Everything Wrong with The Atlantic's Hit-Piece On President Trump
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The Atlantic released a hit piece on President Donald Trump that is tragically absurd. It alleges that President Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in 2018 because he didn’t want to mess up his hair and makeup, and he had no interest in honoring “losers.” It reads like bad fanfiction from a deranged Trump-hater. Worst of all, the so-called sources are all anonymous. This is a bad day for journalism for a couple of reasons.
It’s already been debunked
The piece from The Atlantic begins:
“When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.”
This is verifiably false. Internal documents from the Navy show that, yes, the trip was cancelled due to rain. The helicopters couldn’t fly him, and the Secret Service thought it would be too difficult to secure the president in case of a crisis.
The document is also corroborated by an unlikely source: John Bolton. He wrote in his memoir about this day. Bolton has also admitted that he didn’t hear President Trump make any disparaging remarks about the troops, but he does say he wasn’t with him all day.
Other Trump officials were quick to go on the record debunking the story, including people who were part of the discussion or at the president’s side.
Here is a Twitter thread with more officials denying the allegation.
Media-Democrat Strike Team
This report is a recycled story from 2018. It apparently received no real traction, and it’s being rehashed 60 days from an election.
It is curious that the article posted around 5:30PM on September 3, and by 7AM the next day, there was an ad airing on MSNBC. I’ve never had to buy an ad, but they would have had to read the article, come up with the idea, gather people for it, film it, edit it, put it through approval (which can be a headache, I know from experience), and buy the spot for it. I suppose it’s not impossible, but it’s a tight deadline. It suspicious.
Also, Sahil Kapur of NBC is reporting that a Democratic super-Pac is launching a $4 million ad campaigns in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania featuring a veteran who is switching from Trump to Biden. “New buy seeks to capitalize on The Atlantic’s piece on his remarks about those who died in war.”
If you were paying attention to 2016 Podesta email’s that Wikileaks dropped, you’d know that the media coordinates with Democrats. Of course, anyone with eyes can see the mainstream media is pulling for Biden. At a press conference on Friday, the first reporter asked what Biden thought of the condition of Trump’s soul. These aren’t serious questions you would ask a presidential candidate, especially when press conferences have been so rare.
Biden has no way of knowing this story is true, but he’s cut a campaign ad with these alleged Trump quotes at the graves of fallen soldiers. It’s tacky, but Biden has been lying his entire campaign regarding the “Fine People Hoax.” Why wouldn’t he stoop this low?
Anonymous Sources
Anonymous sources should really be a last resort, but it’s become a crutch during the Age of Trump. Journalism is going to live beyond the Trump presidency, unless they kill it first. The author of the piece, Jeffrey Goldberg was asked on CNN why people didn’t want to go on the record over such serious allegations toward the president. He unenthusiastically claims that he tried, but unnamed sources have reasons. Goldberg listed one: “They don’t want to be inundated with angry tweets and all the rest…”
Who on earth would care about mean tweets from a few Trump trolls when a leaker could have fame and a lucrative book deal? There is no true sacrifice for outing yourself as a Trump-hater to the media. Unless there’s a strategic move to stall the big reveal, it doesn’t make sense.
AP and other sources have “confirmed” the story, but they’re anonymous sources confirming that anonymous sources said something, not that they’ve independently verified the story actually happened. As the Intercept pointed out, this is a new deceptive tactic by the media.
Jennifer Griffin of Fox News was the anchor who “confirmed” the story. John Roberts of Fox News, however, spoke with two people who were in the meeting for the cemetery trip, and confirmed from sources who were part of that discussion that Zach Fuentes, advisor to Chief of Staff John Kelly, made the call. Roberts also brought up the allegation of President Trump not wanting to mess up his hair, and noted that he was with the president the following day, in the rain, at another cemetery paying tribute to the fallen.
Lack of Credibility
The Atlantic isn’t the most credible news source. For example, a few weeks ago, one of their writers claimed to be an eyewitness of a cop shooting an unarmed black child and getting away with it. The Federalist investigated and found that was false.
