Conservative Commentator Says Mainstream Media Needs ‘Xanax’
Todd Starnes is accusing the “Mainstream Media and Democrats” of having “gone bat-crap crazy over Donald Trump” and his comments calling for Second Amendment violence against Hillary Clinton.
“I mean it’s full-blown, head-spinning, Linda Blair-projectile vomiting kind of crazy, folks,” Starnes, a Fox News columnist and contributor, told his viewers (video above) and readers Wednesday. Calling it “full-blown liberal media bias,” Starnes compares Trump’s call for violence – which was so offensive and outrageous the Secret Service was forced to issue a statement – to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s comment she wishes Trump would just disappear.
“Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren told MSNBC that she wanted to make Trump ‘disappear.’ Was that a threat? What exactly did the senator mean by wanting to make Trump disappear?,” Starnes falsely claimed. “Where was the Mainstream Media outrage to such a nefarious suggestion? Where was the wall-to-wall speculation, smothered in righteous indignation? There was none – nary a peep,” he lamented.
Why?
Because Starnes was lying.
Here’s what Senator Warren actually said, per Politico:
“I wish Donald Trump would just disappear. Close down his Twitter account, drop out of the race and I’d be the happiest girl on the face of this Earth.”
Memo to Todd Starnes and his apparently non-existent editors and fact-checkers: there’s a difference between calling for Second Amendment violence and wishing someone would disappear.
Starnes is a serial liar, yet Fox News lets him get away with it, and has for years.
Starnes used to just stick to made-up “religious freedom” issues while attacking big-city liberals and LGBT people, but recently he has expanded his territory in the Fox News universe and now is a full-fledged political commentator who continues to give news stories his same unique treatment.Â
What does that mean?
Let’s harken back to a few weeks before Christmas, 2013, when Starnes told his readers and listeners at Fox News (he used to be mostly just a Fox News radio guy) that a Georgia public school was confiscating Christmas cards. Starnes, who attended college in Georgia, surely knew the powder keg he was lighting, and so he did it.
“For as long as anyone can remember, teachers at Brooklet Elementary School have posted Christmas cards in the hallways outside their classrooms – until Monday,” Starnes wrote in a post titled, “Georgia School Confiscates Christmas Cards.”Â
When boys and girls returned from Thanksgiving break, they discovered that their teachers’ Christmas cards had been removed – under orders from the Georgia school’s administration. Robb Kicklighter’s wife is a third grade teacher at the school. He said many teachers are disgruntled by the school’s decision to confiscate the Christmas cards. “They took down the cards so the kids can’t see them,†he told me. “Some of the cards had the word ‘Christmas’ and some had Nativity scenes.†The Christmas card censorship comes as the Bulloch County Board of Education cracks down on religious expression in their schools.
Was this true?
Of course not.
Starnes didn’t bother to actually do the work of a journalist, he did the bidding of his buddies of the religious right.
What was the truth?
The cards belong to school staff and “due to a legitimate, personal privacy concern raised by one of the school’s staff members,” the school moved the cards into the the staff office so “so that the staff member could still participate in the tradition,” according to Principal Marlin Baker.
In other words, it was none of Starnes’ business. (Nor yours, nor mine.)
And what happened?
“Unfortunately, today the school was terrorized by an intentional and vicious dissemination of untrue information that disrupted the good work going on inside,” Principal Baker and the school system said in a statement. “Fox News Radio Commentary Host Todd Starnes, acting on misinformation that neither he, nor his media outlet corroborated with the school system or Baker, misreported a story about student Christmas Cards being removed from the school. Baker did not receive any questions from the local community either.”
Let’s do that again: “the school was terrorized by an intentional and vicious dissemination of untrue information” by Todd Starnes.
Fox News, with or without Roger Ailes, is still Fox News.Â
EARLIER:
Dan Rather: ‘No Citizen Who Cares About the Country and Its Future Can Ignore What Trump Said’
Why Trump’s ‘Second Amendment’ Attack on Clinton Is Even More Dangerous Than You Might Have Thought
NRA Launches $3 Million Anti-Clinton Ad Buy on Heels of Trump Call for ‘Second Amendment’ Violence
‘It’s an Assassination Threat’: Democratic Lawmakers Slam Trump for ‘Second Amendment’ Remarks
Secret Service Is ‘Aware’ of Trump’s ‘Second Amendment’ Comments Against Clinton
Former CIA Director Weighs in on Trump’s Call for ‘Second Amendment’ Violence Against Clinton
Clinton Campaign Responds to Trump’s Call for ‘Second Amendment’ Violence Against Her
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