NYT and CNN won't acknowledge FEMA dismissal proved Trump charge accurate
Journalists have made a blood sport of “fact checking” Donald Trump. But sometimes they prove fast and loose with the facts themselves. Or they fact check things that are really opinion and can’t objectively be true or false.
Other times Trump is proven correct but journalists still insist on calling him a liar.
But who are the real liars these days? Especially because one definition of lying is withholding part of the truth.
Facts are pesky things, the saying goes. But when the facts are suddenly on Donald Trump’s side, CNN and the New York Times are not bothered by them, preferring to drop them down the memory hole.
In one recent case, they called Trump a liar for something he said that was later proven true. But they still have yet to acknowledge his vindication, failing to revamp their now debunked fact checks.
Consider what went down with Trump and his take on the federal response to Hurricane Helene that devastated several Southern states in late September. The storm hit Florida, North Carolina and Georgia, causing massive flooding and driving people out of their homes.
Many of the areas hit were Republican strongholds.
In his September 30 Truth Social Post Trump said of North Carolina, “I was also going to stop into North Carolina, which has really been hit hard. I have a lot of supplies ready for them, but access and communication is now restricted, and we want to make sure that Local Emergency Management is able to focus on helping the people most affected, and not being concerned with me. I’ll be there shortly, but don’t like the reports that I’m getting about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. MAGA!”
This was a serious accusation of government malfeasance and bias. And certainly plausible. Or at least plausible to any good reporter who should always be skeptical of government behavior and is aware of the history of the federal government’s long history of malfeasance toward disfavored groups. Remember the Tuskegee Experiment?
More recently, the federal government has been known to show bias against conservatives. During the Obama Administration there was a scandal amid revelations that the IRS was targeting conservative and tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status with extra requirements and scrutiny.
But CNN and the New York Times rushed to label Trump’s accusation as false without really knowing whether it was true or not. Their attitude seemed to be that the government can do no wrong and anything Trump says must be a lie because orange man bad.
CNN.com published a fact check on October 6 headlined “Trump cites baseless ‘reports’ about anti-Republican bias in the North Carolina response.”
How did they know whether or not the reports were baseless? Did they bother to do any independent investigation? It does not seem that way.
Putting the word reports in quotes to suggest Trump fabricated them is another way reporters make assumptions.
Fact-checker Daniel Dale wrote that, “It’s unclear what ‘reports’ Trump might have been getting, but there was no apparent basis for the underlying claim that the Biden administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper were maliciously abandoning certain communities out of partisan bias. Trump provided no evidence when a reporter pressed him later in the day.”
Similarly, in an October 4 article titled “Trump’s False Claims About Federal Response to Hurricane Helene,” New York Times fact checker Linda Qiu said Trump had “falsely accused” the Biden Administration of “neglecting areas that had voted for Republicans.”
But again: How does Qiu know whether this accusation is false or not? She seems to simply be relying on the word of politicians and government officials, taking whatever they say at face value in her rush to brand Trump a liar.
Qiu wrote, “While some have criticized the federal response and emergency responders faced obstacles in reaching some areas, there is no evidence that the Biden administration was purposefully ignoring the needs of Republican areas. In fact, Republican governors have praised the Biden administration for its response, and FEMA has designated counties in several states — including dozens won by Mr. Trump in the 2020 presidential election — as eligible to apply for federal assistance.”
But, lo and behold, in early November, Trump’s accusation was proven correct in a big way. The conservative Daily Wire reported that a FEMA supervisor told employees working in Florida to “avoid homes advertising Trump” in a “best practices” advisory to workers.
Supervisor Marn’i Washington “relayed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, internal messages viewed by The Daily Wire reveal.”
The practice was widespread and emblematic of the exact bias Trump had asserted. Leif Le Mahieu wrote that “Government employees told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped from the end of October and into November due to the guidance, meaning they were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance. Images shared with The Daily Wire show that houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote in the government system messages such as: ‘Trump sign no entry per leadership.’”
Washington was fired by FEMA the next day.
But the New York Times and CNN.com articles covering her dismissal did not mention that she was busted for doing exactly what Trump claimed. Why was Trump’s vindication not fit to print?
Trump’s words were obvious context for the dismissal of Washington. But the self-styled guardians of the truth omitted the truth about Trump.
And the fact checks, as of this writing on December 30, have still not been revised. So that means CNN and the New York Times are now peddling falsehoods about Trump in the very articles in which they call him a liar.
That is a neat trick and one of the privileges of today’s era of consequences free journalism. Lawyers can get disciplined or have entire cases thrown out if they put anything false in court papers. But for many journalists writing about Trump, falsely decreeing him a liar is the highest and most noble form of truth.
The authors of the CNN and New York Times articles did not respond to requests for comment.