The Washington Post Article That Almost Wasn’t
Corporate media has been pushing this hard on Trump. Accusing him of “mocking” a disabled person in front of hundreds while televised. It makes absolutely no sense to do that if you’re running for president and you know that a dozen cameras will be on you. Completely illogical. So what’s REALLY going on here?
First let’s establish what corporate media is. CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, etc. Are owned by extremely large and powerful multinational corporations that have their own interests. I’ll say it again, their own interests. Not yours or mine. We see that by their initial refusal to report on the Wikileaks scandals, then they barely mention it because everyone else is talking about it. Why? Because it benefits them to suppress information that damages a candidate that they PROFIT from. So already we know who they want in office because it benefits their corporation. The truth is disregarded.
On November 21st, Donald Trump made a statement that some people in New Jersey were celebrating when 9/11 attacks happened. He said “I watched when the world trade center came down. And I watched in Jersey City, NJ thousands of people were cheering” The next day he was interviewed by former Clinton Communications Director and DNC operative George Stephanopoulos, who now works as Chief Political Correspondent for ABC NEWS. Trump said to him, “There were people cheering on the other side of NJ, I know it might not be politically correct to talk about it but they were cheering.”
Stephanopoulos: “You know, the police say that didn’t happen and all those rumors have been on the Internet for some time. So did you misspeak yesterday?”
Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler vehemently slams Trump as being an essential liar and making up the story in order to frame Muslims in a negative light.
“ This is a bit like writing about the hole in the doughnut — how can you write about nothing?”
The corporate media, especially the Washington Post, went after Trump with a vengeance, claiming that this was not true. Accusing Trump of being “delusional” and even “fact checking” Mr. Trump with their own facts. The Washington Post claimed that Trump’s statement was completely false.
Since the story broke though, there have been more witnesses that have come forward that corroborate Mr. Trump’s story including police officers .
“But in a new examination by NJ Advance Media, a police officer who worked on 9/11 and residents on the outskirts of Journal Square say they witnessed small pockets of people celebrating before the groups dispersed or were broken up by authorities.”
“When I saw they were happy, I was pissed,” said Ron Knight, 56, a Tonnele Avenue resident who said he heard cries of “Allahu Akbar” as he shouldered his way through a crowd of 15 to 20 people on John F. Kennedy Boulevard that morning. (NJ Advance Media)
Why would the Washington Post or Glenn Kessler ignore first hand accounts of residents of New Jersey supporting Donald Trump’s story?
When confronted about this story and how the Post essentially called him a liar, Trump referenced a story by their very own Serge Kovaleski.
Serge Kovaleski, who now works for the New York Times, wrote an article for the Washington Post September 18, 2001. He writes:
“In Jersey City, within hours of two jetliners’ plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.”
Trump says he saw the story televised, and the Washington Post themselves reported it. Two independent sources of media, on the very same topic.
Not only did Glenn Kessler look like an idiot, he was being an irresponsible reporter by claiming to fact check Trump’s story without doing any actual “fact checking”. To add insult to injury, his employer had a story on the same issue.
The internet began to notice the witch hunt, and began to question Kessler.
Kessler attempted to defend himself by bringing up the semantics of the story in question. But in his original article, he states that nothing happened, not that there wasn’t many people there.
August of this year, Kessler doubles down in a new article but this time, he was going in for the kill. Changing the narrative and tempo:
As most of us are aware, special thanks to Glenn Kessler, that Trump was now “mocking” Kovaleski. This kickstarted a firestorm of corporate media coverage which seemed to never end, and the hate poured in. The memory of Kessler’s gross error about New Jersey suddenly vanished and a new story was abuzz.
Kessler was successful in diverting his shortcomings as a reporter, to Trump in what appeared to be mocking. Corporate media paints us a very vivid picture:
But the truth is much more boring and doesn’t sell many newspapers or subscriptions.
According to ScienceofPeople.com use of hand gestures is actually integrated with our psyche.
“Hand gestures make people listen to you. Spencer Kelly, associate professor of Psychology and co-director of the Center for Language and Brain at Colgate University found that gestures make people pay attention to the acoustics of speech. Kelly said, “Gestures are not merely add-ons to language — they may actually be a fundamental part of it.”
The most popular TED Talkers used an average of 465 hand gestures
But that’s not the fun part. Trump was complaining how Kovaleski suddenly “did not remember” details of the article. Who really remembers the week of 9/11 anyways, am I right? Either way, Kovaleski was hesitant to be candid with the story.
Whether the Post was placing undue pressure on Kovaleski or threatened him, is uncertain. Either way, the Post was almost successful in disguising the fact that they misrepresented claims that Trump’s comments on New Jersey was false.
Donald Trump does not have a history of disrespecting people with disabilities. In fact, he has been found to be extremely supportive of those who are disabled.
It’s unknown the intent behind Kessler’s articles regarding Trump and the New Jersey incident, debating history rather than policies. Who was 100% accurate and who was 98% accurate seems trifling in the scope of globally impacting policies the POTUS may adopt. The media it seems, has not been held accountable for it’s latest round of antics. Arguing semantics rather than the pursuit of truth.
I give Glenn Kessler 5 Pinocchios for his coverage of Trump and the New Jersey 9/11 celebrations (or lack thereof)
