The headline of the May 6 CNSNews.com article by Edwin Mora blares: “Pelosi: It’s Cheaper to Treat Teens for Drug Use Than Interdict Drugs at Border.” The statement is repeated in the first paragraph of Mora’s article.
Mora and CNS are twisting Pelosi’s words. They have framed the article to suggest that Pelosi doesn’t support interdicting drugs at the border and endorses drug use among teens, which of course is completely false. Mora knows that too — but he doesn’t report the full truth until farther down in the article. It’s not until the ninth paragraph that he puts Pelosi’s words in their proper context: “To solve the drug problem, she said, requires reducing demand.”
And it’s not until the very end that Mora notes the actual question he asked of Pelosi: “Madame Speaker, the Justice Department has reported that one in five teenagers used illicit drugs last year and that most of those drugs came across the border from Mexico. Are you committed to sealing the border against the influx of illegal drugs from Mexico and, if so, do you have a target date in mind for getting that done?”
It’s a gotcha question, its goal to illogically equate not “sealing the border” with endorsing teen drug use. Such a question penalizes any nuanced answer, and that’s exactly what Mora does to Pelosi.
The dozens of outraged comments at the end of the article show that Mora’s word-twisting had the intended effect of inflaming anti-Pelosi hatred.