In breathless, panicked coverage the establishment American media heaped scorn and suspicion on President Trump’s 4th of July speech at Mount Rushmore on Friday night.
Trump’s speech in front of the South Dakota monument was followed by a dazzling firework display, when even Fox News cut away from the ceremonies to replace their coverage with talking heads discussing the coronavirus pandemic.
The New York Times rushed to label the speech “divisive” and mocked the President for what they called “using the holiday and an official presidential address to mount a full-on culture war against a straw-man version of the left that he portrayed as inciting mayhem and moving the country toward totalitarianism.”
But that view of the left is by no means a “straw man,” with recent polling reflecting that the majority of Americans do not agree with recent actions by the radical left to pull down statues of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington.
Speaking late from the mountain time zone on Friday night, Trump declared:
And his rationale for pointing such things out is objectively true on all three fronts.
Whether the influence of the Chinese Communist Party in U.S. schools; the New York Times itself founding the anti-1776 education effort called ‘The 1619 Project‘; or the commonly accepted, malign influence of Hollywood, President Trump’s assertion augurs true to most Americans.
A Washington Post headline asserted that President Trump “peddled fiction,” though their article on the speech states Trump didn’t discuss the coronavirus when in fact he did.
In truth, it is the Post – as ever – peddling fiction.
CNN called the speech “jaw-dropping” and alleged the President of the United States’ defense of monuments and American history “amounted to a culture war bonfire”.
During the speech, Trump announced the establishment of “the National Garden of American Heroes, a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live.”
The list of new statues to be erected is said to include John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson and Harriet Tubman, among others.
Despite the racial and historical mix, Time magazine hysterically accused the President of “pushing racial division,” and “flouting coronavirus rules.”
And curiously, most channels didn’t even carry the Trump speech live.
CNN stuck with fear-mongering coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, hyping the expected rise in cases while continuing to ignore the President’s hydroxychloroquine called shot and the general decline in death rates.
Even Fox News pivoted away both before and after Trump’s speech, despite the festivities surrounding the event including live music, speeches from other political figures, and a fireworks display.
Conservative platforms One America News, America’s Voice, and the Right Side Broadcasting Network covered the full event, in addition to CSPAN. But it does reflect incredibly poorly on the state of America’s establishment media that they are all delighted to use their front pages to trash the event – even to lie about it – but won’t actually show the event to their viewers and readers.
If ever the mainstream media were unclear as to why they deserve the “enemy of the people” moniker slapped on them by President Trump and his supporters, last night provides a potent reminder.
Hiding July 4th celebrations from their audiences while falsely reporting on them after the fact is probably something everyone could have predicted of the media by this point.
But that doesn’t make it okay. Nor does it make it any less pathetic.
