The media’s mischaracterization of Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech is not an anomaly

Then I watched the full address. None of it was true. “We embrace tolerance, not prejudice,” Trump said. “Every child, of every color — born and unborn — is made in the holy image of God.” He praised great black Americans including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Jesse Owens, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Muhammad Ali, declaring that “only America could have produced them all.”

Standing beneath the image of Abraham Lincoln, Trump declared, “Lincoln won the Civil War; he issued the Emancipation Proclamation; he led the passage of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery for all time.” The crowd cheered at his mention of the abolition of slavery, which got zero mentions in the coverage of his address. Trump explained that “by tearing down Washington and Jefferson, these radicals … would tear down the principles that propelled the abolition of slavery in America and, ultimately, around the world, ending an evil institution that had plagued humanity for thousands and thousands of years.” He declared, “Our opponents would tear apart the very documents that Martin Luther King used to express his dream, and the ideas that were the foundation of the righteous movement for Civil Rights.” To the Times, this amounts to “stoking racial fears to pit a white voting base against nationwide calls for social justice.”

The mischaracterization of the Mount Rushmore speech is not an anomaly. Trump’s critics in the media have fallen into an insidious habit of taking his quotes criticizing the hordes who burn buildings and tear down statues, and reporting them as criticism of “racial justice protesters.” This is dishonest. Trump has said more than once that he is “an ally of all peaceful protesters.” He’s not the one blurring the lines between violent mobs and peaceful protesters; his media critics are. They know most Americans oppose the mob but support racial justice, and so they twist Trump’s words to make it seem like he opposes both. Trump says and tweets plenty of outrageous things, but that doesn’t give reporters license to make them up.

ConservativeChick

Article URL : https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-medias-mischaracterization-of-trumps-mount-rushmore-speech-is-not-an-anomaly/