When Donald Trump sought this week to lump white supremacists and those protesting against them into the same bag, he triggered a political firestorm with Republicans and Democrats warning “both sides” could not be treated alike. He also added fuel to an increasingly urgent debate over whether the US media can uphold its tradition of so-called…
Left vs. Right Bias: How we rate the bias of media sources
The very first sentence of this piece reveals your own bias. Trump was asked if he was “lumping white supremacists and those protesting against them into the same bag,” and he specifically said he wasn’t.
Here’s the exchange at the press conference:
Trump: “And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
Reporter: “You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly? (inaudible) understand what you’re saying.”
Trump: “No, no. There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people – neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them.
“But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know – I don’t know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit.”
So he’s saying — point blank — there were white supremacists and Nazis there, who were “rough, bad people,” but there were also others who simply showed up to protest.
The Antifa group assaulted at least three journalists at the Charlottesville rally — but somehow pointing that out equates to a false equivalence?
It’s sad a group supposedly dedicated to exposing media bias is biased itself.