's distortion of Clinton's statement and you can't get more mainstream media than ABC News. Even if Trump's or ABC News' "fact checkers" have a complete inventory of the latest ISIS videos, which I doubt, not finding Donald Trump in them doesn't mean his anti-Muslim statements aren't being used by Daesh to argue their case. Every thinking person knows this already, but ABC News, in its rush to ride roughshod over the facts in support of Trump, has distorted a rather banal statement of fact by Hillary Clinton into a demand that she produce a video that she never claimed existed.

If this is an example of the presidential election year that is coming, we have a big problem. As ridiculous as it seems, it looks like a rather large section of the US bourgeois wants Donald Trump to be our next president.

Full disclosure: I have opposed Donald Trump for a long time. I'm from Atlantic City

And Still the ISIS recruiting continues, even here in sunny Southern California it seems...

Oh, yes. This is about Syria too..

by Clay Claiborne

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria