Last night, I was speaking with my former boss and friend of 20-plus years, Rep. Gary Palmer, who was just feet away from Rep. Steve Scalise on the Alexandria baseball field yesterday when he was shot, about running for his life towards the only open gate on the field while under fire. We were standing behind the crime scene tape where the shooting occurred just hours earlier.
“He was there to kill us,” Palmer told me.
But the official media narrative that has emerged over the past 24 hours on the attempted and deliberate assassination attempt of Republican members of Congress is a journalistic Rorschach test of deflection, double standards, non sequiturs, hot takes, fake news, and revisionist history.
The media gaslighting of this incident follows just days after the same media gaslighted last year’s Orlando Pulse nightclub attack, which I wrote about here at PJ Media on Monday:
One Year After #PulseNightclub Attack, @orlandosentinel Gaslights Omar Mateen's Motive https://t.co/pqWqJshLsH via @pjmedia_com pic.twitter.com/d444v7DOfE
— Patrick Poole (@pspoole) June 12, 2017
The media hot takes began early after yesterday’s attempted assassination:
https://twitter.com/pbolyard/status/874977295546580992
Now we see the media this morning framing the attack by blaming Republicans, and namely President Trump, for contributing to a “climate of hate” that has resulted in an incident of “blowback”:
Mika: I’m Not Blaming Trump “Squarely” for Scalise Shooting, But . . . https://t.co/SDCW9M1a6m
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) June 15, 2017
Now @msnbc is blaming Trump tweets for rhetoric that led to the shooting by a twisted Bernie Sanders fanatic.
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) June 15, 2017
Incorrect facts are a forgivable part of the “fog of war” following such an incident. But even before any facts were known about the shooter, David Frum of The Atlantic was pushing out fake news:
Virginia:
No background checks
No licensing
No registration
No permit req’d for concealed carry of long guns
Open carry long guns & handguns— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 14, 2017
https://twitter.com/StarChamberMaid/status/874984718302945280
And when the real facts came out, they contradicted Frum’s fake news:
NBC News: James T. Hodgkinson had a valid Illinois firearms license when police were called to him shooting in the woods in March.
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) June 14, 2017
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/875029280463482880
There were even more gun-related fake news “facts”:
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/875346166023680001
Last night’s New York Times editorial on the shooting is a particular piece of work:
Opinion: America’s lethal politics https://t.co/Fa6RKq1ZaM
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 15, 2017
NY Times is kinda meh about tying political climate to today's mass shooting
Totally sure Sarah Palin incited Loughner back in 2011 though pic.twitter.com/pbqqoDxYpW
— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) June 15, 2017
The New York Times Runs The Worst Editorial In Human History, Blames SARAH PALIN For Giffords Shooting AGAIN https://t.co/kO9HDBy2oK pic.twitter.com/a8fbb2rQMw
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 15, 2017
Tucson shooter was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed grammar was a conspiracy. NY Times is completely wrong. https://t.co/FJSvT5RqY3 pic.twitter.com/C5kSfcYzzU
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) June 15, 2017
The Times editorial was even too much for some of their media colleagues:
I wrote this at the time. Jared Lughner was not a right-winger. At all. NYT editorial is perpetuating a myth. https://t.co/sKzBdXA6YS https://t.co/aNQRuWTwya
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) June 15, 2017
Unbelievable. The Times is still peddling this despicable lie. https://t.co/TyGFopPt6m pic.twitter.com/2wibKRbmnQ
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) June 15, 2017
The next paragraph is even worse. This is shockingly dishonest. https://t.co/TyGFopPt6m pic.twitter.com/mEG6kKHGvB
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) June 15, 2017
Don’t let facts get in the way of a good media narrative:
And Loughner was a schizophrenic who was obsessed with Giffords three years before that map which nobody has any reason to believe he saw
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) June 15, 2017
The Washington Post has weighed in, too:
Opinion: The baseball shooting wasn’t an attack on the GOP. It was an attack on all of us. https://t.co/g1akRLolGe
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 14, 2017
This is a paragraph that was actually written in response to the attack on GOP representatives in the Washington Post. pic.twitter.com/BQI08h5xJY
— China is Responsible for COVID-19 (@JohnEkdahl) June 15, 2017
Our own PJ Media New York editor delivered the verdict on that one:
Fact check: Pants on Fire https://t.co/QFHiXNeeiq
— David Steinberg (@realDSteinberg) June 14, 2017
And after the attempted assassination of political officials, we had the immediate call by the media nannies to not politicize the incident:
Note the media has two modes for coverage of politically motivated shootings: 1, a rightwinger did it, or 2, we must not politicize this /2 https://t.co/SYEKHe6oX3
— Ursus, Director of Weather and Banana Programming (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 14, 2017
Don't politicize a politically motivated assassination attempt!
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 15, 2017
"How dare you politicize a shooting where the shooter shot a politician because of his politics."
— Razor (@hale_razor) June 14, 2017
After months of promoting fake Trump-inspired hate crimes, the media totally has the moral authority to tell us to not politicize a shooting
— Scott Greer (@ScottMGreer) June 14, 2017
Yeah, I remember something about that:
Life comes fast if you're @robertmackey pic.twitter.com/zAvLvsOWoq
— Patrick Poole (@pspoole) March 3, 2017
A corollary to “don’t politicize this tragedy” is to blame Republicans for “overreach”:
Rush to blame Dems captured by @Hadas_Gold https://t.co/orJrDQjG2b. It is not so far being echoed by most White House aides
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 14, 2017
How the left-wing media is less upset about Republicans getting gunned down by a leftist than they are about the reaction to it. https://t.co/zOu013Nk9X
— jon gabriel (@exjon) June 14, 2017
Republicans are shot by a committed leftist, and the story is still Republican overreach. https://t.co/t69VmqS9sc
— jon gabriel (@exjon) June 14, 2017
https://twitter.com/Heminator/status/875078841202614272
Served with generous helpings of double standards:
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/875084344293023745
https://twitter.com/molratty/status/875097326062153728
The thing about standards is they're supposed to stay the same pic.twitter.com/PUdMUrGO78
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) June 14, 2017
The media's big problem right now is that everyone in the country knows how they'd be covering this shooting if the parties were reversed.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) June 15, 2017
And if all else fails, bury the facts:
He was literally in a Facebook group called "Terminate the Republican Party" and you don't want to connect that dot? https://t.co/CdTNCPqrNr
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) June 14, 2017
I'm confused why @CBSNews deleted this tweet. This is literally what the Governor said. pic.twitter.com/Xf3uCGYG6V
— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) June 14, 2017
America narrowly averted one of its biggest political tragedies since the Kennedy assassination yesterday, one that could have altered the political landscape forever.
The lives of some of the victims still hang in the balance, and some sober reflection seems warranted:
Alexandria shooting is a warning about turning politics into a religion, like the totalitarian Left. https://t.co/2GYwH0YPwb @PJMedia_com
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) June 14, 2017
But the media in its ongoing state of hysteria and “China Syndrome” meltdown seems to make such sober reflection following this attempted assassination impossible. If this tragic incident has shown anything, it’s that the media’s ability to get away with their gaslighting without receiving pushback is diminishing.
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