Thread by @JewhadiTM

.@IlhanMN Happened Because Media Chose to Lie to You pjmedia.com/davidsteinberg… #SelfEvident via @pjmedia_com

Three years ago, most American newsrooms picked Ilhan Omar -- despite her crawling Jew-hatred and evidence of an extensive criminal past -- to be the transcendent face America needed to fight bigotry and federal corruption.

Reporters apparently chose to lie about Omar to help birth a more trusting country.

Perfectly irrational idiocy. Legacy newsmedia, decayed, perhaps brought itself final ruin by getting exactly what it wanted.

Omar was perceived as a best-case image for shepherding progressive causes against President Trump. Ilhan Omar’s individual character, however, was openly trending towards worst-case.

She had written anti-Semitic statements indistinguishable from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. She had disturbing associations with Islamic terror-tied groups.

Sources within the Minneapolis Somali community presented evidence, including a video, of the “East Africa Team” members of @IlhanMN’s campaign openly threatening local Somalis who may have released negative information about her.

Then came the harder evidence of corruption: Publicly available state records, viewed along with her own confirmed, time-stamped social media posts, suggested a breathtaking spree of state and federal felonies.

The social media posts, visible to anyone who cared to investigate, were rapidly being deleted from Omar’s confirmed accounts.

Best-case image, worst-case character: Would legacy outlets publish the facts, then chase more?

While self-righteously condemning Trump’s “fake news” jab, would editorial decision-makers see an illusory greater good in faking it?

The Star Tribune finally -- after three years of prodding -- mentioned the disturbing, overwhelming fact pattern pointing to Ilhan Omar having been on an eight-year felony spree.

Charmed with credentials, political belief, and cultural approval above fact-finding, it seems they chose to fawn over a seemingly corrupt anti-Semite because her identity felt like a heaven-sent club to wield against Donald Trump.

Fittingly, the media bookended this “see no evil” period of the Ilhan Omar era with more perfectly irrational idiocy: It seems the media chose to whitewash its responsibility and duplicate the work of other reporters … to repair trust with its customers.