Media Won't Report What Was Said Right Before Trump's Immigrant 'Animals' Comment
The smear machine was operating on all cylinders — but Trump supporters were in full gear too.
When President Donald Trump referred to dangerous criminal gang members made up of illegal aliens as “animals” Wednesday during a public meeting with California elected officials and law enforcement, mainstream media headlines from across the country wasted no time distorting the president’s meaning.
Even by the skewed standards of Trump administration coverage, it was appalling.
Trump’s comments were in response to Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims, who said California state laws were keeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents out of local jails and making it harder for local law enforcement to deport dangerous criminals.
Mims’ question specifically referred to members of the MS-13 gang.
In his response, Trump was clearly talking about savage criminals, not all illegal immigrants. The White House transcript has the exchange verbatim:
“We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country,” Trump said. “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It’s crazy.”
Any normal person could understand exactly that the president was referring to a criminal element. And an honest person could have summed it up in a headline that did not distort Trump’s words to the point of lying about them. But normal, honest people are in short supply in the mainstream media, evidently.
The New York Times was went with deceptive ambiguity: “Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant.”
Not even a hint that the “some” in question are MS-13 gang members so vicious their own countries are afraid of their return.
The Associated Press, a once respected “news” organization that became an official shill for the Democrat Party with the Obama presidency, not only omitted the context, it focused on Democrats’ dishonest response to Trump: “Trump draws rebuke for ‘animal’ remark at immigration talk.”
The AP story gave a quick acknowledgement to the topic of gangs, but gave its prime real estate to Democrat opinions like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and California Gov. Jerry Brown — two high-profile Democrats who are at war with the Trump administration.
Most ludicrously, a Washington Post columnist even went beyond quoting Democrats to tarring Trump with some of the greatest crimes in human history: “In reference to ‘animals,’ Trump evokes an ugly history of dehumanization.”
Why argue about immigration policy when you can jump right to comparing Trump’s comments to slavery in pre-Civil War America, the Holocaust and the 1990s genocide in Rwanda? Nothing like perspective.
Fortunately, the mainstream media doesn’t have the power it used to to control the flow of information, and Trump supporters wasted no time in getting the truth of the story out.
The president was referring very specifically, and very clearly, to a criminal element among illegal aliens that has caused indisputable agony to innocent people in the United States — and will no doubt commit more crimes if they’re allowed to enter or stay in the country.
Trump supporters were ready for the ludicrous media spin and lashed back hard. Check out these reactions to coverage from NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who blatantly said Trump had called “people trying to get into the country ‘animals’ not people”:
Fortunately, thanks to social media, Trump supporters were able to hit back, but this kind of deliberate distortion of the president’s words isn’t unusual.
It’s what American conservatives have learned to expect from the supposedly professional, objective American media.
It’s the smear machine in action, but this time Trump’s supporters were ready.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
