Shaun King Does It Again -- Passes Off Obama-Era Immigration Cell as Trump's
Shaun King hasn’t had a particularly great week or so, at least when it comes to waiting for the facts to come out.
As you may have heard, the Black Lives Matter icon — who has been on the rebound after a series of troubling fundraising incidents — took up the case of a woman who said she was raped by the police during a traffic stop. Unfortunately, he did so before the bodycam footage from the police officer came out, which proved that nothing at all had happened. Whoops.
And then there was the fact that he identified the officer only by his surname, which led to death threats leveled against yet another officer. In other words, King probably has two lawsuits to look forward to (at least if I’m lucky). But, hey, at least he learned a valuable lesson about finding out the facts before you hit send on the Twitter app, right?
Of course not! This is Shaun King we’re talking about here — and he’s going to make a bloody fool of himself as often as possible.
For a bit of background for this one, you may have heard that the Trump administration has decided to charge every parent caught bringing their children into the country illegally as part of a zero-tolerance policy against the practice, which would separate the parent from the child.
The aim, obviously, is to deter any parent horrible enough to subject their child to the kind of privations one needs to endure in order to illegally cross the border from doing so, as well as to cut down on a rash of asylum applications featuring parents bearing children from Central American countries.
On Sunday, King tweeted out an article that allegedly showed pictures of the children affected by the zero-tolerance policies in holding cells. The article was from the Arizona Republic and the pictures were troubling:
“I saw this photo floating around and didn’t know if it was real,” King wrote. “It is.
“Children of immigrants are being held in cages, like dogs, at ICE detention centers, sleeping on the floor. It’s an abomination.”
The picture was real, sadly. There was one issue, though. It wasn’t published this month. Or anytime in 2018. Or 2017.
Actual publication date, according to Twitchy? June 18, 2014. Ah yes, the heady years of the Obama administration — the guy they all wanted to give four more years to. This happened during the summer during which unaccompanied minors were showing up at the border with alarming frequency in part due to the idea that amnesty was imminent.
Sadly, King wasn’t the only liberal who fell for this. In fact, Obama speechwriter frat-bro Jon Favreau actually retweeted the same article before he deleted it, and yelled, “Dear Lord in Heaven, what hath my actions wrought?” and prostrated himself on the parquet floor of his Dupont Circle apartment in a fit of weeping; his friends have been unable to move him from that position since. (At press time, I could only confirm the tweet and its deletion for certain).
Other liberal luminaries who aren’t big on fact checking:
This makes me sad and angry. https://t.co/WM1m57iR8x
— Paolo Uggetti (@PaoloUggetti) May 27, 2018
Take a look at these photos. #WhereAreOurChildren https://t.co/OZRG6YIXJB
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) May 27, 2018
At least Sarsour isn’t known for her adherence to the facts and Uggetti isn’t known, period, unless you’ve followed Bill Simmons’ post-ESPN career with perfervid intensity.
In King’s case, this came on the very same week in which he got himself more bad headlines for cosigning for an alleged rape victim who hadn’t been raped. A quick search of this article’s URL (or a look at the Wayback Machine) could have saved King even more trouble.
Shaun King is a man given to both inflammatory rhetoric and jaw-dropping credulity. This isn’t a particularly appealing combination, especially when he’s the face of a movement. Will someone finally take away this irresponsible charlatan’s BLM representation card, please?
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