With the midterms closing in and fears of a red wave, red ripple, red trickle, or red anything mounting on the Left, Evan McMullin, Mike Lee’s opponent for the Senate, has filed a lawsuit. The suit is against Salt Lake television stations and the conservative PAC The Club For Growth. At issue is a segment in a political commercial by the PAC, in which McMullin appears to say that the Republican base is racist. McMullin says that the 2017 quote in the video was edited to convey the wrong impression. The clip was from an appearance on CNN following the incident in which a white supremacist drove his car into a group of protestors in Charlotte, N.C. It is worth noting that then-president Donald Trump was roundly criticized by the mainstream media for speaking out against “hatred, bigotry, and violence” without specifically singling out white nationalists. And it is also particularly germane to the conversation that Trump’s remarks were edited by the mainstream media and the news was routinely slanted to make him appear to be racist, incompetent, and dangerous.
During the CNN spot, McMullin said that there was an element of the GOP base that is racist. You can watch The Club for Growth ad below:
Host Rod Arquette on KNRS radio in Salt Lake, who has been watching and analyzing Utah politics for years, noted on-air that the quote was edited from McMullin’s original statement. But he also rebuked McMullin’s assertion of racism. Arquette said that he has heard Republicans, including Lee, issue statements condemning racism on many occasions. In a response to an inquiry from PJ Media, Arquette said:
Evan McMullin needs to learn that there is this thing called “free speech” in America. The people at Club For Growth are jumping for joy today. People are talking about this ad because of McMullin’s lawsuit. McMullin has been calling Donald Trump a racist for years so I guess the more than 70-million people who voted for Trump in 2020 are racists as well.
At least one TV station had already pulled the ad at McMullin’s request. The websites for KSL-TV and Deseret News, both subsidiaries of Bonneville Communications, did not post anything regarding the controversy as of Tuesday evening. However, KUTV and Fox 13 both had stories about the issue. Fox 13 had McMullin’s original quote:
“Not all Republicans, of course, are racist. I was raised by Republicans who are not at all — and who welcome Americans of all backgrounds and are not at all alike. But there is an element of the Republican base that is racist, and our leaders are afraid to stand up to them, because if they do, if they do so, they’ll be criticized, and they’ll potentially lose votes, and so they don’t do it.”
Mike Lee’s campaign issued a statement that it was not responsible for the ad and that it is prohibited from working with PACs.
A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics survey last month gave Lee a 2% lead over McMullin in the polls.
Related: No Surprise: ‘Liz’ Romney Stabs Mike Lee in the Back
While The Club for Growth did edit the quote from McMullin, which may not have been above board, progressives have been doing the same to conservatives for years. They have not only edited quotes and taken them out of context, but they have also leveled every foul smear they can think of at their opponents and skirted the truth, to put it mildly, when it suited their needs. Let us not forget Joe Biden’s now infamous “red speech” and the violence that followed in its wake. Let us not forget how the words “MAGA Republicans” have unapologetically dripped from Biden’s lips on more than one occasion. Progressives are all too happy to play the game when it suits them but are the first to cry “foul” when the tables are turned. The Daily Beast has made very serious accusations against Herschel Walker, far more damning than that of one sneaky edit, and he has vowed to take legal action. And if McMullin can sue over a five-second edit, then Walker is entitled to his day in court.
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