This latest edition of "Stupid Fact Checks" by Hillary Clinton lapdogs posing as objective reporters comes from the Associated Press. It's a doozy.
Shortly after the conclusion of Sunday's second presidential debate, in reaction to Trump's statement that "Assad is killing ISIS," the AP tweeted: "Trump wrong that Syria's Assad is fighting Islamic State militants." There's one insurmountable problem with that statement, namely that, as PJ Media's Patrick Poole noted, "recent AP reporting documented fighting between the Syrian regime and ISIS." The plot thickened from there, to what should be the wire service's complete embarrassment.
The AP should have simply pulled the tweet and said, "We were wrong, and we're sorry. Stuff happens."
Of course it didn't, because doing so would mean admitting that Trump was right, and we can't have that — ever.
Here's the wire service's original tweet:
Early Tuesday morning, in light of others quickly finding AP tweets and stories contradicting their claim (one example is here — "Syrian troops drive Islamic State fighters out of Palmyra"), the AP indicated that it had pulled and would replace the original tweet, teasing the idea that what Trump had said was only "partially true."
Partially true? Really? Here's what appeared just a couple of minutes later:
You see, in the el bizarro world of AP, what Trump said is "only partially true" because — I can't believe I'm having to type this — ISIS is only one of "numerous" groups he is fighting:
TRUMP: "I don't like Assad at all. But Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS."
THE FACTS: Only partially true. Syria's President Bashar Assad considers the Islamic State group to be among numerous "terrorist" groups that threaten his government. His overstretched military is mainly focused on combating Syrian opposition groups, some of which are supported by the United States. Assad does use air power against IS-held areas and his ground forces are engaged in fighting with the extremists in Deir el-Zour in the east.
One tweeter noted that AP's geographic description was incomplete: "Actually, Assad regime + Iranian-backed allies clash with #ISIS regularly in several areas, not just in Deir Ezzor." The enmity between Assad and ISIS is a years-long situation; Syria also attacked ISIS positions in Iraq over two years ago.
Yes, the AP is really pretending to mount a serious argument here. By their "standard," Trump could only have been right if he named each and every militant and terrorist group (with the T-word not in quotes, unlike the cowardly AP) which Assad has attacked in recent years.
Thus, if anyone states that Hamas has never recognized Israel's right to exist, which it hasn't, AP will say, "sorry, that's only partially true, because Hezbollah also doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist."
We could go on forever with similar examples, but the need for day-to-day New Media national beat reporting news presence and near-instant analysis as an alternative to the garbage we're seeing from the Associated Press and elsewhere has never been greater.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
