Media just can’t stop telling falsehoods about Trump’s views on race

The media just can’t stop lying about President Trump’s views on racism and hatred.

The media has been awash in praise for the joint statement that former presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush put out on Wednesday concerning the violence in Charlottesville. The statement was viewed as a rebuke of Trump’s statements.

The Dallas Morning News headline said, “Former presidents Bush rebuke Trump’s neo-Nazi stance.”  The New York Times called it “a rare joint rebuke of Mr. Trump.” The New York Times praised George W. Bush for leading the condemnation of former KKK leader David Duke in 1991, and then accuses President Trump of being “equivocal in his public or private statements against white nationalists and other racist organizations.” The Times alleged Trump is “embracing” America’s “racially charged past.”

{mosads}This all comes despite the Times’ Julie Davis quoting Trump as saying last November, “I disavow and condemn them,” in reference to a neo-Nazi conference in Washington, D.C.

But the strange thing about the Bush statement is that it so closely parallels Trump’s own statements. They wrote: “America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms.” How is that fundamentally different than Trump saying on Saturday, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides…. It has no place in America.”

What about Trump’s statement on Monday? “As I said on Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America. And as I have said many times before, no matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws.” Or Trump’s statement on Tuesday? “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”

Is the only difference that the Bushes condemned bigotry “in all forms,” whereas Trump condemned it “on many sides”?

In any case, Black Lives Matter is a racist group. Even the left-wing Huffington Post has called out its most visible members as “directing violent, hateful language towards people with white skin.”

Furthermore, even media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times have compiled evidence from a broad range of sources that both sides instigated the violence.

Left-wing BuzzFeed News described how fights started with “two people, one from each side, screaming, goading each other into throwing the first punch.”

Left-wing protesters acknowledged, “Before the attack occurred, we chased the Nazis out of their park, removing their platform.” A University of Virginia student described events this way: “I was on Market Street around 11:30 a.m. when a counter-protester ripped a newspaper stand off the sidewalk and threw it at alt-right protesters. I saw another man from the white supremacist crowd being chased and beaten. People were hitting him with their signs.”

The left-wing The Nation noted, “black-helmeted white supremacists — members of the Traditionalist Workers Party, Identity Evropa, American Vanguard, and other hate warriors — commanded the steps at the southeast corner of the park, repelling attempted incursions by Wobblies, communists, and a multiracial cast of irregulars.”

Trump certainly has never condoned white supremacist or Nazi bigotry. He has never condoned their violence. Indeed, there is no equivocation in any of his statements. He has consistently called for the laws to be properly enforced and announced on Monday that the U.S. Department of Justice would be investigating civil rights violation charges in the case.

The media should be investigating why both state and city law enforcement stood down. The police did not contain the far-left militant group Antifa in its own area. Why isn’t the press demanding answers from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Democratic Mayor Mike Signer? Why did the two consider it acceptable for this violence to take place?

The media’s false statements have gotten completely out of control. President Trump has never said that there were “very fine people” among the white supremacists and Nazis. Maybe Republicans, such as the former presidents, should actually listen to Trump’s statements before they comment on them.

John R. Lott, Jr. (@JohnrLottJr), Ph.D. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and author, most recently, of “The War on Guns” (Regnery, 2016).

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.