Topic: Media Research Center
As we've seen, one of the Media Research Center's duties for Donald Trump's presidential campaign is to try and counter the fact that Trump's a rampant liar. That's demonstrated again in a June 23 post by Nicholas Fondacaro:
Donald Trump delivered a condemning speech against is opponent Hillary Clinton Wednesday, explaining why he calls her “Crooked Hillary.” The “big three” networks rushed to her defense, mostly picking on the easy targets among his allegations. But NBC’s Hallie Jackson went the farthest in bending the truth to counter Trump, and make Clinton look good. “Trump never one to mince words, though today not all of them were true,” Jackson reported during Nightly News.
First, Jackson bent the truth regarding Trump’s claim that Clinton’s private E-Mail server was hacked by foreign governments. “But a State Department inspector general's report said it found no such evidence, only routine phishing,” she stated, “No government official has said her e-mails were hacked.”
But that’s not entirely accurate.
According to a recent report by the State Department’s Inspector General, there were two known attempts to hack into the server. That’s a huge step up from Jackson’s claim of “routine phishing.” But then again this fact has been omitted from NBC’s reporting in the past, most notably by reporter Andrea Mitchell when the report was first released.
But Trump did not say anything about attempted hacking; he specifically said Clinton server was actually hacked. An attempted hack is not an actual hack. Therefore, Trump is wrong, and Fondacaro looks silly for trying to spin it.
But Fondacaro keeps on spinning:
Jackson also noted the source material for some of Trump’s accusations, “Trump leaning heavily on the book Clinton Cash.” She once again mislead viewers claiming, “But that book's author admits there's no evidence to prove those allegations.” Although author Peter Schweizer did admit that he didn’t have the hard evidence that he would like, he has stated that a goal of his book was to get officials involved since that have the legal authority to investigate farther than he can.
But if even Schweizer admits he has no "hard evidence" to back up his paratisan attacks on the Clintons -- as Fondacaro is conceding -- Trump should know better than to cite it as undisputed fact. Fondacaro is just trying to whitewash more Trump falsehoods.
In other words, Fondacaro is the one "bending the truth," not the fact-checkers.
Despite all this nitpicking, Fondacaro failed to mention all the other Trump falsehoods in the speech that he also apparently concedes. CNN counted 10 outright "false" statements by Trump and four more "misleading" claims.
One of the "false" claims CNN identified was the server claim Fondacaro tried to whitewash, pointing out that "there is no conclusive indication that Clinton's email was ever breached, let alone proof that foreign governments were behind even such attempts." Fondacaro somehow forgot to mention that Trump claimed foreign governments hacked Clinton's server.
