Fake News: Media misrepresents Trump’s attack on MS-13 gang members as slur on all illegal immigrants

ABC, MSNBC, The New York Times, and other media outlets on Wednesday and Thursday distorted President Trump’s attack on MS-13, the brutal gang of illegal criminals, into an attack on “undocumented immigrants.”

“Trump Calls Some Undocumented Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant” was the graphic on MSNBC. This Times headline read: “Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant” – so, there’s the narrative.

“I do want to say to be fair to Trump he was referring to gang members MS-13 and not just undocumented immigrants. And that’s an important distinction,” stated MSNBC’s Peter Wehner during the airing of the biased graphic.

Trump’s comments came as he was talking to law enforcement officials at the White House. Fresno County, California Sheriff Margaret Mims told the President of the difficulty of going after illegal gang members. She explained: “There can be an MS-13 gang member I know about. If they don’t reach a certain threshold, I can’t tell ICE about it.”

“We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — we’re stopping a lot of them,” Trump said in the Cabinet Room during an hourlong meeting that reporters were allowed to document. “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people, these are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”

On Good Morning America, Thursday, reporter Cecilia Vega chided: “I got to say immigrant communities hear this as a dog whistle and say this is downright dangerous language.” She blamed Trump for not being precise: “The President didn’t make it clear whether he was talking about gang members or about immigrants in general.”

photo/ Gerd Altmann via pixabay