Following Meryl Streep’s attack on Donald Trump at the Golden Globe awards ceremony see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsskWm8znyE there has been renewed interest in his alleged mocking of a disabled reporter.
This image has stuck in the minds of those opposed to Donald Trump such as Meryl Streep as the main reason they despise him and are afraid of what he might do as president. However, the facts are much more interesting than the perception.
There are a number of refutations of this narrative. One I recently watched, published back in the heat of the presidential campaign is called “Trump NEVER mocked a disabled reporter- Media Exposed“.
Although this does a good job explaining and demonstrating the claim in its title, it is deceptive on the central point of what was Trump mocking. I posted the following comment on the video:
It is true that Trump did not mock a disabled reporter as this video shows. But what is more telling is that this video itself admits his statement that “Arabs living in this country celebrating the 9/11 attacks, cheering as the twin towers came crashing down” is false. In this video this is corrected to “… the true story of Middle Easterners living in new Jersey celebrating the deaths of 3000 Americans on 9/11, a story one of their own reporters covered”. Trump has “doubled down” on his claim saying “thousands were celebrating”. The reporter from the Washington Post first said that he “didn’t remember the details” and this is what Trump mocked. Later the reporter corrected Trump on the numbers, saying “it wasn’t thousands or even hundreds”. But what he didn’t correct was more important: The reports were true but were about 5 celebrating Israelis. This is why “Arabs” is corrected in this video to “Middle Easterners”. This is the truth, that the lie about Trump mocking a disabled reporter is covering up. For more info see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vEOoqspFNU
Comments on videos and other forums are presented as if they are live to everyone instantly, but I have seen in several that this is only for the benefit of the user posting. In reality the comment does not get shown to others until moderation has approved it or maybe never gets shown. So, suspicious that this little nugget of truth telling would not pass the censors, I looked at the site in incognito browsing mode, and sure enough my comment was not showing.
Later that day on I mentioned this to someone else and sent them a link to the video. As expected my comment was not there for them to see, though I could still see it. So we did an experiment. He posted a comment from his laptop asking why some of the comments are not showing. I could see his comment immediately. Maybe I was being blocked for some historical reason, so he then pasted in my comment as his own. Once he did this not only could we not see this new comment but his previous comment also became hidden. Clearly youtube is operating automatic banning of users and their comments to block comments like the one I made. This all happened in the span of a minute or two, so I doubt very much any human discretion was involved. Most likely, it was a filter on some key words, or the link. Anyway, it shows that the comments section is a fraud.
Trump evidently does not owe an apology to disabled people. After his claim of thousands of Muslims in new Jersey celebrating the 9/11 attacks was challenged. His only response was to cite the Washington Post article written by the disabled reporter he was then accused of mocking. This article was about what turned out to be Israelis pretending to be Muslims celebrating the attacks. This fact is the hot potato central to the image of Donald Trump. Imagine what would happen if he dared to correct himself and apologise to the Muslims of New Jersey and beyond during the inauguration. Imagine if he spoke the following words of truth to the media and the American people:
There is nothing harder to accept than being unjustly accused of doing shameful and criminal acts which you have not done. During this campaign I have been accused of many things without the slightest shred of evidence, the media has lied time and time again. What makes an exciting and entertaining story is often not real news but fake news. We were all misled into war by a river of fake news on Iraq. I have also been misled at times by fake news and I want to take this opportunity to make an important correction.
During the campaign I accused American Muslims of having celebrated the September 11th attacks in the thousands. I was wrong. The media reported this in various ways implying that conclusion, however I have learned that in reality what happened was that those handful of people celebrating were Israeli Jews, not Muslims.
Muslims in America and across the world condemned the attacks on that day, even the Taliban condemned them. So to the Muslims in this country and around the world, I am sorry for what I said I was wrong and I falsely accused you. I plan to reopen the investigation of what happened on that day and hopefully we will discover all those who helped make it happen and why.