Why isn’t the Assassination Attempt on Donald Trump Bigger News?

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assassination-attempt-on-president-everettAh Washington Post, you’ve done it again. Here you have a legitimate, under-reported story, and you manage to find a way to drop in some good old fashioned radical left wing bias. From your 6/21 edition:

The No. 1 trending question related to Donald Trump on Google right now is “Who tried to shoot Trump?” Which means a lot of people don’t know the answer. Which is probably because the assassination attempt on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee hasn’t been covered as a major news story.

The answer, authorities say, is Michael Steven Sandford, a 20-year-old British citizen who was in the United States illegally after overstaying his visa. Sandford allegedly tried to pull a gun from the holster of a police officer at a Trump rally in Las Vegas on Saturday. He was arrested and later told the Secret Service that he had driven to the event from California and had been planning to kill the candidate for a year, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nevada.

News outlets have certainly reported on the incident, but it hasn’t gotten anything resembling wall-to-wall coverage.

So far, so good. Just the facts. Then they do a good job of bringing up an element of the story that I had not realized, since we got rid of cable at Chateau d’ Bob some time ago:

Cable news shows devoted little time to Sandford Tuesday morning and afternoon. Trump’s dismal fundraising report from May and his recent firing of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski received far more attention. Trump called in to the Trump-friendly “Fox & Friends” morning show and wasn’t even asked about the attempt on his life.

It’s worth noting that the real estate magnate didn’t bring it up, either. Trump hasn’t so much as tweeted about it, which suggests he doesn’t consider it a huge deal or doesn’t want to talk about it.

And why would this be? Our friends at WaPo have the answers! The article starts well enough, citing that the assailant didn’t even come close to succeeding, and cites several other instances of would-be assassins who did not become darlings of the news cycle. But being the WaPo it’s only a matter of time before they go off the rails.

From Trump’s perspective, Sandford doesn’t fit neatly into his campaign narrative. The billionaire has positioned himself as a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, so he certainly won’t use the failed assassination attempt to push for gun control. Sandford is an illegal immigrant — and Trump is all about deporting illegal aliens — but the candidate’s focus is on building a wall to keep out Mexicans and barring foreign Muslims from entering the United States. A Briton who overstayed his visa isn’t a very good poster boy for the cause.

“Doesn’t fit the narrative”. I’ll grant them that point, even if it is a shaky one. Overstaying one’s visa drops you firmly in the category of illegal immigrant, There’s no good reason for Trump to have not made this into a bigger story. The Post even posts a counter point from Hot Air:

Can you imagine the coverage we’d be seeing if someone had attempted to shoot Hillary Clinton? The same could be said if it had happened with Barack Obama in the summer of 2008. Questions would be debated on air for weeks on end about the evil lurking in the hearts of men and why someone would be so desperate to prevent the election of the first black or female president. But when someone plots for more than a year to kill Trump, travels across the country to find an opportunity and then launches his attempt, it creates barely a ripple in the media pond.

The next logical step for a journalist would be to follow up on this obvious point, no? If you guessed “no”, you were correct! The article closes by making a bizarre leap straight to pointing out that some Trump supporters on social media are blaming Glenn Beck & Brad Thor’s friendly-fire anti-Trump rhetoric and using that as the closing argument in the post.

I thought the “Maybe it was ignored because it didn’t fit the narrative” was a great angle to explore, but unfortunately the article stopped at the right side of the aisle. Maybe this would have been a better question to ask of the PR wing of the Radical Left, aka the mainstream press. The elements are certainly there for a story not fitting the narrative – a foreigner in the US illegally, weapon of choice would have been a stolen government issue gun; where have we seen this before? Kate Steinle was unavailable for comment.

If you want a more intelligent analysis of the story, click over at PJ Media, where Debra Heine asks the question, Was Trump’s Would Be Assasin Inspired by a “Climate of Hate?” This story is a textbook example of why, despite their biases, it is still useful to read the MSM. I hadn’t know that even the Trump-friendly sources were keeping relatively quiet about this story, and I’m still not sure why they did. And it’s equally useful to know that leftists who believe that they are journalists remain blissfully unaware of the biases that taint their reporting.

And to the Washington Post, Stay stupid, my friends.

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Here’s a question that could be asked; if this guy had been planning this for a year, why didn’t he have his OWN gun? After all, they are given away at every street corner, blister-packed at the checkout at Walmarts and come in unsolicited junk mail to every home… how come THIS guy couldn’t get one?

ever wonder if this was a hoax, created by the demorats? so where has this guy been living?? the post is like the slime-useless journalists. climate hate- now the new spine Brexit. Now this is where the useless media and journalistss will focus and they will blame Trump. the fool went to England in april to kiss careron’s ass and run his mouth on how good the EU was. just an matter of time when all trade and nuclear deals will blow up in the fool’s face with hilary and the septic tank drunk kerry all in line for photo op

The lie a day news is too busy pampering their favorite demac-RAT politicians pushing lies about so called Climate Change and supporting gun control to bother to listen or report the truth

@Bill: if this guy had been planning this for a year, why didn’t he have his OWN gun?
Pretty obvious that you have never been to a Trump rally, Bill.
You stand in line to get to a metal detector gate.
Then you get searched by a Secret Service officer.
THEN you get in.
Even a plastic, printed gun (3-d printed) could not get through because the physical search would find it.

