Mainstream Media Gets Distracted by Fly, Blows Off Pence's Most Powerful Debate Moment
For the liberal media, apparently, a fly in the room is more important than a dead human being — if it can help defeat Donald Trump.
That’s the damning takeaway from Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate, where a fly landing on the head of Vice President Mike Pence has generated more attention than more crucial topics — like the responsibility of a presidential administration to protect the lives of American citizens.
That’s a topic the mainstream media doesn’t dwell on in its post-debate coverage, but it’s one the parents of Kayla Mueller are painfully familiar with.
In one of the most powerful moments of the debate, Pence delivered a summation of the Trump administration’s foreign policy strengths — its movement of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and its destruction of the Islamic State group’s sham “caliphate” that had defied the Obama-Biden administration with impunity, among others.
Then Pence got to the return to the United States on Wednesday of two men charged in Mueller’s death.
A young American woman who traveled to Syria in 2013 to do humanitarian work, according to The New York Times, Kayla Mueller was kidnapped by Islamic State group terrorists and held until her death in 2015, possibly as a result of Jordanian airstrikes on the Islamic State.
As Pence pointed out Wednesday, if it had not been for the fecklessness of the Barack Obama-Joe Biden administration, Kayla Mueller might have been rescued and reunited with her parents — who attended the vice presidential debate in Pence’s support.
Vice President @Mike_Pence: Kayla Mueller’s family says that if President @realDonaldTrump had been in office when Joe Biden was, they believe Kayla would still be alive today#VPDebate pic.twitter.com/WZ1w1Hzj6f
— Team Trump (Text VOTE to 88022) (@TeamTrump) October 8, 2020
“You know when President Trump came into office, ISIS had captured an area of the Middle East, the size of Pennsylvania. President Trump unleashed the American military, and our armed forces destroyed the ISIS Caliphate and took down their leader al Baghdadi without one American casualty,” Pence said.
The Islamic State group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “was responsible for the deaths of thousands. But notably, America’s hearts today are with the family of Kayla Mueller, the parents of which are here with us tonight in Salt Lake City,” Pence said.
“The reality is that when Joe Biden was vice president, we had an opportunity to save Kayla Mueller. Breaks my heart to reflect on it, but the military came into the Oval Office presented a plan. They said they knew where Kayla was.
“Baghdadi had held her for 18 months, abused her mercilessly before they killed her. But when Joe Biden was vice president, they hesitated for a month. And when armed forces finally went in, it was clear she’d been moved two days earlier.
“And her family says — with a heart that broke the heart of every American — that if President Donald Trump had been president, they believe Kayla would be alive today.”
Now, there’s no question that if Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris had brought up the parents of murdered American hostages who blamed the Trump administration, the mainstream media would have a field day.
Retrospectives would explain the story post-debate, talking heads would issue weighty pronouncements about how women voters in particular should pay attention to a story so deeply tied to American womanhood, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos might not have needed to talk nonsense about Pence’s “mansplaining.”
But Pence was talking about the grim reality of the world Trump inherited from the spineless Obama administration – a world he remade with the use of American military force and diplomatic muscle.
There is no more Islamic State group “caliphate,” for instance. There is no more Iranian terror general named Qassem Soleimani. Pence was making the point that Americans are safer in the world because of President Donald Trump — and a Biden administration would mean a return to the cavalier cowardice of President Barack Obama, and the equally irresponsible Joe Biden.
And that, of course, is a topic the mainstream media has no interest in. It only involves the lives and deaths of Americans — not furthering a radical leftist goal
The errant fly got more buzz than Pence’s invocation of Mueller’s memory.
Fortunately, the mainstream media no longer monopolize the American conversation.
.@VP leads the most searing moment of the #VPDebate
Brilliantly recounting the failure of @joebiden to save Kayla Mueller and the success of @realdonaldtrump in destroying the ISIS caliphate and extermination of al-Baghdadi & Soleimani under @realDonaldTrump
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) October 8, 2020
America will never forget. https://t.co/690GjI7ueF
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 8, 2020
Pence highlights the fact that Trump’s foreign policy and military plan destroyed the ISIS caliphate, killed the ISIS leader, and just today brought the killers of Kayla Mueller to justice. And he reminds that Obama and Biden had a chance to save Mueller, and then did nothing.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 8, 2020
God Bless Kayla Mueller and her family
May She Rest In Peace ?? pic.twitter.com/zmyy8j0jAx
— Prezzy91 (@Prezzy91Parler) October 7, 2020
Readers who look through the replies to those first two will see plenty of snark from liberals, who love social media almost as much as President Trump.
They’ll see references to more than 200,000 American deaths attributed to COVID-19. They’ll see accusations that Pence is politicizing the death of a young woman. They’ll see references to the fly at the debate.
What they won’t see from liberals, though, is an acknowledgment that Pence’s point is the truth — and that it should not be just one deciding factor in this upcoming presidential election, but the deciding factor.
As much as Democrats want to pretend responsibility for the health care of every individual American somehow rests at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., that’s not how the Founders set up the country.
What the United States president is chiefly responsible for is foreign policy — ensuring the country’s safety and security in a dangerous world.
Donald Trump has spent almost four years proving — over the objections of the Democratic Party, the mainstream media and Washington’s foreign policy establishment — that he understands that, and that he’s more effective than any Democrat could ever hope to be.
Kayla Mueller’s parents have said, with very good reason, that if Trump had been president when their daughter was kidnapped, Kayla would have survived the ordeal.
In a world of real journalism, in the context of Wednesday night, that would have been cast — as former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway put it — as the “most searing moment” of the debate.
But it was a moment that would have hurt the Biden-Harris ticket. It was a moment that would have helped Trump’s re-election effort. And it was a moment with a lesson for all Americans.
And for the mainstream media, a fly is way more important.
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