Salon released a baseless fear-mongering article this week claiming that right-wing personalities such as former President Donald Trump, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon are “leaders of the neofascist movement” and “escalating threats of right-wing violence, insurrection and other forms of mayhem in public”.
These statements are nothing new for left-leaning outlets, however, Salon’s incredulous statement that the “media doesn’t care” suggests malicious ignorance on how the mainstream media has covered right-wing politicians for the last several years.
For example, CNN, MSNBC, and ABC have entire webpages dedicated to news following the former president, even though Trump hasn’t held public office for nearly two years. This follows the infamous reporting from these outlets that endured throughout Trump’s campaign and presidential stint.
Recently, during the anniversary of the riot at the Capitol on January 6, the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters found that NBC and CBS gave the incident, of which they blamed the former president for inciting, 80% of evening air time. CBS Morning host Tony Dokupil, spent a staggering 50 minutes and 28 seconds ranting and giving “remarks about denouncing Republicans as the only party delegitimizing elections with January 6 being “the moral question of our time,” it was all downhill as he implied the right could carry out “a new and more violent political era,” painted opposition to Democratic proposals on voting as dangerous and compared January 6 to September 11, 2001.”If the media did not care about these events and their supposed ties to Trump, they would not utilize a majority of their air time to commiserate about it .
The piece later makes egregious claims that Trump was issuing “threats of white supremacist violence” and asking the audience of his rally to “enter into a lethal blood pact and fight an existential battle” against Critical Race Theory and communist ideas.
The excerpt from the speech in which Salon references is as follows:
“Getting critical race theory out of our schools is not just a matter of values, it’s also a matter of national survival. We have no choice…. The fate of any nation ultimately depends upon the willingness of its citizens to lay down — and they must do this — lay down their very lives to defend their country…. If we allow the Marxists and communists and socialists to teach our children to hate America, there will be no one left to defend our flag or protect our great country or its freedom.”
The author construes this statement in a completely bizarre way, and claims the former president is echoing “the infamous neo-Nazi ‘14 words’ slogan and pledge.”
Trump is stating that having a population that hates their country means that no one will want to defend it in times of crisis. He believes that Critical Race Theory is teaching children to hate America, and therefore losing generations of soldiers to defend the nation.
Whether it is living under a left-wing rock, or malicious intent, Salon has been the subject of multiple Accuracy in Media investigations where their writers either lack the ability to critical think or shamelessly attack institutions they do not ideologically agree with.