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It is safe to say that relatively few Americans still trust the establishment media. Those who are willing to seek out the truth behind the headlines know how many times the biggest newspapers and television news networks have run with stories that turned out to be partially, mostly, or entirely false. Those same people can recall the many occasions on which these media outlets concealed or downplayed real news that should have been exposed. But do reporters and editors ever create “news” stories out of nothing? The answer to that question is yes. The latest example of this is currently all over print media, TV networks, and the internet. President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to the Los Angeles riots. That’s the story – but it didn’t happen.
Trump responded, “If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it, we’ll see.” He then moved on to describe some of the violent acts that leftist rioters have perpetrated against law enforcement officers and federal agents. He did not return to the subject of the Insurrection Act, even though the reporter attempted to draw him back to it.
It isn’t a stretch to imagine that, before this press briefing even began, the reporter’s boss told him to entrap the president into saying he was ready to invoke the Insurrection Act.
“If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it, we’ll see.” Those were the president’s exact words. How else was he going to answer the question? Was he going to say, “No, I would never do that?” Of course not, because that would have been an irresponsible statement on many levels.
Still, multiple news outlets reported, “Trump threatens to invoke” or “Trump threatens invoking” the Insurrection Act. Others were more careful about how they framed it, but still, the story was out there, with the subtext implying Trump would declare martial law and make himself a dictator.
A headline from Politico stated, “Trump has floated invoking the Insurrection Act.” This is exactly how the left-wing media creates fake news. Trump did not “float” the idea at all – he merely answered a reporter’s question. Had it not been asked, the Insurrection Act would probably not have been mentioned at all. The article claims, “Trump has said he is considering” using the act. Again, fake news. That is not what he said.
To set the record straight: Has the 47th president ever flirted with the idea of the Insurrection Act? He has. Would he want to deploy active-duty military personnel onto the streets of American cities to restore law and order? It’s probably a stretch to say he would want to, but it can be assumed he is absolutely prepared to if he thought it necessary. Has Mr. Trump used the word “insurrection” in connection with the chaos in Los Angeles? He has, in the vaguest of terms.
There is nothing coming out of the White House, the Justice Department, or the Departments of Defense or Homeland Security that suggests the Insurrection Act is being seriously considered. Yet, here we are. A reporter asks a loaded question; the president gives him a straight answer – the only rational answer he could have given – and now it’s a huge media-made spectacle, and the country is supposedly on the verge of becoming a police state, which it is not. This is the state of the establishment media – the so-called mainstream media – in America today.
It is not the first time leftist Trump-hating journalists have tried to shove this particular fabricated piece of fearmongering down the American people’s throats. Back in April of this year, USA Today columnist Chris Brennan penned an invective-laden screed about Trump’s immigration agenda. The column drips with his personal animosity toward Trump. Brennan was essentially predicting the president would invoke the Insurrection Act on April 20, the day recommendations for dealing with the southern border were to hit his desk.
“Trump desperately wants to have an emergency at the border,” a subheading in Brennan’s column stated. In a nutshell, Brennan asserted that Trump was only interested in expanding his own power and would use a manufactured border crisis to do so – probably by declaring martial law.
Two months later, the very real crisis at the US-Mexico border, created by the previous administration, is over – because Donald Trump ended it. Martial law was not enacted, and most Americans approve of how the president is handling the illegal immigration problem.
Brennan, blinded by his animus for Trump, missed the mark wildly. But the media was determined to find a way to resurrect the narrative that President Trump is a dictator-in-waiting. Perhaps that’s what the orchestrated riots in Los Angeles are all about. Maybe the hope is that Trump can be goaded into invoking the Insurrection Act so that his political foes can claim they were right about him all along. They would be well advised not to hold their breath.