David Kupelian’s Hitler hypocrisy aside, WorldNetDaily initially covered the assassination attempt on Donald Trump something like the news organization it claims to be, with several actual news stories that combined reporting with embedded tweets (though with nods to its trademark pro-Trump bias):
- Blood on Donald Trump’s face during assassination attempt (in which Joe Kovacs quoted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stating, “The Democrats and the media are to blame for every drop of blood spilled today”)
- Trump thanks Secret Service, law enforcement after assassination attempt
- Secret Service confirms shooter dead, spectator killed
- WATCH: Counter snipers on roof see something, engage and kill shooter
- WATCH: Man outside Trump rally says he saw shooter crawling up roof with rifle
- Incredible photo catches bullet intended for Trump in mid-air
- Cop confronted Trump shooter before gunfire, another witness saw man moving ‘roof to roof’
WND also cranked out an article on Franklin Graham crediting God for not killing Trump, and another of Dan Bongino crediting Trump himself because he didn’t duck.
An article by Bob Unruh quoted a right-wing commentator doing what his boss Kupelian did:
That an out-of-control extremist tried to assassinate President Donald Trump during a campaign event on Saturday was a surprise, but it really shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise.
It’s because, “For months, politicians, the press and pundits have escalated reckless rhetoric in this campaign on both sides. That includes claims that Trump was set to kill democracy, unleash ‘death squads’ and make homosexuals and reporters ‘disappear.'”
That’s the verdict delivered from Jonathan Turley, a prominent legal commentator, constitutional expert in his testimony to Congress and law professor at George Washington University.
Unruh also jumped on the right-wing bandwagon of pretending he doesn’t know how breaking news is covered, even though he had a long career in real journalism before throwing it away to join WND:
Democrats have held a deep-seated hatred of President Donald Trump since he launched his first bid for the presidency. They manufactured the “Russia, Russia, Russia” lies, they attacked every word he said and every move he made, they schemed to create claims they would use politically for a failed impeachment-and-remove attempt. And then another.
All the while they’ve insisted over and over – and publicly – that he actually is a “Hitler,” suggesting that he must be stopped by any means necessary.
Most legacy media ideologues have been willing co-conspirators to that agenda. And over the weekend when a 20-year-old Democrat donor tried to assassinate him with a sniper rifle, the headlines stunned with their bias.
CNN, for example, wildly claimed, right after the shooting, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.”
“Falls at rally?”
Would this be because a sniper’s bullet grazed his ear and he reacted by ducking down, to take himself out of the line of fire for followup shots?
Fox News said CNN’s report was that “the former president had merely fallen off a stage.”
The headline angered conservative lawmakers, as well as others on social media, who described the headline as “conscious deception” and “disgraceful.”
As we pointed out when Newsmax and the Media Research Center did this same thing, reporting only known facts in the immediate aftermath of the shooting is the journalistically responsible thing to do — not “hatred” or “bias” — and Unruh censored the fact that CNN updated its story as more facts became known. Unruh is simply playing dumb here to appease his bosses — or he has been away from real journalism so long that he cannot recognize it anymore.