Thread by @DrewHolden360

🧵THREAD🧵

Another Trump-related conspiracy has crashed & burned, this one about protests a year ago at Lafayette Square Park.

We were told Trump acted like a tinpot dictator for a photo op.

But an IG investigation found that wasn’t true. I think some apologies are in order ⤵️

Let’s start with @CNN, because they’re emblematic of the trend.

The causality here is clear: protestors forced out for Trump. The rest of their reporting fits that framing.

The thing is: that wasn’t true. @Kevinliptakcnn, @MarquardtA, @evanperez, @davidgshortell, @JDiamond1

A few of CNN’s key voices chimed in along similar lines. Here’s @Acosta, running with the same point about causality that the IG report dashes.

“Just an unbelievable use of military and police force to clear out Lafayette Park protestors for a photo op”

Any follow up, @Acosta?

One of the more insidious problems of the last few years in journalism is using “fact checking” to offer commentary.

“No. They cleared peaceful protestors out of the way for a photo-op” from @ddale8 sure seem like an example of that problem.

But it wasn’t just CNN, of course. Lots of examples from @nytimes, too.

I ask this earnestly: @peterbakernyt, @maggieNYT, @katierogers, @KannoYoungs, @ktbenner, do you still stand behind this reporting? Do you think this is neutral and accurate framing of what happened?

@washingtonpost may have been the most egregious in their commentary.

They had *multiple* pieces of “news analysis” - so not opinion commentary, mind you, this is the news section - comparing the United States to dictatorships because of the incident.

But @MSNBC was pretty close behind them, both in print and broadcast. These are just a few examples.

Again, causality is clear: this thing happened because Trump wanted it to. They had a rotating series of guests on to drive the point home (more on that soon).

This narrative was omnipresent. Here’s @AP picking up the same framing, both when the incident happened and even months later: “peaceful demonstrators cleared from Lafayette Park so Trump could walk across park to church”

You may wonder what the impact of getting this wrong was.

I would recommend reading the inimitable @davidshor on polling “the real inflection point in our polling was the Lafayette Park incident...that’s when support for Biden shot up and it’s been pretty steady since”

At the risk of putting too fine a point on it: this moment, while surely not a unicausal phenomenon, represented a turning point where current President Biden overtook former President Trump in the polls.

We’ve now learned that the narrative surrounding that event wasn’t true.

Some of the about-faces on this were pretty dramatic. Here’s one example from @ABC, that elides how they could have possibly gotten the story so dramatically wrong to begin with.

@bgittleson and @JordynPhelps, what say you? Does this causality still pass muster for you?

More of the same on that front - with a little more hyperbolic language - from @USATODAY.

These from @NPR almost exactly a year apart presented without comment.

And this one from @ForeignPolicy. I don’t even know what to say.

I don’t have room for all the other bad takes but here’s just a smattering from @voxdotcom, @frontlinepbs, @kasie/@11thHour and @TheView.

And it wasn’t just the media. Plenty of Democrats across the country used this coverage as a cudgel against Trump and Republicans heading into the election.

That includes President @JoeBiden and Vice President @KamalaHarris.

@SpeakerPelosi made it a rallying cry, too, suggesting that Trump’s actions had “denied” “residents of Washington, DC” “their right to fully participate in our democracy” which beggars belief in a few different directions.

But other members of her party in the House quickly picked up the charge. Often on @MSNBC. Here we’ve got @RepRubenGallego (“a preplanned operation to incite violence”) and @repblumenauer.

Their colleagues in the Senate were even more active, led by @SenSchumer.

The framing of the protestors as peaceful is also dubious at best. Sound familiar?

@SenWarren/@ewarren needs her own specific mention, as perhaps the most outspoken member of the Senate.

She called on Barr to resign (multiple times).

And of course the commentariat got involved. I’m short on space so I’ll need to double up for some of them.

@DavidAFrench captures the (now known to be incorrect) thrust of the criticism here. @davidfrum takes it a step further in his thread.

And of course the usual suspects at the @washingtonpost opinion page, @JRubinBlogger and @MaxBoot, went all in on this one.

Given previous history, I can’t imagine there will be much revisiting.

But I think that @matthewamiller captures this phenomena best. It’s hard to get the punchy, sexy soundbite that gets you on tv without outrunning the facts, at least a little.

But when you play fast and loose with those facts, sometimes it turns out that you’re just wrong.

Getting the facts right should matter.

Don’t these outlets and individuals care about getting to the truth, particularly given the impact? Can’t people see the connection between incidents like this and declining faith in the media?

In all, this was another of now countless examples where a media narrative reflected the worldview and political perspectives of those covering it rather than the facts.

That’s bad for everyone, most of all the American people. And without changes, it’ll only keep happening.

Full report here: doioig.gov/sites/doioig.g…