MSNBC Producer Hastily Deletes Anti-Trump Bombshell News Piece
Ah, MSNBC. The left’s best friend on the cable dial. The place where Keith Olbermann once eloquently told George W. Bush, “You‘re a fascist! Get them to print you a T-shirt with ‘fascist’ on it!”
The channel where Al Sharpton struggled valiantly with the scourge of white privilege, the blight of institutional racism and the vagaries of the teleprompter for so many years.
Now that Donald Trump occupies the Oval Office, MSNBC has seen a renaissance of sorts, as its brand of hysterical Chicken Little-ism is now back in fashion. And, of course, it’s having a field day with the president’s alleged “s***hole countries” comment.
Unfortunately, MSNBC’s employees are not quite having a field day with fact-checking. As it turns out, a bombshell story related to the poophole countries remark broken by a segment producer at the network turned out to be … well, bull fertilizer.
According to The Daily Caller, Mary Emily O’Hara tweeted Friday that the U.S. Ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, had quit over the president’s remarks.
O’Hara said that Feeley “has resigned because he no longer feels he can comfortably serve under (President Trump). Feeley is the first U.S. diplomat to resign over the president’s comments.” According to the Washington Examiner, MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi also allegedly tweeted something to the same effect, although the tweet has since been deleted and direct screenshots apparently weren’t taken. (The tweet still shows up on a Google search as of Monday morning, however.)
O’Hara’s story would have been a pretty big bombshell, if it were true. Unfortunately, it turns out that Feeley’s resignation was unrelated to the comments and was simply due to differences with the president. It also happened weeks before the comments were made, and doesn’t take effect until March.
Not exactly storming out in a huff.
“U.S. Ambassador to Panama John Feeley, a career diplomat and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, has resigned, saying he no longer felt able to serve President Donald Trump,” Reuters reported Saturday.
“Feeley’s departure had been communicated to State Department officials on Dec. 27 and was not a response to Trump’s alleged use of the word ‘s***hole’ to describe Haiti and African countries at a meeting on Thursday, U.S. officials said.”
Whoopsies.
O’Hara, who describes herself as “America’s 11th favorite cable news lesbian” on her (protected) Twitter account, issued an apology of sorts later in the day.
I’m pretty disappointed. Given that O’Hara couldn’t be bothered to check with her sources as to when Mr. Feeley resigned, she’s only like my 23rd or 24th favorite cable news lesbian now. I know that’s a pretty big chart hit, but you can’t say she didn’t have it coming.
According to The Daily Caller, MSNBC also issued an apology of its own, saying, “We deleted a previous tweet about the US Ambassador to Panama’s resignation that misrepresented the resignation as a result of the president’s recent racially charged comments.” Here’s the screenshot from The Daily Caller.
There was some confusion as to why MSNBC issued the tweet; no evidence seemed to be forthcoming that the network itself had tweeted the story from its official account, which it seemed to insinuate in the “correction” they tweeted. The “correction” itself was later apparently deleted, leading to further confusion. The nearest we can tell, O’Hara and probably Velshi were the only MSNBC figures to tweet the story from their accounts; why the network itself felt the need to issue the tweet and then delete it is anyone’s guess at this point.
It’s also worth noting that that “correction” tweets didn’t bother mentioning that both the president and other senators present at the meeting deny the remarks were actually made, but this being MSNBC, it’s difficult to muster surprise, much less shock.
There are, for cable news, one of just a few default narratives any story involving the Trump administration can fit into: a) Russia, b) racism and provincialism, c) Trump is stupid, d) administration in chaos or e) big business is running everything.
Somewhere in the glass-walled, Macbook-bespeckled bowels of MSNBC headquarters, I get the feeling someone realized that if they played their cards right, they could not only fit Feeley’s resignation into category b) but also shoehorn it into d) as well, making it not only timelier but also more controversial. Overjoyed at this revelation, they fired off an email which eventually reached the inbox of Ms. O’Hara. Delighted, she put it out on Twitter. And then she found out it was a blatant lie.
I have no evidence that this is actually what happened regarding the Feeley story.
However, my version of events is just as verifiable and truthful as O’Hara’s. Which is to say, it isn’t.
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