Why hadn’t Donald Trump said anything about it?
Maria Bartaromo asked him when he learned about it.
Trump responded,

“Actually, I learned about it watching television. They didn’t tell me about it, and probably they’re better off not telling me about it.”

“But I learned about it watching television, and I can tell you this: we have tremendous Secret Service and we have tremendous police throughout this country, and I think they did a fantastic job. The policeman whose gun was tried to be, you know, stolen by this maniac, was really fantastic. And so police have done a great job, and Secret Service, these people are great. They don’t get the kind of credit they deserve. I deal with them all the time. I see them, I watch them, I know them and they’re terrific, terrific people.”

Good answer.

Asked specifically about reports that the man had overstayed his visa, Trump commented,

“Well, that’s what’s happening. I mean, look, we have no law, we have no order when it comes to many things. I mean, we’re just talking about immigration.”

“Overstaying visas is a whole part of it,” Trump said, speculating that there are “millions” of people currently overstaying their visas in the United States. “We have no idea who’s in our country. You’re going to have a very rude awakening one day in this country. We have no idea who’s in our country. “

So, if asked, he DOES comment on that aspect of illegal immigration.

As to ”chipping” US visas for visitors, the US already has biometric chips in those visas.
What is needed is a locator chip that FINDS the individual after he overstays his visa.
Donald Trump has spoken about this improvement in his rally speeches many times.
All of his speeches are available for free at http://rsbn.tv/

the doj, lynch, fbi are useless. lynch is a POS and too stupid to know her a** from a hole in the ground. this administration is imploding as it collapses. soon Trump will be blamed for Brexit.
Hawaii now list a gun own on the terrorist watch list-demorat gov. can not wait till this hit the Supreme Court. when one is on the watch list-difficult to buy an airline ticket and even to file taxes and secure home loan-nice. the fool should like his new $24 million dollar home in the islands.
the federal and state consequence of being on the terrorist watch list are high and can cause personal and financial collapse.

The left doesn’t consider threats to anyone but those on the left to be a big deal. They yearned for the assassination of Bush and Cheney for eight years going so far as to make a movie depicting Bush’s assassination. It allowed them to live their ultimate fantasy at the time. Have there been any DOJ investigations into the riots that have been taking place like the one in San Jose to see if there is some sort of a conspiracy to commit or incite violence? Remember the Chicago Seven trial?

The left has gotten to the point where the GOP should have a back up plan regardless of the nominee in case he or she doesn’t make it to November.

Gun control narrative? The loon tried to steal a gun from the cop. Is the WP implying that there is a movement to disarm police by the Democrats that Trump is against? This is more deflection. And can only be read seriously by Kool Aid drinkers who have lost touch with reality.

Why give the guy publicity? It just encourages other crazies. The political climate is dangerous enough already.

@Greg:

Why give the guy publicity? It just encourages other crazies. The political climate is dangerous enough already.

Yes, best to sweep it under the rug and forget about it before someone makes a connection between an attempted assassination and violent left wing rhetoric.

@Bill, #9:

You don’t even realize where most of the crazy talk is coming from. It somehow hasn’t registered that the angry anti-Trump demonstrations are a response to something, and it isn’t to reasonable rhetoric. How is it that so many people don’t recognize what Trump is? It’s totally obvious.

I just heard George Will has announced that he’s done with the GOP. Maybe there will be a new Conservative But Not Crazy Party forming up as an alternative.

@Greg: Oh, no… I realize it fully. In fact, you should have read where I have pointed it out numerous times.

Trump supporters, who are essentially the clueless republican far right, are in the process of destroying the GOP. Having done so, they’ll blame the left, or the GOP itself, for the results. As always, it will be viewed as anybody’s fault but their own.

@Greg: Your not paying attention what is going on with us clueless Trump supporters. Maybe you like getting stabbed in the back by the so called conservatives we keep electing to congress and getting the same result as if we had put democrats in. Its time to get rid of the phonies. GOP destroyed? So what, there not working in our best interest anyway. Pay attention and quit following the faux conservatives. They want Hillary so they can keep there lucrative jobs spreading government propaganda! Trump will run the pigs away from the trough. The elite globalists are shaking in their shoes. The clueless have gotten a clue.

@Greg:

It somehow hasn’t registered that the angry anti-Trump demonstrations are a response to something,

Sure they are. It’s in response to being paid by George Soros to riot..

Trump will run the pigs away from the trough. The elite globalists are shaking in their shoes. The clueless have gotten a clue.

And the evidence for that would be. . .none. Do you not understand that Donald Trump is one of the very people he claims to oppose? He was applauding the UK’s decision to leave the European Union from his half-a-billion-dollar Scottish golf course—Scotland being a country overwhelmingly in favor of the UK remaining. Apparently he thinks Europe will be stronger in the face of outside threats if it’s broken up into smaller pieces—one of the most obvious such threats being his good buddy, Vladimir Putin. It’s almost too absurd to believe.