Ken Berwitz
When Donald Trump told us that thousands and thousands of Muslims celebrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks, most mainstream media accused him of making the story up.
Then newspaper articles started surfacing which referenced the celebrations – not the number of people Trump claimed, but that the celebrations took place.
Fascinatingly, one of them, serge kovaleski – the reporter with a physical disability that Trump disgustingly mocked when talking about him – who specifically wrote that there were celebrations in his Washington Post article of September 18, 2001, now says he doesn\’t remember them happening, and in any event he said “people” were celebrating, not Muslims. Maybe he thought they were Irish or Italian people.
In addition, an article in the New York Post, and a news report by CBS reporter Pablo Guzman which talked about people seeing celebrations have also been unearthed – and, I expect, there are plenty more where that came from.
So what we have here is Donald Trump – a man who is, to say the least, prone to exaggeration – accurately telling us there were celebrations, but probably overstating the number of people involved.
If media only said he claimed there were more celebrants than there actually were, they would be fine. But every media venue which claimed that the celebrations did not happen at all – and that is almost all of the ones I saw after Trump made his claim – were wrong.
What\’s more, since they certainly had access to archives which would have shown that there were reports of such celebrations, it is hard not to conclude that this was a deliberate attempt to call Trump a liar about something they knew was not a lie.
Isn\’t it about time some of them admitted Trump was right about the celebrations taking place…and maybe even apologizing for claiming they did not?
Don\’t count on it happening, though. Being a “journalist” in today\’s world means never having to say you\’re sorry – even when you\’ve invented your story.
