Actual Newsweek Headline: ‘Trump Tells Hate Group Americans ‘Worship God,’ Not Government’

October 15th, 2017 10:52 AM

Newsweek, whose home page of late devotes every square pixel to anti-Trump-pro-liberal articles, featured a Harriet Sinclair piece Thursday on President Trump’s then-upcoming speech to the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. Or, as the magazine’s hit-piece of a headline called it, “Donald Trump To Speak At Hate Group's Annual Event, A First For A President.” Seriously? And the headline didn’t exaggerate the hostile tone of Sinclair’s story. (Newsweek ran a similar "hate group" headline after Trump's speech.)

Typically, Newsweek relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center for its “hate group” designation. The SPLC, a civil-rights organization turned cynical left-wing fundraising operation, has an unearned reputation for being the media’s go-to source for “hate groups” – i.e., any social conservative faith-based organization that SPLC doesn’t approve of.

Amazing in its absence from a story linking FRC and the Southern Poverty Law Center is any mention of Floyd Lee Corkins, who in August 2012, using SPLC’s “hate map” as a guide, burst into the headquarters of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., with a backpack full of sandwiches from Chick-Fil-A (another pro-faith, anti-gay marriage company) with the intention of assassinating the employees of the social conservative Christian organization. The building manager stopped him, but not before getting shot himself.

Sinclair wrote:

President Donald Trump will be the first sitting president to address the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described as a “rogues' gallery of the radical right.”

She hinted where the scurrilous headline came from:

The anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, labeled as a hate group by the SPLC, has hosted its annual summit since its inception in 2006.

....

Speaking of the president’s decision to attend this year’s 12th annual event, SPLC President Richard Cohen told The Independent: “By appearing at the Values Voter Summit, President Trump is lending the legitimacy of his office to a hate group that relentlessly demonizes LGBTQ people and works to deny them of their equal rights.”

Sinclair has a low and very passive standard for what she calls “attacks.”

Trump’s attacks on the LGBTQ community have not gone unnoticed, with the president rescinding Obama-era protection for transgender students that allow them to use the bathroom that matches the gender they identify with. Trump also suggested a ban on transgender troops in the military, and failed to recognize Pride Month or National Coming Out Day, unlike his predecessor.

....

It is not clear what topic Trump will address during his speech, but the group’s overwhelmingly negative attitude towards the LGBTQ community has prompted questions about whether a president should be attending a day of glorified hate speech.

Newsweek actually followed up with a similar piece by Michael Edison Hayden on Friday on Trump’s actual speech to FRC with a similar headline: “Trump Tells Hate Group Americans ‘Worship God,’ Not Government.” No mention of Corkins.