The media created a new lie about Trump and immigrants, and only AP corrected

By Katrina Trinko | The Daily Signal

If you’ve been scanning news headlines, you might have read that President Donald Trump on Wednesday called immigrants “animals.”

Here are a few of the headlines:

“During Roundtable, Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’” (NPR)

“Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant” (New York Times)

“Trump ramps up rhetoric on undocumented immigrants: ‘These aren’t people. These are animals.’” (USA Today)

Then, Mediate did a nice roundup of tweets from news outlets that also promoted the narrative:

So, between the tweets and the headlines, we have six of the biggest news outlets in the United States promoting the narrative that Trump called illegal immigrants “animals” during a roundtable Wednesday.

There’s just one catch: The president was referring to MS-13 gang members.

If you look at the full transcript from the White House, here’s what was said:

Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims: Thank you. There could be an MS-13 member I know about—if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.

Trump: We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in—and we’re stopping a lot of them—but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It’s crazy.

The dumbest laws — as I said before, the dumbest laws on immigration in the world. So, we’re going to take care of it, Margaret. We’ll get it done.

So, if you read the full transcript, it’s an extremely reasonable assumption Trump was referring to member of the notorious gang MS-13 as “animals,” not all—or many—illegal immigrants.

Yet, none of these headlines or tweets note that the “some” illegal immigrants are actually gang members.

Personally, I’d rather never call another human being, no matter how reprehensible his actions, an “animal.”

But it’s ridiculous to pretend that people scanning the headlines would have the same reaction to ““Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant” as to, say, “Trump Calls Some MS-13 Gang Members ‘Animals’ in Rant.”

Those are very different statements.

Now, the Associated Press at least has taken responsibility for leaving out context, tweeting today:

That’s good — and other media outlets should step up to the plate. Readers deserve accurate reporting from outlets that say they are objective and non-ideological, not slanted reporting that completely eliminates crucial context.

Image courtesy of The White House

5 thoughts on “The media created a new lie about Trump and immigrants, and only AP corrected

  1. The President is giving animals a bad name. He should call these ones “subhumans”, or maybe “monsters”.

  2. Listen to the entire clip please. The president was totally correct with what he had to say. Calling these people animals is an understatement.

  3. You have to love the Fake News, these fools are still blinded by the news that Donald J Trump
    is President !!

    The President was only talking about the MS13 gang, calling these hoods ” animals ” was a little
    on the delicate side in my book. These POS running around the country should be handled with
    extreme prejudice……!!

    Hey fake news keep up the good work, you make it so easy .

    • I wish you were right about fake news making it so easy. There are so many incredibly dumb people in this country….all of them Democrats….who read no further than the headlines and take what the lying media has to say as gospel. And they vote.

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