As we’ve previously documented, if it’s a day ending in “y,” it’s also one where mainstream media reporters are going to take a Republican out of context and spread fake news stories about them because of narratives and Orange Man Bad.
The most recent example of this happening was Thursday during the daily White House press briefing. The issue of whether or not public schools should fully reopen has been a hot topic of much discussion in recent days. President Trump has pushed for in-person school attendance while some governors are opting for a combination of either in-person schooling and remote/online learning, or remote instruction only.
During Thursday’s press briefing, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked a couple of different times about Trump’s stance on schools reopening. The first one related to CDC guidelines and whether or not the President would be rethinking his position once revised guidelines came out:
Reporter: On the schools: The President — the Vice President talked about some of the new guidelines or new pages of documents for CDC coming out this week. Is that still the plan? Are those going to come out this week? Is there any chance that this is being rethought at this time?McEnany: So those are CDC guidelines you’re referencing, so I’ll leave it to CDC as to when those guidelines come out. But we really would like to see schools open. As has been clear, we don’t think our children should be locked up at home with devastating consequences when it’s perfectly safe for them to go to school, as emphasized by many medical experts. So the President is very keen on seeing schools reopen. It’s the only thing that’s fair to America’s children.
It was McEnany’s response to the second question on reopening schools that sent the media rushing to their social media feeds to proclaim she suggested Trump was willing to ignore science to get kids to return to the classroom:
Reporter: Well, you talked about earlier, with school districts — what we’re seeing is more school districts — at least in Virginia, for example, last night — deciding to go online only. What does the President say to parents out there who are now going, “Okay, what do I do with my kids?”McEnany: You know, the President has said unmistakably that he wants schools to open. And I was just in the Oval talking to him about that. And when he says open, he means open in full — kids being able to attend each and every day at their school. The science should not stand in the way of this. And as Dr. Scott Atlas said — I thought this was a good quote — “Of course, we can [do it]. Everyone else in the Western world, our peer nations are doing it. We are the outlier here.”The science is very clear on this, that — you know, for instance, you look at the JAMA Pediatrics study of 46 pediatric hospitals in North America that said the risk of critical illness from COVID is far less for children than that of seasonal flu. The science is on our side here, and we encourage for localities and states to just simply follow the science, open our schools. It’s very damaging to our children: There is a lack of reporting of abuse; there’s mental depressions that are not addressed; suicidal ideations that are not addressed when students are not in school. Our schools are extremely important, they’re essential, and they must reopen.
Watch:
It was obvious listening to and reading her full quote that she was not suggesting Trump wanted to ignore science to reopen public schools for in-person attendance. Nevertheless, here’s how several news outlets and journalists reported her comments on their Twitter feeds:
Twitter user Drew Holden posted a lengthy thread documenting numerous instances of reporters and Democrats running wild with the out-of-context-quote, which you can read unrolled here.
The “stunning, jaw-dropping” fake news spread online by supposedly objective reporters got so out of hand that CNN’s Jake Tapper stepped in to correct the reporting done by many journalists, including his White House correspondent colleague Jim Acosta:
McEnany herself also weighed in to call out the false reports:
This is just another variation of the bogus “Trump is willing to sacrifice senior citizens to get the economy back up and running” stories we heard back in April, except the media are saying this time around that it’s children Trump wants to sacrifice.
Media reporters were wrong then, and they’re wrong now. Even more to the point, they just flat out lied in both instances.
I’d say “shame on them,” but I think it’s been firmly established at this point that most national media reporters don’t have any.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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