Topic: Newsmax
Last month, Donald Trump went to South Carolina gun store and admired a gun with his face on it. Both a right-wing reporter and a member of Trump's staff reported that he bought the gun. Just one problem with that: As someone who has been indicted on a felony charge, he is not allowed to buy a gun, and it would violate the conditions of his release to do so. Cue the backpedaling by both the reporter and the campaign. Also cue the Trump-fluffers at Newsmax trying to play cleanup, and that's what Eric Mack did in a Sept. 26 article:
Former President Donald Trump admired a special edition Glock pistol Monday that featured his likeness, but he did not buy one, according to reports.
"I want to buy one," Trump said Monday in Summerville, South Carolina. "Isn't a Glock a great gun?"
Trump posed for pictures with the Glock, along with members of his campaign tour, which included Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
While Cheung initially posted "President Trump buys a @GLOCKInc in South Carolina!" on social media platform X, according to multiple news outlets, that post was deleted.
"President Trump did not purchase or take possession of the firearm," the campaign later told USA Today in a statement. "He simply indicated that he wanted one."Trump would not be barred from buying the Glock under 18 USC 922, but the sale of the firearm to him is illegal due to myriad indictments against him.
[...]
The gun store told The New York Times it did not sell a gun to the former president Monday.
While Mack noted Cheung's backpedaling, he failed to note that Brian Glenn of the right-wing Right Side Broadcasting Network asserted on-air that “We can confirm that President Trump got that gun today," only to furiously backpedal in an all-caps tweet: "PRESIDENT TRUMP DID NOT BUY A FIREARM. I WAS THERE. MOVE ALONG FAKE PRESS."
While Newsmax apparently did not promote the original claim that Trump bought the gun, doing a story emphasizing that he didn't looks like cleanup for a preferred candidate instead of "news."
