Trump slams WaPo misquoting him as a ‘media travesty,’ but the ‘real scandal’ goes well beyond

Two months later, the Washington Post issued a correction to a January story reporting that former President Donald Trump instructed Georgia’s lead election investigator to “find the fraud” during a phone call.

State officials reportedly located an audio recording of the call in a trash folder on a device belonging to Georgia Secretary of State chief investigator Frances Watson, the Post explained.

“The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source,” the correction said. “Trump did not tell the investigator to ‘find the fraud’ or say she would be ‘a national hero’ if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find ‘dishonesty’ there. He also told her that she had ‘the most important job in the country right now.'”

Trump released a statement on the correction and took it to the media for its one-sided coverage.

“While I appreciate the Washington Post’s correction, which immediately makes the Georgia Witch Hunt a non-story, the original story was a Hoax, right from the very beginning,” the release said. “I would further appreciate a strong investigation into Fulton County, Georgia, and the Stacey Abrams political machine which, I believe, would totally change the course of the presidential elections in Georgia.”

“You will notice that establishment media errors, omissions, mistakes, and outright lies always slant one way—against me and against Republicans. Meanwhile, stories that hurt Democrats or undermine their narratives are buried, ignored, or delayed until they can do the least harm—for example, after an election is over,” Trump said. “Look no further than the negative coverage of the vaccine that preceded the election and the overdue celebration of the vaccine once the election had concluded. A strong democracy requires a fair and honest press. This latest media travesty underscores that legacy media outlets should be regarded as political entities—not journalistic enterprises.”

The real travesty is what many are overlooking about the story, as explained by the Washington Examiner’s T. Becket Adams, who said “the real scandal is that a bunch of newsrooms claimed at the time they ‘confirmed’ the details of the ‘scoop’ with their own [anonymous] sourcing.”

Adams proceeded to note that this includes ABC News, NBC News, and USA Today. CNN and PBS NewsHour were also cited.

All of which makes a tweet from David Shafer, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, all the more interesting.

In effect, the party chairman laid the blame on the doorstep of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

Talk about audacity, Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler weighed in on Trump’s statement to note that the former president’s call to the Georgia Secretary of State was the article cited in the impeachment article.*

This being a separate call than the call to Watson, backed up by audio — which is not to say that the media did not mischaracterize what was said on that call.

The tweet serves as a weak attempt to deflect focus away from the real story.

Flipping the script on Kessler, The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway did a little fact checking on her own.

In another tweet, she remarked on how thoroughly we are “screwed” by a corrupt media.

“Our media are so, so, so breathtakingly corrupt,” Hemingway wrote. “They *always* mischaracterized this call — in a corrupt and fraudulent way. But to actually make up quotes in service of that? We are so screwed. By our disgustingly corrupt and unaccountable media.”

The Daily Caller’s Henry Rodgers provided the receipts to further disprove Kessler’s assertion.

The reaction to the story was pretty intense, here’s a quick sampling from Twitter:

DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW

Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!

Success! Thank you for donating. Please share BPR content to help combat the lies.
Tom Tillison

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

BPR INSIDER COMMENTS

Scroll down for non-member comments or join our insider conversations by becoming a member. We'd love to have you!

Latest Articles