We told you on Friday about how and why the media suddenly decided to return to the Obama birther story. It wasn't because it suddenly became relevant again. It wasn't because Trump brought it up. And it certainly wasn't because any new information came to light. The media suddenly started asking Trump about this again for one reason and one reason only: Trump is soaring in the polls and they're panicking, looking for a way to save Hillary.
So they decided to bring back to life one issue that they were sure they could hang on Trump in a damaging way. Let him say he doesn't think Obama was born in the U.S., they attack him for being a crazy conspiracy theorist. Let him say he was, they attack him for his "flip-flop." They returned to the issue because they figured Trump couldn't wriggle out no matter what he said.
Checkmate. Or so they thought.
Instead, Trump brilliantly played them by announcing he would make a live statement on the issue, then trolling them into giving love coverage of a 30-minute long event in which Medal of Honor recipients sang Trump's praises, only to wait until the very end when Trump suddenly declared that yes, Obama was born in the U.S., and furthermore, "Hillary started it and I ended it."
Now that was of course a reference to what we've already heard many times before, and what Rob recounted nicely on Friday, that the birther story did in fact begin with Hillary campaign operatives Mark Penn and Sid Blumenthal in 2008 - long before Trump ever talked of it. This sparked some very predictable knee-jerk reactions from the press, particularly the Washington Post, which insisted flat-out that this was "false."
This is not the first time that Trump has accused Clinton of sparking speculation over Obama’s birthplace, an assertion that has been repeatedly disproved by fact-checkers who have found no evidence that Clinton or her campaign questioned Obama’s birth certificate or his citizenship.
But that narrative collapsed quickly, as later in the day, former McClatchy D.C. bureau chief Jim Asher - who is very liberal, by the way - revealed that Blumenthal personally pitched the birther story to him back in 2008:
So basically the media just made a sloppy assertion it really couldn't back up - that no way, no how, no never did Hillary's campaign ever raise the birther matter - because they had to protect their narrative that Trump is the racist conspriacy theorist and Hillary is pure as the wind-driven snow on this issue. When it turned out the media's sloppy assertion was about as flimsy as a thing can be, did they admit they were wrong?
Let me show you something. I got into a Facebook debate about this on Friday with two liberal journo types. The main one to pay attention to is Ron French, who is a longtime Michigan journalist and is currently the senior writer as the "centrist" Bridge Magazine. (I use the scare quotes because they claim to be centrist but if you read their material I think you would come to a different conclusion.) The other key player is Hugh McDiarmid, a liberal activist whose father of the same name is the retired lead political columnist for the Detroit Free Press. I once briefly syndicated a column by the younger Hugh at the old North Star Writers Group syndicate.
They are scoffing at the idea that it could possibly matter that, contrary to media assertions, someone from Hillary's campaign did in fact bring up the birther issue in 2008. Watch how the exchange goes:
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My expectation is that the media will drop the birther story quickly because it's blowing up in their faces
You see the technique that both French and McDiarmid try to use here? Once it gets established that yes, someone from Hillary's campaign did indeed raise the issue, they first try to deny that Hillary is responsible for that. French, who either doesn't know who Blumenthal is or disingenuously pretends not to know, tries to explain this away as some mere "supporter" that Hillary couldn't possibly be expected to control.
When I point out that Blumenthal was being paid by Hillary and is well known as her main hatchet man, they then try to change the subject to it being over a decade ago - as if that weren't the whole point, that they brought it up long before Trump did, the very thing the media claimed was "false."
Then they try to say it couldn't be true because a reporter for Politico didn't find any evidence of it, which is just like the Post asserting the same thing because "fact-checkers" didn't find any. The media think that if they don't find out about something, it didn't happen. Turns out they just didn't ask the right people, and if you ask me, they probably didn't try very hard to find out because their motivation was to be dismissive of the whole thing.
And finally, when it becomes impossible to deny that this did in fact happen, they try to change the subject again, this time to whether it's "equivalent" that Blumenthal tried to sell the story to the media whereas Trump openly talked about it personally.
(About that, by the way, which shows more character? If you personally talk in public about something or if you send an operative to quietly pitch the story to journalists behind the scenes? Hmm?)
The thing I find astonishing here is not that their liberal bias shows. That's to be expected. It's that if you're supposed to be a serious journalist (and in fairness to McDiarmid he is not a working journalist, whereas French is), it should matter to you when a fact that was being asserted turns out to be completely wrong. The media simply blew it with their assertion that Hillary's campaign never pushed this thing. When confronted with evidence that they had blown it, you'd think the media would at least deal with the fact of their failure. But not in this case: Instead, they try to change the subject and pretend that what they were asserting eariler didn't really matter - because the whole thing wasn't about what did or didn't actually happen. It was about damaging Trump and trying to rescue Hillary. And when you're caught in a lie in the pursuit of that objective, shift your tactics and try something else.
My expectation is that the media will drop the birther story quickly because it's blowing up in their faces, which is what they deserve because they're the ones who tried to resurrect it for baldly partisan purposes. But they're going to try to get Trump on something else, not only because they're determined to defeat him but also because they're monumentally pissed off about the way he trolled them on Friday.
Remember, every time they're sure they've got him, you know what happens.
We told you on Friday about how and why the media suddenly decided to return to the Obama birther story. It wasn't because it suddenly became relevant again. It wasn't because Trump brought it up. And it certainly wasn't because any new information came to light. The media suddenly started asking Trump about this again for one reason and one reason only: Trump is soaring in the polls and they're panicking, looking for a way to save Hillary.
So they decided to bring back to life one issue that they were sure they could hang on Trump in a damaging way. Let him say he doesn't think Obama was born in the U.S., they attack him for being a crazy conspiracy theorist. Let him say he was, they attack him for his "flip-flop." They returned to the issue because they figured Trump couldn't wriggle out no matter what he said.
Checkmate. Or so they thought.
