The College Fix

OPINION: They think you’re stupid … and hope you’ll forget their past behavior

Academia and the mainstream media just can’t help it — they continue to make fools of themselves by pushing The Narrative in the aftermath of the Donald Trump assassination attempt.

Earlier this week, NBC News featured an article decrying the spread of online conspiracy theories regarding the July 13 shootings, noting the FBI and Secret Service have no evidence to support, for example, claims there was a second suspect involved.

The piece also rips Republican politicians like Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson for saying federal law enforcement “can’t [be] trusted”; after all, Johnson “traffick[ed] in discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and Covid.” (The story provides a link supposedly supporting its claims against Johnson, but it does no such thing.)

A search shows that Rachel Maddow’s blog (yes, I know, I know) chides Johnson for, among other things, questioning COVID vaccines and the danger posed by the pandemic itself, as well as the notion that January 6 actually was an “insurrection.”

Johnson also engaged in “ugly rhetoric” by allegedly taking issue with mass immigration and how it ultimately will alter the demographics of the U.S.

And then this pops up on Thursday: “Donald Trump Might Not Have Been Shot After All” — because the FBI director said it wasn’t clear if the 45th president was hit by a bullet or by shrapnel.

That’s right, neither the FBI nor the (now-former) Secret Service director can answer simple, basic questions from elected representatives, but Newsweek’s Khaleda Rahman, an vehemently anti-Israel “journalist” based in the U.K., throws out the chum that Trump may not have been shot … as if that somehow lessens the severity of the assassination attempt and the government’s ineptitude.

Look, I’m reluctant to defend any politician, but as post-pandemic news has slowly oozed out discrediting some of the government’s — and lapdog mainstream media’s — track record over the last four years (everything from COVID to January 6), who can blame people for not trusting what the “official” word is?

Just in case, here’s a refresher of what we were told to which our “betters” now either say “oopsie!” or ignore outright:

— Over-the-counter masks and social distancing helped mitigate the spread of COVID and prevent infection.
— The COVID vaccine not only would prevent one from getting the disease but would help prevent its spread.
— The January 6 “insurrectionists” were “a violent group of armed radicals.”
— The Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation.”

And the biggie: that Donald Trump was a Russian agent during the 2016 presidential campaign.

MORE: Cancel culture comes back to bite the Left amid posts wishing Trump was assassinated

Guess which one is on the FBI’s radar pic.twitter.com/WH1kfWj16p

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 24, 2024

This doesn’t even get into the notion of lawfare — how the Biden administration and Democrats across the country went after the 45th president by any means necessary, and the Justice Dept. being more concerned with conservative parents at local school board meetings than Black Lives Matter, antifa, and other left-wing protesters who terrorize and ransack whole communities.

In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, American University “extremism expert” Kurt Braddock (pictured) worries that Trump raising his first and yelling “Fight! Fight! Fight!” after being shot might lead to another January 6, 2021 (the paper actually says “2020” — oops), “when Trump exhorted rally-goers to ‘fight like hell’ right before people swarmed the Capitol.”

Never mind Trump told January 6 protesters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” which was withheld from his second impeachment trial (emphasis added).

Fact checkers like Snopes.com that have to concede this fact claim some of Trump’s other rhetoric could have been “condoning violence” — stuff like “Have to show strength.” Riiiiight. As if such hasn’t been commonplace political talk since time immemorial.

Which segues into Prof. Braddock’s second concern — that Republicans are “inflaming” the assassination attempt by blaming Democrats (and the media). The problem here, of course, is that Democrats have been doing just this to Republicans since at least the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing when Bill Clinton blamed conservative talk radio.

And who can forget how Sarah Palin was “responsible” for the shooting of Gabby Giffords due to her use of a political “target” ad? Y’know, just like how Joe Biden said less than a week before the assassination attempt that Democrats should put a “bullseye” on Donald Trump?

It’s going to be a looooong three months.

MORE: Media should abandon ‘objectivity’: journalism professor

IMAGES: Ron Mader/Flickr.com; American University

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