Deroy Murdock says mainstream media make zero effort to cover President Trump's efforts to unify the country
Democratic 2020 candidates slam President Trump as a racist at presidential debate in Houston; reaction from Fox News contributor Deroy Murdock, syndicated columnist and contributing editor for National Review Online.
“Donald Trump is a racist.”
Democrats deploy this lie more often than commas and periods. Look no further than Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate in Houston.
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey declared: “We know Donald Trump’s a racist, but there is no red badge of courage for calling him that.” He claimed that America has “a president that [sic] can’t condemn white supremacy.”
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“Anyone who supports this [President Trump’s immigration policies] is supporting racism,” said Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind. “The only people, though, who actually buy into this president’s hateful rhetoric around immigrants are people who don’t know any.”
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas shouted: “We have a white supremacist in the White House, and he poses a mortal threat to people of color all across this country.”
“President Trump, you’ve spent the last two-and-a-half years full-time trying to sow hate and division among us,” Sen. Kamala Harris of California hectored, “and that is why we’ve gotten nothing done.”
These and other Democrats deliberately ignore the 25 or more instances in which Trump condemned racism, denounced white nationalism, attacked anti-Semitism, applauded Jews, embraced blacks, praised Muslims, and preached national unity and love among Americans, from coast to coast. I repeatedly have documented these statements, events, and actions in tremendous detail, most recently in a piece in the National Review.
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Just last Tuesday, Trump addressed the 2019 National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Conference at Washington’s Renaissance Hotel.
The president did not merely breeze by for a photo op. He spent a full 30 minutes speaking with black educators and detailing his policies to assist scholars, professors and administrators at these 101 public and private campuses – most with large, if not majority, black student bodies.
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“For more than 180 years, HBCUs have strengthened our country and called America to greatness,” Trump said. “Your institutions have been pillars of excellence in higher education and the engines of advancement for African-American citizens.”
Trump celebrated distinguished HBCU alumni, including such noted Americans as educator Booker T. Washington, the Tuskegee Airmen who helped win World War II, civil rights leaders Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and others.
Trump specified the steps that he and his administration have taken to advance HBCUs, including the following:
Many HBCU students attend summer school. HBCU presidents appealed to President Barack Obama for eight years to allow year-round Pell Grants for college students. Obama didn’t lift a finger. Trump approved this in less than two years and gave HBCU students fresh financial aid options. Trump added: “I signed legislation to increase federal funding for HBCUs by a record 13 percent.” (Fiscal hawks might bristle at that number, but no one can call such a spending hike bigoted.)
The Trump administration forgave the debts of Dillard, Xavier and other New Orleans-area HBCUs, which have struggled since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
The White House has pressed NASA to recruit HBCU students interested in space careers.
The Departments of Labor and Education are collaborating with HBCUs to expand apprenticeships for their students.
Forty students have been chosen as the 2019 White House HBCU Competitiveness Scholars.
In his fifth week in office, Trump explained: “I signed an executive order to move the federal HBCU initiative to the White House, right where it belongs.”
These and other Democrats deliberately ignore the 25 or more instances in which Trump condemned racism, denounced white nationalism, attacked anti-Semitism, applauded Jews, embraced blacks, praised Muslims, and preached national unity and love among Americans, from coast to coast.
These and other pro-HBCU reforms unfold just steps away from the Oval Office, not in some far-flung federal outpost.
Beyond this, Trump repeatedly spoke about national unity, including when he said: “Every day of my presidency, we’ll strive to give every child, of every background and every race, religion and creed, the best chance to reach that beautiful American Dream.”
These are the words of a racist?
Naturally, this huge story generated tremendous attention among the Old Guard media. Wrong!
Trump’s half-hour address garnered exactly zero minutes and zero seconds of coverage on that night’s ABC, CBS and NBC evening news programs.
Alas, Trump stomped on his own potential HBCU headlines by firing National Security Adviser John Bolton via Twitter at 11:58 a.m., just two-and-a-half hours before his speech. Still, despite that major development, ABC, CBS and NBC could have spared a moment or two to mention Trump’s HBCU presentation, at least fleetingly.
After all, the networks somehow found time for such urgent developments as ABC’s 15 seconds on the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders doubling their pay, CBS’ 22 seconds on the health benefits of twice-weekly naps, and NBC’s one minute and 34 seconds on a 9-year-old Ohio boy who was “lunch-shamed” on his birthday.
“The national news media have no interest in highlighting any facts which might undermine the ‘Trump is a racist’ narrative,” the Media Research Center’s Brent Baker observed. MRC kindly furnished this statistical confirmation of the networks’ irresponsible public affairs coverage.
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Tuesday afternoon, Trump reached out to blacks – as he has many times before. On cue, the media buried the story. And, playing their part perfectly, top Democrats two days later screamed: “RACIST!”
This is exactly why America is choking on the poison of division. And the corrupt fake news media are right in the middle of this “DJT = KKK” venom – pumping it out by the gallon.
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