It all started with an Associated Press (AP) tweet: “NRA bans guns at President Trump, VP Pence speeches during it’s [sic] annual meeting in Dallas.” The Washington Post jumped on it, as if it were real news, offering a misleading headline to its story: “The NRA said guns will be banned during a Pence speech; Parkland students see hypocrisy.”
This likely reflected a tweet from one of the “heroes” of the Parkland, Florida, massacre, Cameron Kasky, who is credited with founding the anti-gun group March for Our Lives. Tweeted Kasky: “The NRA has evolved into such a hilarious parody of itself.”
The Huffington Post chimed in: “NRA Convention Bans Guns to Protect Mike Pence. Parkland Survivors’ jaws drop,” while far-left Slate upped the rhetoric, also without checking the facts: “Parkland Survivors mock NRA for banning guns during the Pence speech at convention.”
Politico wasn’t far behind: “Parkland students criticize the NRA for banning guns at upcoming Pence event.” Nor was CBS News: “Parkland survivors call out NRA over gun ban at Dallas event with Pence.” The Hill couldn’t resist, tweeting, “NRA faces backlash for banning guns at NRA convention.”
When the truth about the ban came out, AP deleted its tweet, but the cat was already out of the sack. It took NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch to set the record straight. On Twitter she said:
The NRA banned nothing. The media does this every year. It’s Secret Service SOP [Standard Operating Procedure] and they supersede all … local control.
And then she pointedly rejoined that media:
Don’t complain about your eroding credibility and people calling you “fake news” when you publish things like this.
This incident hardly rates among the top “fake news” stories of recent months that were heavily propagated by the mainstream news, simply because there have been so many of them, such as:
• If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.
Then-President Obama repeated this lie on 37 separate occasions. PolitiFact, hardly the gold standard of calling out lies that go against its left-wing bias, named this statement by the former president as “the lie of the year.”
• Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!
Michael Brown didn’t have his hands up, shouting “don’t shoot” before Officer Darren Wilson, fearing for his life, shot him dead when Brown charged him (after Brown had already assaulted Wilson in his police SUV), an account verified by the DOJ through physical evidence and eyewitness testimony. But the media couldn’t have cared less.
• The Benghazi attack was inspired by an online video that offended the Prophet Muhammad (who died, just for the record, in June of the year 632).
It was a terrorist attack, and though Hillary Clinton would repeatedly push the narrative that the attack was spontaneous mob violence brought on by the video, she e-mailed her daughter the night of the attack and acknowledged that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack.
• Cuba has a great healthcare program.
So popular is Cuba that more than an eighth of the island’s population has chosen to go into exile to get away from the murderous communist Fidel Castro, guilty of torturing and killing at estimated 15,000 of his own people. As to its healthcare system, numerous visitor anecdotes talk about people begging for aid in geting care, and Rich Warner, who worked in the healthcare field in Cuba for seven years, admitted that the system lacks even basic diagnostic equipment and at times does “without electricty and running water.”
• Donald Trump can’t win the White House.
So certain was Newsweek that Hillary would win in November 2016 that it prepublished a magazine with the title “Madam President.”
***
What is certain is that if there is any chance to denigrate the hated NRA, even if the facts are wrong, the mainstream media jump like marionettes to take a shot at the five-million member pro-Second Amendment organization. The president and vice president will be well-protected by the Secret Service during the event, expected to be attended by 80,000 pro-gun Americans in Dallas, starting on Thursday, May 3 and continuing through Sunday, May 6.
Image: Screenshot from NRA website
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