Regarding this particular story, Jeffrey Goldberg could have reached out to other people who where present on that day and would have gone on the record, such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders or John Bolton, but that would have compromised the story he was trying to tell. Goldberg also does not mention documents that easily refute his story.
But some people are blinded by their ideology. In 2018, Jeffrey Goldberg hired Kevin Williamson, a longtime writer for The National Review, and then immediately fired him when leftwing critics inside the paper and on Twitter outraged over controversial abortion comments. Williamson told Glenn Beck in an interview that he warned Goldberg that a firestorm would happen as soon as he announced, but Goldberg didn’t take him seriously. He thought his magazine was more tolerant than The New York Times. He was obviously wrong.
Laurene Powell Jobs is the majority owner of The Atlantic, and she is a Biden mega donor. The Daily Caller reported that she gave over $1.2 million to the former Vice President and other Democrat candidates and groups since 2019.
Plausibility
The Atlantic tried to link the legitimacy of these anonymous claims by pointing out past remarks made by President Trump regarding the late Senator John McCain. He famously said John McCain is considered a hero because he got caught and said he prefers ones who didn’t get caught. This statement caused and uproar across the political aisle. It was offensive and inappropriate, but it was also a joke. To be more accurate, it’s a Chris Rock joke. President Trump is known to punch hard and even punch down, but does he normally use his bully pulpit to beat down on someone for no reason? And even though his comments about Senator McCain were wildly inappropriate, he maintains large military support because he does indeed support the military, and most can accept that his comment was personal and not philosophical.
What about Trump attacking “Gold-Star families,” like the Khans? Trump created problems when he went after them, but the Khans did go after him. The media pulls a game on the public when it comes to Trump. For example, when Trump called Omarosa a “dog,” the media obsessed with the fact he attacked a woman of color. Never mind that Omarosa is literally famous for being a TV villain. But they never attack Democrats for going after black supporters of the president in a similar fashion. When President Trump attacked Serge F. Kovaleski for backtracking on a story he reported, the media focused on Trump attacking a disabled man. In fact, the manipulation of this particular story is why Brandon Straka of the #WalkAway movement left the Democrat Party.
The allegations against the president sound like they were manufactured or interpreted by a very bad writer. Trump comedy, for example, is terrible because many of his critics are so blinded by hate that they can’t understand him. Comedy requires a level of honesty. As Scott Adams, author of Dilbert noted in a periscope, the writer is missing Trump’s signature: the joke.
Is it plausible Trump would mention he wouldn’t want to ruin his hair and makeup? Yeah, as a joke. Is it plausible President Trump called dead soldiers “losers and suckers,” and that was the reason he skipped out on going to a cemetery with other world leaders? I think not, especially since it’s debunked.
It’s not that the quotes are unfamiliar to the president’s vernacular, but the presented context and intent are OOC.
Media’s Pattern of Trump Hoaxes
It’s a good hoax because enough people might believe it, and it may only take a small percentage to sway an election. Some people still believe Trump was a Russian agent, some still believe President Trump called Neo-Nazis “fine people,” and some believe he made fun of a man’s disability. These are false, but the media and Democrats pushed them regardless.
Remember when the media pushed the lie that Trump called Mexicans “animals” when he was specifically referring to MS-13? Remember when NBC News claimed Trump called Robert E. Lee “incredible” at a rally in Ohio? Have you noticed fact-checkers are saying Joe Biden isn’t going to ban fracking, even though there are multiple videos of Biden promising to do just that?
If the media can push lies that happened right in front of your face, imagine the danger they can provide with anonymous sources.
There’s always a possibility that some of these elements could be true, but The Atlantic isn’t practicing responsible journalism. For the sake of the future of journalism, they need to do better.
The media and many Democrats have bought the hype of Trump being a dictator, but their fictionalized worldview of Donald Trump didn’t materialize outside the borders of their delusional minds.