It’s not often that a member of the “mainstream media” actually apologizes to a member of the Trump administration when he or she gets the information wrong, but that’s what Daniel Drezner did on Wednesday, April 12, after accusing Attorney General Jeff Sessions of using the word “filth” when referring to illegal immigrants.
Under the title of “I Was Wrong About Jeff Sessions,” Drezner -- a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and a regular contributor to the newspaper’s PostEverything column -- stated in a column posted on Wednesday, April 12, that “I tweeted something inaccurate about the sitting attorney general.”
The columnist began by stating:
Full disclosure: The hard-working staff here … does not like Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Not one little bit.
I didn’t like him when he was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump. I didn’t like him during the campaign when he dismissed divergent views as “soulless globalism.” And I really don’t like him bringing back the 1980s War on Drugs sentencing or putting a halt to forensic science reform.
“Yesterday, however, I tweeted something inaccurate about the sitting attorney general,” Drezner noted. “And for that, I owe him an apology.”
The columnist then explained “the genealogy of my error: First, perusing Twitter,” he came across the following tweet by Josh Dawsey: “During a speech to border agents, Sessions stated: ‘It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.’"
“I’m not going to lie,” Drezner indicated, “seeing the word ‘filth’ used to seemingly describe illegal immigrants brought me up short. It’s pretty potent language for an attorney general to use to describe fellow human beings. I quickly scanned the linked Wall Street Journal story and saw these paragraphs:
In remarks Tuesday to Border Patrol agents at the U.S.-Mexico Border in Nogales, Arizona, Mr. Sessions spoke in stark terms about the threat he said illegal immigration posed.
“We mean international criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into war zones, that rape and kill innocent citizens,” Sessions said according to the text of his prepared remarks. “It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.”
“This seemed like a typical Sessions tactic of using absurd language to talk about the entire category of illegal immigrants, a category he really dislikes,” Drezner noted. “So I tweeted the following: ‘Filth. He described illegal immigrants as ‘filth.’ Whatever your views on immigration, that's f**king embarrassing for a U.S. official to say.”
“At that point,” the columnist stated, “I had to fulfill some day-job responsibilities, like meeting with students and colleagues and such.”
“By the time I got back on Twitter, it had gone viral,” Drezner stated. ”And it turned out that my tweet was not true at all.”
First of all, here’s the relevant portion of the attorney general’s prepared remarks:
But it is also here, along this border, that transnational gangs like MS-13 and international cartels flood our country with drugs and leave death and violence in their wake. … When we talk about MS-13 and the cartels, what do we mean?
We mean criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into war zones, that rape and kill innocent citizens and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders. Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings.
“It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth,” the prepared statement read.
“The context is clear,” Drezner noted. “Sessions was going to use ‘filth’ to describe MS-13 and drug cartels, not all illegal immigrants crossing the border. One might think, like I do, that the language is hyperbolic, but in context, it did not imply what I thought it implied in my tweet.”
“Furthermore, as it turns out,” the columnist continued, “Sessions didn’t even say the word ‘filth’ in his speech, as the Washington Examiner’s T. Becket Adams reported:
The attorney general concluded with this line: “It is here, on this sliver of land, on this border, where we first take our stand.”
As the updated Wall Street Journal story noted, “Mr. Sessions deviated from his prepared remarks and didn’t say ‘filth’ as he delivered his speech.”
“So, full stop,” Drezner stated. “I was wrong, and I apologize to the attorney general for making this mistake.”
“I wish I had caught the error in time to delete the tweet before it went viral,” he noted. “Alas, I did not. Deleting it now seems like I’d be trying to erase my mistake. I did respond with a follow-up tweet, but that is insufficient given all the attention this received.”
“So, yet again: I made a mistake, and I’m sorry,” Drezner concluded.
If only other people in the “mainstream media” were as honest and forthright as this Washington Post columnist. people might start trusting reporters and editors again.
