The press keeps gaslighting us about Trump's signature Mexico lie
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You can't tell the story of Trump's irrational border wall obsession without including the central, humiliating fact that he regularly promised that Mexico would pay for the 2,000-mile barrier. Yet that's exactly what the press is doing today: omitting thatThe press keeps gaslighting us about Trump's signature Mexico lie
You can't tell the story of Trump's irrational border wall obsession without including the central, humiliating fact that he regularly promised that Mexico would pay for the 2,000-mile barrier. Yet that's exactly what the press is doing today: omitting that defining lie about the border wall. I know this because I recently examined 16 articles that were published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN in the immediate wake of Trump's border “emergency” announcement. Combined, the pieces totaled nearly 20,000 words. How many of those 16 news articles mentioned that Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall? Only two, and those references totaled just 60 words. That's astonishing. The entire reason for the unfolding constitutional showdown is that Trump couldn't get Mexico to pay for the border wall, and then couldn't get Congress to pay for it, either. Yet in the news coverage today, there's often no mention of the origins of the controversy. Many in the press are turning a collective blind eye to the absurd genesis of the border wall story, and that helps Trump. The breakdown: I cast a wide net and collected 16 articles that were all published either Feb. 15 or Feb. 16, immediately following Trump's announcement, as news organizations flooded the zone for the big news. I looked at six dispatches from the Times, six from the Post, and four from CNN. A total of 34 reporter bylines were part of the “national emergency” reports, which included straight-up news pieces, news analysis stories, and fact-checking posts. When I first collected the stories, I had no idea how many did or did not mention Mexico paying for the wall. My hunch was the number would be low, but I was shocked when the number turned out to be two—and the two references were fleeting at best. Read more