As is their usual way, the mainstream media went completely bananas on Monday when they learned that a shocking (!), macabre (!), violent (!!) video was shown to people at President Trump’s Miami resort last week. Supporters of the president were gathered at the Doral resort for a three-day conference sponsored by the pro-Trump group American Priority. Speakers such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke at the event, and we’re sure a great time was had by all. Hopefully, they raised plenty of money to support the president’s reelection.
But little did they know, a controversy was building in one of the (little-visited, from what we can tell) rooms off the main ballroom.
“A video depicting a macabre scene of a fake President Trump shooting, stabbing and brutally assaulting members of the news media and his political opponents was shown at a conference for his supporters at his Miami resort last week, according to footage obtained by The New York Times,” the paper reported on Sunday evening.
Mostly because the “victims” in the meme video were displayed as media personalities and companies such as CNN, reporters came unglued to accuse Trump of fomenting violence against their sacred clan.
“Vile,” remarked ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “And dangerous.”
Karl, who doubles as the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, issued a statement condemning the video: “The WHCA is horrified by a video reportedly shown over the weekend at a political conference organized by the President’s supporters at the Trump National Doral in Miami. All Americans should condemn this depiction of violence directed toward journalists and the President’s political opponents. We have previously told the President his rhetoric could incite violence. Now we call on him and everybody associated with this conference to denounce this video and affirm that violence has no place in our society.”
NBC’s Benjy Sarlin must have come close to throwing his back out as he tried to make his case: “Some of the targets in this video were sent bombs by a Trump superfan last year and the president responded by attacking the press. Saudi Arabia killed a Washington Post columnist and the W.H. stuck by their side. His backers get the text and subtext perfectly clearly.”
Mounting the highest horse, naturally, was CNN.
“Sadly, this is not the first time that supporters of the president have promoted violence against the media in a video they apparently find entertaining — but it is by far and away the worst,” the network said in a statement. “The images depicted are vile and horrific. The president and his family, the White House, and the Trump campaign need to denounce it immediately in the strongest possible terms. Anything less equates to a tacit endorsement of violence and should not be tolerated by anyone.”
But we don’t need to endorse or tolerate the video. We don’t really need to pay any attention to it at all. The way the media has portrayed it, you’d think that Trump himself doctored the scene from “Kingsman: The Secret Service” for the fun of his supporters. At the very least, he viewed it and put his stamp of approval on it. At the very, VERY least, all the people who came to Doral for this event sat in a darkened movie theater and watched this awful clip before bursting into spontaneous applause. Right?
Well, no.
As a reporter for Reason.com pointed out, the video (among others) was played on a continuous loop in some off-the-beaten path room at the event titled “Memetics.”
“I was there,” tweeted CJ Ciaramella. “There was a room at the conference showing videos by that ‘carpe donktum’ guy. A meme art exhibit I guess. It was empty when I went in.”
He later posted a video of the room, confirming that the room was indeed “empty and weird.”
So, what we have here is a front-page NYT story about an “empty and weird” room at an unofficial event supporting Trump, at which a distasteful YouTube meme video was playing on one of the screens. Really? From THAT we’re supposed to conclude that Trump is trying to turn his supporters into terrorists against the press?
Maybe if the media would cover these stories with some measure of restraint and reason, Trump’s supporters wouldn’t hate them so much to begin with.
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