When the Washington Post's notoriously inconsistent fact checker Glenn Kessler feels he has to defend Donald Trump against a false claim, you know it must be a whopper. That was the case with the meme which arose last week that Trump, in words found at the New York Daily News, "booted a fussy baby from a rally Tuesday because the tot was wailing over the businessman’s speech."
However, instead of giving several media outlets and the Hillary Clinton campaign the formal Four-Pinocchio "whopper" evaluation, Kessler merely gave Trump a "Geppetto checkmark" for telling the truth, and gave those who reported it and Team Hillary an unwarranted pass: "We can see why some reporters ran with this tale, based only on the videotape."
Here are portions of what Kessler wrote, beginning with Trump's reaction to the press's misstatement of the original incident (links are in original; bolds are mine):
“The press came out with headlines: ‘Trump throws baby out of arena.’ So dishonest. I mean these are dishonest people. I could give you 20 stories like that. Everyone’s having fun, we’re smiling, I’m waving. Everyone’s having fun, but they say Trump throws baby [out]. You know how terrible that is? It’s such a lie. And they know it’s a lie.”
—Donald Trump, speaking at a rally in Green Bay, Wis., Aug. 5, 2016
Donald Trump is complaining that the media has spun a fable that he kicked a baby out of his rally in Ashburn, Va.
The New York Post, for instance, headlined its article: “Trump loves crying baby, then kicks the tot out of his rally.”
... The Guardian newspaper even used the incident to declare that this is a core problem with Trump — that he has “a total lack of empathy.”
Within days, the Clinton campaign highlighted the baby affair in a video trashing Trump’s week ...
There are two parts to the video. During his speech a baby starts to cry, and Trump says: “Don’t worry about that baby, I love babies. … I hear that baby crying. I like it. What a baby. What a beautiful baby. Don’t worry, don’t worry. The mom’s running around like — don’t worry about it, you know. It’s young and beautiful and healthy, and that’s what we want.”
But then about a minute later he says: “Actually, I was only kidding. You can get the baby out of here. … I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking.”
So, just from watching the video, Trump sounds rather cruel. But what’s missing is what the mother was doing. As it happens, Daniel Dale, a reporter from the Toronto Star, was sitting right behind her and wrote that the entire incident was mischaracterized:
"... to my eyes, it certainly was not an ejection — it was an unusually barbed endorsement of the mother’s own decision to depart."
"One other salient fact is missing from all the pieces on babygate. Mom and baby, very much not kicked out, came back to their seat a bit later."
It's reasonable to wonder whether Kessler would have been motivated to write his post if that Toronto Star reporter hadn't been present, even though the mother, Devan Ebert, has spoken out (from a Facebook post which excerpted Ebert's original Facebook post, which has since gone private):
I fully support Mr. Trump. I thought he responded very graciously to my child crying and he made a lighthearted moment out of what I usually consider to be stressful. I actually was out of the auditorium before he even made his follow up comment about my child and even then, when I was informed of his comment, I laughed. I understand he says things jokingly, and I understand no one wants to speak over or struggle to listen over a crying baby.
... You have our vote. Trump 2016.
Kessler's refusal to condemn the press's reporting would also seem to indicate that if Trump hadn't robustly defended himself, supposedly objective "fact-checker" Kessler would have let it all slide, despite the mother's subsequent statement supporting Trump's version.
That should be a lesson for center-right politicians who are content to let media mistreatment and dishonest memes slide. Will it be?
I'm not even going to bother wondering if the outlets which erred in their reporting or the Hillary Clinton campaign will apologize. Julie Scharper at the Baltimore Sun particularly owes Trump and her readers an apology for falsely claiming that "Trump banished the baby, humiliated the mother." In the unlikely case someone actually does apologize or correct their erroneous record, let me know.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
