Topic: CNSNews.com
We already know CNSNews.com blogger Craig Bannister is a terrible media analyst. We now also know he's a rather desperate spinmeister for the Trump administration.
After transcripts of President Trump's conversation with the president of Mexico went public, Bannister used an Aug. 3 CNS post to spin away the negative parts of it:
On Thursday, The Washington Post published purportedly-leaked, classified transcripts of President Donald Trump’s conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia - but, the worst thing The Post could find to headline its expose’ is that Trump asked Mexico’s president to stop saying he’s against a border wall.
[...]
The Post’s top six ‘Highlights” from the Trump-Nieto conservation, according to its “annotated transcripts” are:
- “Trump threatens potential tariffs on Mexican goods,”
- “Trump vows to help fight the ‘tough hombres’ driving the Mexican drug trade,”
- “Trump seems to acknowledge that his threats to make Mexico pay had left him had left him cornered politically,”
- Trump asks that they avoid publicly disagreeing over how the wall will be funded
- Trump describes the wall as ‘the least important thing we are talking about,’”
- Trump tells Peña Nieto to stop saying publicly that his government would never pay for the wall.
Thus, the biggest scoops from The Post’s claimed leaked documents are that an American president:
- Threatened to use tariffs,
- Wants to fight drug smuggling,
- Says it’ll make him look bad if he doesn’t deliver on his promise,
- Discourages public opposition,
- Says there are more important problems to tackle than building a border wall, and
- Discourages public opposition (See above).
Of course, Bannister is ignoring that Trump is effectively admitting that he's reneging on his own campaign promise to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. But Bannister cannot admit that's happening, so he must spin things to trying to falsely turn this into a fake-news nothingburger.
This is the kind of so-called analysis for which the MRC is paying Bannister the big bucks.
