Topic: Media Research Center
From the beginning, the Media Research Center has worked to downplay Donald Trump's smears of Mexican immigrants.
In a June 18 NewsBusters post, Ken Oliver-Mendez spun hard by insisting that Trump's characterization of Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists "was not unqualifiedly negative, as he also immediately added 'and some, I assume, are good people.'" Oliver-Mendez then touted how "On the campaign trail after his announcement speech, Trump actually upgraded his assessment somewhat."
Oliver-Mendez grumbled that on Spanish-language networks, "Trump’s opening campaign statement effectively morphed from a condemnation of the perceived prevalence of undesirable elements among unauthorized immigrants entering the country to an offensive statement against immigrants in general, particularly Mexican immigrants." Of course, when you are falsely branding Mexican immigrants as mostly criminals and rapists as Trump did, that's an entirely reasonable reaction.
Also spinning hard is Kevin Gibbons, who uses a June 25 NewsBusters post to keep up the complaint that people were elevating Trump's offensive remarks and ignoring the "positive statements" about Mexico he made:
Trump actually made several positive statements about Mexico and Mexicans, but they have gone largely unheard in the media due to the force of the other, unpleasant remarks he also made.
“Druggies, drug dealers, rapists and killers are coming across the southern border,” Trump tweeted the other day. Even though the object of Trump’s attention knows it’s true, she apparently doesn’t want anyone else to point it out.
Trump’s campaign announcement speech actually applauded Mexico with “They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically.” Everything was going well on the first date, until he took a personal shot at her family member. Trump later added “Mexico is killing the United States economically because their leaders and negotiators are FAR smarter than ours.”
In response, Univision in particular has fueled a well-known negative stereotype of a Mexican’s reaction to a personal insult. Instead of “appreciating” that Mexico outperforms the U.S., all of the focus and attention are on the name-calling.
Gibbons goes on to declare that Univision's dumping of the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant was "rash" and "akin to ESPN cancelling their NBA contract because of racist comments made by former Clippers owner Donald Sterling." Well, no; it's more akin to ESPN cancelling their NBA contract because the NBA commissioner made racist comments.
On June 27, Jeffrey Lord laughably asserted that Trump's smears were "accurate," adding: "Trump is surging in the polls on the very basis of his blunt criticisms of the Obama administration’s conduct of foreign affairs and the GOP Establishment’s woeful performance on issues - dealings with Mexico over the southern border and on trade but two of those issues."
Thge MRC also gave a platform to Jorge Bonilla to defend Trump in a June 28 post. Bonilla proclaimed that Trump "laced blunt truths with Trumpian hyperbolic bombast, adding: "Opinion on Trump aside, reasonable people can agree (or disagree) that perhaps not every undocumented immigrant will be a valedictorian or a hard-working incarnation of the American Dream with an immaculate criminal record, or that our seriously deficient immigration model is in dire need of actual reform."
But does Bonilla agree with Trump that most are criminals and rapists? Apparently so.
By this time, however, it was time for a distraction, which the MRC found in a Univision executive's posting a picture to his Instagram page comparing Trump to Chalreston shooter Dylann Roof. The MRC happily promoted Fox News criticism of it, and Tim Graham whined that the media was ignoring the "scabrous" image in its coverage of the Trump-Univision conflict.
Of course, Graham ignores his employer's promotion of a similarly scabrous image comparing President Obama to Satan in which which the MRC blogger giggled, "Spoiler alert: Barack Obama is the one on the right."
MRC chief Brent Bozell dutifully pounded the Trump-roof image, but he failed to mention the anti-Mexican smears by Trump that provoked the image (and, needless to say, his own organization's promotion of an image that's just as "unacceptable" as he claims the Trump-Roof image is).
It's what you'd expect from an organization that finds holding a conservative accountable for his words to be more offensive than insulting an entire race of people.
