MRC Calls Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Smear Merely ‘Spicy,’ Blames Media For Noticing

Just as it did with his “vermin” remark, the Media Research Center worked to downplay Donald Trump’s claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Bill D’Agostino used a Dec. 18 post to dismiss the remark as merely “spicy” and blamed the media for engaging in “Trump derangement” by noticing the offensive nature of the remark:

Monday morning on the big three broadcast networks brought more regularly scheduled Trump derangement, as anchors and reporters alike worked themselves into a frenzy over comments the former President had made at a New Hampshire campaign rally.

At issue were some particularly spicy remarks Trump had made during a campaign stop in Durham, New Hampshire:

They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world — not just in South America… They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.

The media’s reaction looked exactly like what you’re probably imagining.

On ABC’s Good Morning America, congressional correspondent Rachel Scott accused Trump of “ramping up his attacks on immigrants, using phrases that have clear ties to white supremacy and Hitler.”

Scott laid into Trump with the intensity of a grumpy hall monitor: “The former President also praising dictators. At one point invoking Russian President Vladimir Putin, using quotes from a top U.S. adversary to attack President Biden.”

The gang on NBC’s Today were more measured, with senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez describing Trump’s words merely as “controversial comments about undocumented immigrants.”

[…]

It’s a shame our Alex Christy couldn’t predict the future and extend his study of Nazi analogies into December, because these morning shows on Monday would have really juiced those numbers.

If he did, Christy would again omit the term “digital brownshirts” from his study because that’s the MRC’s favorite Nazi analogy.

Tim Graham took the “media pounce” angle in his podcast the same day:

Trump’s weekend speeches, praising dictators and suggesting waves of illegal immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America, seemed designed to stoke media outrage. On ABC’s Good Morning America, congressional correspondent Rachel Scott accused Trump of “ramping up his attacks on immigrants, using phrases that have clear ties to white supremacy and Hitler.”

Jorge Bonilla repeated the media-blaming narrative (and his “Acela media” tic) in a Dec. 19 post:

The Acela Media are still abuzz over a controversial segment of former President Donald Trump’s remarks in Durham, New Hampshire, and two of the major evening network newscasts continued to parrot Biden campaign talking points in a scramble to turn Trump into Literally Hitler.

ABC and CBS’s reports were similar on substance. Both dutifully regurgitated the Biden talking points linking Trump’s remarks to Hitler, both lamented the lack of a denunciation from within the GOP primary field that was to their liking. But ABC’s David Muir gives the game away here, revealing the purpose of the “Trump-echoes-Hitler” talking point. Watch as Muir weirdly brags about forcing Trump’s primary opponents to react:

Bonilla then tried to frame Trump’s remarks as reasonable but were taken out of context:

Reasonable persons can view Trump’s remarks -when not clipped to start right at the portion most frequently cited in these stories- and determine that the “they” in question are not illegal immigrants, but those who broke the border and enabled the inflow of millions of illegal immigrants into the country:

[…]

Regardless of your interpretation of Trump’s remarks, the full quote looks a lot different than what was represented to the public. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the hysterical overreaction to Trump’s 2015 campaign launch, and the portion of his remarks on immigration, which were spun by the Clinton campaign (and dutifully echoed by the media) as referring to ALL immigrants. Some of those same dynamics are in play here. Time has passed but the game is the same.

Clay Waters served up the “spicy” dismissal of Trump’s hateful remarks in a Dec. 23 post:

It was a triple-liberal-team up against Donald Trump on Tuesday’s edition of the taxpayer-supported PBS NewsHour with an interview segment headlined online, “How media organizations are facing the task of covering Trump’s anti-democratic rhetoric.” (Ironically, the segment on the dangers Trump posed to democracy was introduced with news that Trump had been removed from the ballot in Colorado. Who’s against democracy, again?)

Host Geoff Bennett set up White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez, perhaps the show’s most liberal reporter, to talk to leftist journalism professor Jay Rosen and Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg (who recently took over PBS’s Washington Week) about “one of the greatest challenges that journalists are facing,” how to cover Donald Trump’s campaign for a second term. You can’t treat it like it’s normal! It’s a grave threat! 

Barron-Lopez teed up her guests with Trump’s recent spicy rhetoric:

Waters didn’t explain why he’s dismissing the remark as just “spicy.” Mark Finkelstein, meanwhile, cited a CNN panel in a Dec. 26 post to argue that Trump’s just pandering to his base:

No one explained Trump’s 2016 triumph, which so confounded the liberal media, as well as did Salena Zito. She famously said that the press took Trump “literally, but not seriously,” whereas Trump’s supporters took him “seriously, but not literally.”

There was an echo of that analysis on today’s CNN This Morning. Co-hosts Poppy Harlow and Phil Mattingly were trying to understand why Trump’s fiery rhetoric, far from hurting him with Republican primary voters, seems to actually be helping him.

[…]

At least as notable as the views that Talcott and Carter expressed was the simple fact that CNN simultaneously had both on a panel. Even if this pair aren’t identified with Republican politics at this point, they certainly can understand and describe Republican sentiment without the ingrained hostility of the liberal media.

Waters would never admit that he has an “ingrained hostility” toward anyone who’s not as right-wing as him.