Take Down of CNN, Snopes, Elizabeth Warren and Every Dope On Social Media Saying Trump Lost a 1 Million Dollar Bet

I realize that I repeat this so often it has to lose meaning at some point, but the media’s handling of the Elizabeth Warren DNA story is the latest, and most obvious, example of bias and false reporting I’ve seen in some time. In the good old days – perhaps a year or so ago the @CNN misleading of purposely inaccurate reporting would be from a leaked DNA report that hadn’t been made public. They’d characterize it as they are now – as “proof” of Warren’s American Indian ancestry – knowing that we’d never see the document they were mischaracterizing in their reporting.

Those days are gone – @CNN et al are now blatantly mischaracterizing a document WE CAN READ OURSELVES in real time, without a hint of the cautious self-editing that one would expect when reporting on a public document. The message is loud and clear

The media simply doesn’t care that we know what they’re doing – they don’t care that the report fundamentally belies Warren’s claims of AI ancestry as a part of her heritage, or a racist in-law squabble between her parents’ families. They don’t care that most of us not claiming AI ancestry are statistically more likely to have more AI DNA than does Sen Warren. They don’t care that we’ve all watched the tape of Trump describing a hypothetical debate (should Warren become the Dem POTUS candidate) wherein he says he would toss her a DNA kit and offer her a million dollars if she could prove her Indian heritage.

They don’t care that we know they’ve (again) edited the context out of the sound bite to make it appear that he had actually made the offer directly. They’re not even trying to disguise their unprofessional, misleading, biased spin on a story we can all see directly in front of us, with our own eyes. Elizabeth Warren made a fool out of herself with this AI story and release of the report. Her gaslighting of the results is the story. The media’s gaslighting of the results is another story. Trump doesn’t owe her a million bucks – not only because he never offered it, but because he wouldn’t have lost the bet if he had actually offered it. She’s no more AI than most of you and I.

That’s the truth, and that should be the story.

And I swear to you that, as I write this, a @CNN panelist is saying that “President Trump is gaslighting this story – he’s trying to say he didn’t offer a million dollars to a charity of her choice when we have it on tape.” Alternate universe.

I take it back – this isn’t gaslighting. It’s worse than gaslighting. It’s straight lying – this quote is bracketed by context that directly refutes the lie @mkraju is telling here.

Trump offered nothing. He said he’d let the crowd into his plans if he ever debates Warren – he’d toss her a DNA test kit and offer her a million bucks if she takes it and it proves she has Indian heritage. The words are as clear as day. The video exists. Manu knows this.

Note how Manu and scores of others in the media are using the cherry-picked quote while editing around the context immediately preceding and following it. They know what he said – they just don’t care, as long as it – say it with me – fits the narrative.

Here’s the video. Watch it and tell me if anyone with an ounce of sense could possibly conclude that Trump was offering Elizabeth Warren a million dollars in that speech, rather than telling the audience what he’d hypothetically do if he ever debated her. https://youtu.be/iA9OAM9coS4

Think about why a journalist would do this. What would motivate a journalist to mischaracterize a statement, clip the tape, hide the context of the remark, tweet it out, and report it on television? Bias isn’t the only answer, because blatant bias goes against all journalistic principles, right? Blatant bias like what Manu’s doing here only confirms all of those horrible things Trump says about the media – it gives all of those right-wing media critics more ammunition. So why do they do it? They do it because they don’t care any more.

The anti-Trump media has become a tribe, and the tribe has collectively agreed to encourage, promote, overlook, and abide bad journalism in pursuit of the common tribal goal of denigrating Trump. There is internal control mechanism, no governor to regulate professionalism.

Nobody in Manu’s tribe will tell Manu he was showing his bias and being unprofessional here, because they all did the same thing. They all approve of how he handled it, because that’s how they handled it. Which is why it’ll happen again tomorrow.

P.S. Forgot to tell you where I initially found the video. It was from @snopes, the website that purports to act as an arbiter of truth – a governor, if you will – on disputed political and media statements and reports. They backed up Manu, Warren, et al and rated it as "True". pic.twitter.com/t71X1DhZWF

— Jason Beale (@jabeale) October 18, 2018