Mainstream media challenges Trump for evidence, but exempts self from same requirement

Many mainstream journalists challenged Donald Trump to produce video evidence supporting his claim that "thousands" of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attack. (The candidate said he saw it televised in a news broadcast.)

It's a fair question. I support Trump, but understand that the burden of proof is on him. 

He offered a New York Times article dating from that time, but it spoke only of indeterminate "numbers" of celebrants - not thousands. And some Trump supporters have pointed to a CNN Anderson Cooper story from that time. But it featured only several Muslim endorsers of the 9/11 attack.

And Trump's own assertion that others now tell him they also saw thousands of New Jersey Muslims celebrating doesn't really qualify as evidence that can be examined and might sway disbelievers. Just because a person swears they once saw something does not make it so.

NBC's Chuck Todd made this point in an 11/29 Meet the Press interview with Trump. To the candidate's noting that rally attendees had shared that they, too, had seen the alleged broadcast, Todd correctly answered, "But they want to agree with you, that doesn’t make it true."

Remember that. 

Because many of Donald Trump's critics are completely without concern for video evidence, and are all-too willing to hold up unverified eyewitness testimony as definite proof, when it advances narratives dear to them. 

An Alabama activist was ejected from a November Trump rally in that state. And ever since, mainstream media voices have echoed the claim that he was "punched and kicked" by Trump supporters.

They all cite the same video clip to support that characterization. But that footage contains no depiction of "punching and kicking."

See for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DPs9ZR9RI0

The crush of bodies around the activist make it impossible to see every possible action -- including the alleged "punching and kicking." So, this oft-cited video simply does not prove what so many report.

John Hinderaker of Powerline interviewed Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank on 11/25. (Hinderaker was sitting in for radio host Laura Ingraham.)

The Post had trumpeted the "punching and kicking" story. The smear that Trump and his supporters are some evil racist plague upon the electoral land is a narrative most dear to the mainstream media. 

It is, of course, spurious, foul, and counterproductive to the cause of combatting genuine racism. But the unethical find it of handy utility as a political billyclub. 

Milbank seemed to bristle when Hinderaker pointed out the Alabama rally video contained no evidence of the alleged violence. 

"My colleagues were there and saw it with their own eyes," snapped the suddenly irritable columnist. "So I'm going to take my colleagues' eyes over your videos." (At this moment, let's all remember Chuck Todd's admonition to Trump that claimed witness testimony is not satisfactory proof.)

When pressed to name these Washington Post colleagues upon whose claims the entire world is to unquestioningly rely, Todd at first demurred. Finally, he named just one: Mary Jordan, the author of numerous prior poison pen attacks on Trump. 

(I've read that at some Trump events, reporters are assigned a particular area. And I don't agree with that policy. But if Jordan actually witnessed the ejection, she had either broken an agreement to stay in the assigned reporter area or was straining to view events far away from her position and that were obscured by the crowd. In either case, not exactly an upright, reliable source.) 

On Meet The Press, Todd declared to Trump, "Just because somebody repeats something doesn't make it true...Fact-based stuff matters."

Yes, it does. In every instance, without exception.

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