The media tried to come up with its own version of the Obama Churchill story by going with an obvious racism smear. How better to hit Trump than by claiming that Martin Luther King's bust had been taken down. The timing was perfect. It had just been MLK day. We were headed for February.
The story couldn't get any better. Except it was a lie.
Thanks to White House Chief of Staff for this wonderful picture of the MLK bust in the oval pic.twitter.com/Lzgj6RljvI
— Sean Spicer (@PressSec) January 21, 2017
Then he mentioned a false pool report from a White House correspondent who sent out incorrect information that a statue of MLK, prompting stories in several outlets. A pool report said the statue had been removed from the Oval Office, when in fact the reporter later said it was merely being obscured by a door and an agent when Trump brought in media members in while he signed documents.
'So Zeke – Zeke – from Time magazine writes a story about, [saying] I took down. 'I would never do that because I had great respect for Dr. Martin Luther King.'
'But this is how dishonest the media is,' Trump complained. 'Now, big story. But the retraction was like, where? Was it a line?'
Trump's attack on the press was echoed by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who mentioned the same incident and accused reporters of 'sowing division about tweets and false narratives.'
Spicer took to the White House briefing room Saturday to rail against what he called ' a particularly egregious example in which a reporter falsely tweeted out that the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. had been removed from the Oval Office.'
'After it was pointed out that this was just plain wrong, the reporter casually reported, tweeted out, and tried to claim that a Secret Service agent must have just been standing in front of it. This was irresponsible and reckless,' Spicer said.
Not from the media's perspective. They believe that they are responsibly pursuing a left-wing agenda by telling any lie that they can. Fake news is ubiquitous because as I wrote earlier, the media is not in the news business. It's in the narrative business. The MLK story fell through but they have plenty more where that came from. The plan is to keep throwing mud on the theory that something will eventually stick. That's all the media can do now.