Chris Hayes and Ali Velshi were expecting a sinister display.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at MSNBC’s recent coverage of President Trump and cover more media misses.
MSNBC Looks for Trump’s ‘Dark’ Energy
MSNBC hosts Ali Velshi and Chris Hayes were shocked over the weekend that the military parade honoring the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary in Washington, D.C., didn’t give off “dark, malevolent energy.”
“When we talk about the sort of tension in the country . . . you and I have both been at Trump rallies, those can be very tense, a kind of, I would say, like kind of a dark, malevolent energy, sometimes in them, not always, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the energy on the Mall today, which I think is a good sign, right?” Hayes asked Velshi.
“Correct. You’re really correct about that, Chris, and it’s something we were watching for. I’m just sort of surprised by the number of people who were at the front of the parade watching, cheering, and then would come and ask to take a selfie. This is a very different, this is a very different mood here. People seem to be going out of their way to say that they’re here to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday,” Velshi said.
Velshi added that while there was still politicization at the event — one person walked by and said “Trump 2028!” — it is “not dark, it’s not tense, it’s not amped up.”
“It’s different from covering a Trump rally,” he added of the military parade, which coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday.
Elsewhere on MSNBC, contributor Eddie Glaude, a Princeton University professor, was discussing dark energy as it relates to Trump supporters and the ICE raids in Los Angeles.
During an appearance on Deadline: White House, Glaude said the immigration raids in L.A. reminded him of a time when the nation was divided between “slaveholders and slave catchers.”
“Folk have their red meat, now that they’re going to see the spectacle of quote, unquote ‘L.A. on fire,’ which is not right. What will happen? Will that activate the ugliness that got him in office in the first place? Will folks now declare why they love him?” Glaude questioned. “Because we know that he’s always good on the immigration question.”
“This reminds me historically of — it’s not a clear analogy — but when the nation, when these political factions divided the nation between slaveholders and slave catchers, when they made everybody with the Fugitive Slave Law, all of us had to, if someone escaped all of us had to return that particular piece of property to these folks, with ICE running around L.A., forcing people to make choices,” Glaude said.
“Will they protect their friends, their neighbors, their family members? Will they take, will they confront these folks?,” he asked.
“Here’s the thing: Donald Trump, as a political charlatan of sorts, gives Americans license to be who they really are. They don’t have to pretend and when you see what they really are, who they really are, these people who support him. Right? It’s dark,” Glaude said.
Of course, there is no comparison to be made between people who have knowingly entered the country illegally and people who were enslaved.
After celebrity Kim Kardashian said in recent days that immigrants in L.A. are suffering “fear and injustice” because of ICE raids in the city, DHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said, “@KimKardashian, which one of these convicted child molesters, murderers, drug traffickers and rapists would you like to stay in the county?”
And while MSNBC didn’t see a dark energy at the military parade, The View, ahead of the event, said it was similar to something one would see in Russia or North Korea.
“I don’t understand this,” co-host Sara Haines said Friday. “I can’t be the only one when I think of military parades, I think of Russia and North Korea and visuals of people saluting and doing things and that’s just not what I think of when I think of the U.S.”
“Senator Rand Paul said we were always different than these images and we were proud not to be that,” Haines added. “And then you also think about the conversations about cutting waste and here you’ve got like how much is this going to cost? $40 million.”
Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, recently told NBC News he would not have chosen to put on the military parade.
“I’m not sure what the actual expense of it is, but I’m not really, you know, we were always different than, you know, the images you saw in the Soviet Union and North Korea. We were proud not to be that,” Paul said.
Haines, for her part, said the parade “harkens” back to “World War II propaganda.”
“Who thinks, let’s cut all the aid and the school lunches and throw a parade that harkens World War II propaganda and just throw the money that way,” Haines said. “I can’t keep up with all of it.”
As CBS News reported, Trump’s military parade is not the first in U.S. history, though they are rare. “‘There are historical comparisons to be made, but size and scale is tremendously different,” Arizona State University history professor Brooks Simpson told CBS News.”
Headline Fail of the Week
CBS News faced backlash over the weekend after publishing a story that seemed more like an advertisement: “’No Kings’ day merch for sale on Amazon, Temu and other e-commerce sites.”
“No Kings” protests occurred across the country on Saturday, with protesters describing the demonstrations as a “day of defiance” against President Trump and his administration as they call for Trump to be “dethroned.”
After receiving criticism over the story, CBS broadened its scope, changing the headline to, “Retailers cash in on Army’s 250th anniversary and “No Kings” protest.”
An editor’s note added to the story read: “This story has been updated with more information about the range of items for sale.”
Media Misses