In addition to its usual dishonest media criticism and liberal-blaming, the Media Research Center latched onto a certain word immediately after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump:
- Tim Graham complained that one “raised the prospect of “retaliatory violence” based on anger at vicious criticism of Donald Trump, called it “frankly unpatriotic” to tie this, for example, to President Biden who said on July 8 that “It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”
- Curtis Houck ranted that CBS host Margaret Brennan “twice tried to have [Se. Steve] Scalise denounce Republican Congressman Mike Collins (R-GA) for having tweeted “Joe Biden sent the orders” in reference to Biden rhetorically stating earlier in the week that Trump had to be “put…in a bullseye”.
If you know your recent political history, you know what that bullseye reference is alluding to. Clay Waters went into that history in a July 14 post:
The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening reminded some news watchers of what President Joe Biden said to Democratic donors six days ago, as reported by the New York Times: “During a video call with top donors on Monday, Mr. Biden told them: “It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.”
One may scoff at the idea that a metaphorical comment like Biden’s “bulls-eye” could possibly lead to an attempted assassination of Trump – yet, in 2011 the New York Times bizarrely blamed a campaign map issued by former John McCain running mate Sarah Palin’s political action committee for the attempted assassination of Democratic Rep. Giffords of Arizona.
After the January 2011 attack on Rep. Giffords and others, the press and the Times in particular pinned the blame on a map put out by Palin’s PAC a year before, in March 2010, that included Giffords’ district marked with a “crosshair” target, a symbol that identified congressional districts whose representative voted for Obamacare.
Giffords’ shooter Jared Lee Loughner was schizophrenic, and there was no evidence he was a Republican, a Palin fan, or had ever seen the graphic. That didn’t stop the Times from imposing a “violent rhetoric” template upon a Republican.
Then-Times media reporter Brian Stelter and investigative reporter Dan Van Natta Jr. egged the media to go after Palin’s campaign map on their Twitter accounts. Van Natta linked to an old Huffington Post article on the Palin “gun sights” on Gifford’s district. Stelter threw out red meat: “For the record, there has been no mention of Sarah Palin’s target map on any cable news channel.”
He didn’t have to wait long. A front-page story by congressional reporter Carl Hulse and Kate Zernike headlined “Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics” quickly focused on Palin’s “cross hairs” map:
[…]Will the Times ever raise similar concerns about violent political tactics arising from Biden’s “bulls-eye,” not to mention any second thoughts about the “Trump is a fascist” drumbeat the press itself has encouraged for years? Will the Times voice any concerns about President Biden encouraging “stochastic terrorism” and undermining democracy, which the Times constantly accuses Trump of?
The Times did bring up the bulls-eye in a front-page story on Sunday, not as a full story supporting the blame-Biden thesis but rather in dismissive fashion, first loading up a “far-right” label to discredit the idea. The 40th out of 43 paragraphs:
Waters didn’t factually rebut any of those claims about Trump, and he, like the rest of the world, knew nothing about the shooter at the time of his post, let alone that he reads the New York Times closely enough to internalize a statement of obvious political rhetoric by Biden.
But Waters should perhaps be thanked for saying the quiet part out loud: The MRC is going to cynically exploit the Trump shooting to peddle more anti-media grudges. After all, pushing narratives is more important than sticking to the facts. Thus, the “bullseye” narrative must go forward:
- A July 15 post by Graham happily quoted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy saying, “I look at our current president that less than two weeks ago said, you put a bullseye on Donald Trump. What I’m trying to be is a fair American to tell everybody to dial back.”
- A post the same say by Jorge Bonilla groused that in an interview, Biden was “stumbling his way around the ‘bullseye’ answer.”
- Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in his July 16 hate-watch of “The View”: “Following a soundbite of President Biden falsely claiming he doesn’t use inciting rhetoric against his political opponent (he recently said to put a ‘bulls-eye’ on Trump), moderator Whoopi Goldberg (back from her latest bought of COVID) suggested the incendiary rhetoric didn’t come from her side.”
- Graham referenced an interview of Biden by NBC’s Lester Holt in his July 17 column: “To his credit, Holt focused on Biden’s fierce words, that he told his supporters before the shooting that Trump was an “existential threat” and they should put Trump in the “bullseye.” Biden said it was a mistake, and then launched into an attack on Trump, saying he had many lies in the debate and that ‘I’m not the guy who said I want to be a dictator on Day One.'”
- Daniel McCarthy wrote in his July 19 column: “When President Biden himself talks about putting Trump in a bull’s-eye, isn’t that language likely to lead to someone like Crooks actually putting him in the crosshairs?”
No mention, of course, of how the MRC tried to spin away from that Palin “bullseye” flyer back in the day; as we documented at the time, MRC chief Brent Bozell ranted that “The Daily Kos whackjob website has got targets over faces that they don’t like” — never mind that it wasn’t actually true.