And so does CBS.
As I mentioned in a post some time ago, I record CBS Sunday morning mainly so I can watch the beautiful nature shots right at the end, but also so I can watch some of the other good segments. I rarely watch the political parts, but when they said, on the June 9 show (which I watched on June 30) that they would interview Jim Acosta of CNN, I was curious. I wanted to see him in a non-threatening environment and see how it came off.
I was stunned when, at the 2:15 point, Acosta said, “The man who sent the pipe bomb to CNN and other Democratic targets . . .” Wow! That’s quite an admission.
Also, CBS played along with Acosta’s distortion of what Trump said about the protestors at Charlottesville. Watch the CBS segment at about the 4:45 point. CBS’s narrator says, “A major turning point, says Acosta, was the President’s reaction to a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017.” Then they show Trump saying, “But you also had people who were very fine people, on both sides.” Acosta and CBS make it look as if Trump is saying that there were fine people on the white supremacist side. He didn’t. Here’s the whole segment. Watch the whole thing but if you’re in a hurry, watch it from about the 1:58 point on. By the way, I’m not a fan of Trump, to put it mildly, but on an absolute scale, I thought this was one of his finest and most focused performances.
READER COMMENTS
A
Jul 1 2019 at 5:27am
I thought the implication was that Trump praised people who marched with white supremacists, not that Trump singled out white supremacists for praise.
James Hanley
Jul 1 2019 at 9:20am
That’s one way of reading it,and I can’t say it’s wrong. But given Trump’s propensity to use his words to avoid taking a strong stand on so many things, I took it as his hesitancy to appear to criticize his supporters while giving himself space to clso he was not including the violent people in his claim. Contra David, I didn’t see it as a good moment for him, but a typical one.
Mark Z
Jul 1 2019 at 10:56am
I’ve gotten the impression that there is no distinction being made between white supremacists and non-white supremacists who happen to be marching with them. In any case, there’s something to be said for the argument that it makes overly generous use of ‘guilt by association.’ It doesn’t seem far-fetched (in fact for a large rally it seems almost inevitable) that some ‘fine people’ (e.g., just ordinary conservatives) showed up to protest in defense of the statue, not intending to associate with or even aware of the expected presence of white supremacists.
I don’t think his remarks on the rally were good ones, but I was surprised to learn, long after the fact (because no one ever included the full remark) that he specifically excluded the white supremacists from his category of fine people. I remember thinking, “if he’d stop being so stubborn and just offer a ‘clarification’ he quell most of this controversy,” only to later see that he clarified his position immediately, which in my opinion makes the remark rather uninteresting.
I guess it all depends though on what one has to do to automatically qualify as a bad person. If everyone at the rally can be characterized as “marching alongside white supremacists” then can everyone who attended an Occupy rally be said to have “marched alongside communists?”
Richard A.
Jul 1 2019 at 9:29am
The full “Russia are you listening” statement. Notice what the popular media shows is just that segment that occurs after 40 seconds. I have yet to see real proof that Wikileaks got the DNC emails from Russia. Russia bashing of today reminds me of the Japan bashing of the 80s when much of the popular news media and opportunistic politicians grossly exaggerated Japanese protectionism.
Rob Rawlings
Jul 3 2019 at 7:01pm
Trump said there were fine people on both sides and that amongst those at the rally ‘there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee’. The “unite the right rally” was explicitly white supremacists and I find it hard to believe (and see no evidence from the footage) that fine people ‘protesting very quietly’ were represented in any significant way. What are “fine people” doing at a white supremacists rally any way ?
I therefore find Trumps claim very disingenuous and disagree that this in any way is some kind of “fine moment”
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