The major networks maintain silence in hopes that their socially corrosive lies will stick until November 2020.
If President Trump addresses 50,000 Indians, and the major-network news shows ignore him, does he make a sound?
This rhetorical question has real-world significance given the media’s Big Lie that Donald Trump is an immigrant-hating racist and anti-Semite. Leftist presidential contenders parrot this mendacious garbage around the clock.
“We’ve got a president right now who is a racist,” Vermont independent senator Bernie Sanders claimed September 21 in Iowa. Senator Cory Booker (D., N.J.) said in August in Las Vegas, “We have a president that [sic] contributes his bigoted, racist rhetoric.”
Meanwhile, the old-guard media cover up President Trump’s outreach to immigrants, blacks, Jews, and others whom actual bigots bash.
At least three significant events demonstrate how the big media bury Trump’s bridge-building and, thus, keep the U.S. in a divided, racially explosive rage.
On September 22, President Trump saluted some 50,000 immigrants from India and Americans of Indian descent at Houston’s NRG Stadium. Visiting Indian prime minister Narendra Modi generously introduced Trump at a gathering dubbed “Howdy, Modi: Shared Dreams, Bright Futures.”
“We have met a few times. And every time, he has been the same — warm, friendly, accessible, energetic, and full of wit,” Modi said of Trump. “I admire him for something more: his sense of leadership, a passion for America, a concern for every American, a belief in America’s future, and a strong resolve to make America great again.”
Trump’s remarks were equally positive and hospitable.
“Prime Minister Modi and I have come to Houston to celebrate everything that unites America and India: our shared dreams and bright futures,” Trump said. “I’ve also come to express my profound gratitude to the nearly 4 million amazing Indian Americans all across our country. You enrich our culture, you uphold our values, you uplift our communities, and you are truly proud to be American. And we are proud to have you as Americans. We thank you. We love you.”
“Every day, the Indian-American community is helping to strengthen our country and build our future,” Trump continued. “Indian Americans are pioneering groundbreaking medicines to save countless lives. They’re developing revolutionary technology that is changing the world. And they’re founding new businesses that provide jobs to thousands of our fellow citizens.”
Significantly, in contrast to the lies that Trump “hates immigrants,” he added: “Illegal immigration is deeply unfair to millions of wonderful, legal immigrants who work hard, pay their taxes, follow our rules, and obey our laws.” (Like Trump, Modi has his hands full on immigration policy. In fact, his critics say that he is stripping the citizenship of thousands of Muslim Indians while calling them illegal immigrants.)
This occasion in Houston was a high-water mark in relations between Earth’s two most populous republics.
Regardless, Trump and Modi’s love-in received zero minutes and zero seconds of coverage on that evening’s NBC Nightly News. However, America’s highest-rated news program for the coveted 25-to-54 demographic devoted two minutes and 35 seconds to correspondent Sam Brock’s report on the 25th anniversary of The Shawshank Redemption.
Likewise, as the Media Research Center reported, ABC’s World News Tonight totally spurned Trump’s Indo-extravaganza. However, it focused for one minute and 45 seconds on Katie, a border collie that was lost in Montana and found, alive, 57 days later.
Football eclipsed that night’s CBS Evening News.
On September 10, President Trump spent 30 minutes before the 2019 Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Conference in Washington, D.C. Trump updated black educators and scholars on his concrete steps to boost these 101 campuses.
“For more than 180 years, HBCUs have strengthened our country and called America to greatness,” Trump said. “Your institutions have been pillars of excellence in higher education and the engines of advancement for African-American citizens.”
Trump explained that, among other things, he extended Pell Grants to summer school, which many HBCU students attend. He directed NASA to seek HBCU attendees interested in space careers. He asked businesses to develop apprenticeships for HBCU enrollees. And, on Feb. 17, 2017, in his presidency’s first month, Trump opened a White House office to shepherd these initiatives.
Trump added: “Every day of my presidency, we’ll strive to give every child, of every background and every race, religion, and creed, the best chance to reach that beautiful American Dream.”
Here, too, all three evening-news shows entombed this story. Instead, ABC spent 15 seconds on the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders doubling their pay. CBS delivered 22 seconds on the medical benefits of twice-weekly naps. And NBC broadcast one minute and 34 seconds on a 9-year-old Ohioan who was “lunch-shamed” at his school.
Last spring, I described for NRO another example of Big Media deviousness. On May 2, just five days after a Jew-loathing gunman fatally attacked Southern California’s Poway Chabad:
The president hosted a National Day of Prayer ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. He said: “We will fight with all of our strength and everything that we have in our bodies to defeat anti-Semitism, to end the attacks on the Jewish people, and to conquer all forms of persecution, intolerance, and hate.”
Trump welcomed Poway’s rabbi, Yisroel Goldstein. He said, “I’d like to thank our dear, honorable Mr. President for being, as they say in Yiddish, a ‘mensch par excellence.’ Mr. President, when you called me, I was at home weeping. You were the first person who began my healing. You heal people in their worst of times, and I’m so grateful for that.” . . .
This moving story of a rabbi — with a finger freshly shot off by a deadly killer — being honored at the White House by a supposedly Jew-hating president generated exactly zero minutes and zero seconds of coverage on these flagship newscasts.
None of the three big networks spared a moment to report on the president rallying the republic against anti-Semitism. However, the CBS Evening News dedicated 22 seconds to new Scrabble words. NBC Nightly News devoted 30 seconds to Scientology. And ABC’s World News Tonight invested a full two minutes in a married couple who are scaling, essentially, his and hers mountains on opposite sides of Earth.
This third scenario is the most egregious in a truly disturbing pattern. Soon after the deadly Poway shooting, America was febrile over guns, anti-Semitism, and white nationalism. While 330 million Americans sought a sign of healing and a sense that the U.S. would not vanish in a hail of bigoted gunfire, the president of the United States provided just such words and images. His embrace of a nearly killed rabbi was America’s embrace of the Jewish people. And, as Rosh Hashanah reminds us, the rabbi’s hug of the American president in the Rose Garden confirmed that America’s Jewish citizens are as central and as vital to this nation as the White House itself.
But rather than broadcast this crucial message, just five days after bullets penetrated the Poway Chabad and its congregants, ABC, CBS, and NBC essentially censored the president’s therapeutic statements to his fellow Americans. By ignoring his words and, instead, covering Scrabble and mountaineering, the networks let that week’s coast-to-coast fear and loathing roar on. Their malicious malpractice was as revolting as a group of doctors treating a patient with a 103-degree fever. The medication that would break his fever and speed his recovery is at their fingertips. But rather than administer that drug, they left to play golf — fully aware that their patient still simmered in his own bodily fluids.
So, what explains this piercing silence?
There is a mouse-chases-cat aspect to these (non) stories. Love or hate Trump, his unifying acts are news — just as it would be if David Duke hosted a bar mitzvah reception or Louis Farrakhan emceed a whites-only beauty pageant. There is no moral equivalence between the real Donald Trump and these two hatemongers. However, the left-wing media’s cartoon character, “Donald K.K.K. Trump,” is triplets with Duke and Farrakhan. Journalists at ABC, CBS, and NBC know that surprises epitomize news, except when they make Trump look good or — especially — nonracist.
What must Trump do to generate coverage in this area? Marry Halle Berry? Marry Dave Chappelle?
Rather than give Americans this news, and confirm that President Trump is neither anti-immigrant, nor anti-black, nor anti-Semitic, the Big Three maintain a sarcophagal silence in hopes that their socially corrosive “Trump is a racist!” lies will stick until November 2020.
This is evil.