Reading the Far Right: Attacking the Media Since Trump's Indefensible

After Donald Trump's rally speech in Phoenix Tuesday night, which could be described as the ravings of a madman or, at the very least, a man-child's temper tantrum, not a lot of far-right pundits are stepping up to defend him. Instead, some of them are excoriating the so-called mainstream media for calling the speech what it was.

At the campaign-style rally, Trump went on a fact-challenged rant bashing the media and his critics. He claimed that he had clearly denounced racism when discussing the August 12 events in Charlottesville, Va., in which white supremacists demonstrating against the removal of Confederate monuments clashed with counterprotesters (and one of the latter was killed when a car drove into a crowd), ignoring that he actually had said there were "fine people" on both sides.

He wildly exaggerated what he had accomplished as president, falsely said CNN's ratings were tanking, and generally painted himself as persecuted by hostile media. Oh, and he said the media "are trying to take away our history and our heritage." As CNN's Chris Cillizza put it in a blog post, "You don't have to look very hard to see racial and ethnic coding in that language."

Another CNN journalist, Don Lemon, led the charge against Trump Tuesday night, saying on the air, "What we have witnessed is a total eclipse of the facts."

Lemon continued, "His speech was without thought, it was without reason, it was devoid of facts, it was devoid of wisdom. There was no gravitas. There was no sanity there. He was like a child blaming a sibling on something else. He did it, I didn't do it."

Lemon's analysis strikes us as spot on. But some on the right, who we read so you don't have to, are saying Lemon and some other commentators went too far, by questioning Trump's sanity and saying he is trying to cause a civil war.

"In all, it proved why Trump won in 2016," Matt Vespa asserted at Townhall. "It's these sorts of tantrums from the media that pushes moderates into the Trump camp and makes those already in it to dig in deeper. We went through a gauntlet of nonsense last night, with the discussions about his mental health from people who are explicitly anti-Trump. The talk about civil war was doubly insane. You want to talk crazy; please discuss ways in which you know for sure that the president wants to cause a civil war. The overreach and hyperbole just kills any legitimate criticism there might have been during last night's remarks. That'll get glossed over because apparently Don Lemon thinks Fort Sumter reloaded is upon us. It was a clown show. Period."

Townhall political editor Guy Benson, with whom we sometimes actually agree, called Lemon's remarks "an emotional, strident rant in response to another emotional, strident rant." Well, we agree with half of that. Benson also took Cecilia Vega of ABC News to task for saying Trump's speech amounted to an incitement of violence against the media -- an illegal act. Benson allowed that Trump's attacks on the media "are often overwrought, hysterical, and fact-challenged," but that Tuesday night, "he did not in any way encourage violence or criminal conduct," although he did at some of his campaign rallies.

"Vega's interpretation of his words, therefore, strikes me as reckless and misleading journalism," Benson continued. "It would be one thing to say that he created an extremely hostile environment for the media; he did. It's another thing altogether to lead viewers to believe that he may have crossed some legal line; he most certainly did not." While that's certainly critical of Vega, it's damning Trump with faint praise.

Hot Air blogger Ed Morrissey objected to this remark by Vega: "The president said that journalists hate this country." Morrissey pointed out that Trump didn't actually say that; if he had, it would have been in Cillizza's list of Trump's 57 most outrageous statements in the speech.

"He may have implied it, and his remarks are open to criticism as demagoguery and irresponsibility as they are, but first Vega has to report them honestly," Morrissey wrote. "That's precisely Trump's criticism of the media -- that they twist and misreport what he says. Trump's remarks are just that: criticism, of the same kind and even the same tenor as the media applies to him."

Well, we could argue over whether mainstream media comments about Trump are as bad as what he says about the media, but it's telling that even someone as far to the right as Morrissey called the president's statements "demagoguery and irresponsibility."

Right-wing commentator and radio talker Laura Ingraham also loved that the president got the media upset, tweeting Wednesday, "Trump shd give a national a big rally speech every week. The ashen faces on cable this morning tell you how successful it was. Very."

But a reporter at Lifezette, where Ingraham is editor in chief, acknowledged that Trump's speech was at least over the top. "Trump often went off script and relitigated, in a fashion likely to give White House staff heartburn, how the media covered his reaction to the violence in Charlottesville," Jim Stinson wrote.

"The remarks showed Trump has trouble getting off the media's narrative on Charlottesville," Stinson added. "His criticism of the media over Charlottesville is sure to keep the press commentary -- which Trump presumably does not like -- going."

Many in the far-right media, meanwhile, have continued to defend Trump's original remarks on Charlottesville, saying he was correct to criticize the counterprotesters. "Trump has been criticized for not condemning the white supremacists in his initial response to the clashes in Charlottesville. But Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution," wrote Breitbart editor at large Joel B. Pollak. His first duty was to uphold freedom of speech -- not to indulge the 'anti-fascists,' or the media who protect them by failing to report their violent tactics and totalitarian mindset. Therefore he correctly, and strongly, condemned the violence on 'many sides.'

"The fact that Trump's measured, appropriate response became a pretext for more media outrage, and nationwide protest, is further proof that the media have abandoned their own supposed principles in the service of a political agenda. They want to bring down President Trump, and negate the 2016 election, First Amendment be damned."

Well, much of that is debatable -- offering a competing message doesn't threaten the First Amendment, and even if the counteprotesters were trying to shut down the white supremacist rally, that's not the same as the government shutting it down, which would be a clear violation of the First Amendment. And, news flash, not everyone on the left or in any ideological movement agrees on everything -- some of the counterprotesters may have ideas that will strike even those on their side as bizarre -- and no one should answer hate with hate or violence with violence. But you just don't make a moral equivalence between those who support racist ideas and those who oppose them.

And speaking of racism, there is one well-known American who loved Trump's Tuesday speech unconditionally. That's Joe Arpaio, former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., to whom Trump pretty much promised a pardon, after saying earlier he wouldn't go there. Arpaio was recently convicted of criminal contempt of court for defying an order that he stop his department's infamous roundups of people he suspected to be undocumented immigrants. Targeting largely poor and Latino neighborhoods, the raids were clearly racial profiling, the U.S. Department of Justice ruled in 2011. Arpaio will be sentenced later and could face up to six months in jail, although observers doubt he will serve time.

And his record may even be expunged. "Do people in this room like Sheriff Joe?" Trump asked the rally attendees in Phoenix, which is the seat of Maricopa County. He assured them that Arpaio is "going to be just fine," although the president had promised not to do anything about it that night. Trump's advisers have advised him to hold off on a pardon until after the sentencing.

But Arpaio is grateful, both to Trump and to the sheriff's allies in the fringes of the right, such as Infowars' Alex Jones. Arpaio went on the deranged commentator's talk show Wednesday and said, "I want to thank you, Alex, and your staff, Jerry Corsi, Roger Stone, for bringing this story out and reaching the president. I supported him from, what, two years ago at the same forum that he did yesterday, and I'm with him and I'm with him to the end." Stone, like Jones, is a well-known Trump ally and conspiracy theorist, and Corsi is the man who helped sink John Kerry's presidential hopes in 2004 by spreading false allegations that the Democrat wasn't really a military hero. (Thanks to Media Matters for excerpting this from Jones's show.)

And another fun Arizona fact provided by Media Matters: Kelli Ward, who's challenging incumbent Jeff Flake (a Trump critic) for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate from the state in 2018, has close ties to Jones, Stone, and other extreme right-wingers. Read all about it at the Media Matters site.

But we'll keep reading the far right so you don't have to. We'll be back next week with more.