Topic: NewsBusters
Is Noel Sheppard a secret birther? The way he's defending Donald Trump, he just might be.
In an Aug. 14 NewsBusters post, Sheppard blames ABC's Jonathan Karl for having the temerity to bring up Trump's longtime birtherism in an interview with him last week, and he parroted Trump's protests that he would never have talked about President Obama's birth certificate if Karl hadn't brought it up. "Not surprisingly, Trump was right," Sheppard added.
Sheppard did concede that "Trump could end all this birther discussion by simply saying that he has moved on and wants to now exclusively talk about what's ailing the nation," but he then huffs that "it's clear that the media want to discuss the birther issue moving into the 2014 midterm elections in order to depict Republicans as being racist." We didn't know Sheppard could read the minds of reporters to divine that purported motivation
Sheppard followed that up by pushing an old Republican canard:
Readers should recall George Stephanopoulos bringing up birth control at a Republican presidential debate in January 2012 despite this not being an issue during the campaign up to that point.
This of course metastacized into the Republican War on Women with everyone in the media piling on a contrived controversy.
In fact, as Media Matters reminds us, debate participant Rick Santorum had been asked about his views on birth control -- which included that states have a right to ban it -- a few days earlier.
Does Sheppard think the public had no right to know about that stance? Apparently so.
