Our largest state tabloid made it clear Sunday that Trump has hit a nerve with them by exposing the media’s lack of honesty and integrity. There’s a very true old Yiddish saying that “A half-truth is a whole lie.” The media owe their income and existence to exploiting this practice in violation of the Code of Ethics published by the Society of Professional Journalists. The Arizona Republic’s lead Op-ed on Sunday demonstrates just how hurt they are by public recognition of the media’s habitual application of the half-truth principle.
One of the half-truths they published Sunday is that they caught Trump “lying” about his veterans’ donation. A date was never set for writing his check and he did make the donation – so where is the alleged lie? To call this a half-truth is generous. The press may have caused Trump to make the donation sooner than he planned, but that is not a lie. To say so is dishonest.
It is true Trump wants to change the liable laws, but not eliminate them. His expressed desire is to make them fairer so the press can’t get by with slandering people so easily with half-truths that create a false image or impression of a person in the public mind. One would think a fair press would be in favor of fairness for informing and protecting the public. However, fairness seems to take a vacation when it might be imposed to diminish the political abuses or financial rewards for printing half-truths.
When it comes to the criticism of Judge Curiel, I agree it was not a wise criticism and I believe I would not have made it. However, anyone with common sense understands what Trump is getting at by pointing out that a strong public supporter of a pro illegal alien group such as La Raza my not be fair and objective in a case against the person that wants to secure the border. That is about as likely as expecting a fair hearing from Judge Snow in an Arpiao hearing: Or expecting a fair opinion from a Supreme Court justice that speaks for, raises money for and donates money to Planned Parenthood to render a fair opinion on abortion and the right to life of the child. In making its criticism of Trump the press has established its newly minted “Curiel Principle” holding that black or Hispanic defendants are wrong to object to a white judge or jurors because of their heritage or affiliations. Those defendants are asserting their objection based on the same criteria that Trump has expressed about Judge Curiel.
Two points need to be made in the Curiel matter. First, Judge Curiel is a lifelong supporter for Hispanic organizations and causes – a lifelong member of the Hispanic National Bar Assoc. that in July 2015 publicly declared economic war on Donald Trump. It called for a boycott of all Trump business ventures. Curiel supports politically motivated boycotting in his court a defendant for perceived prejudice (presumably based on heritage). Is that fair? Second Judge Curiel’s association with the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Assoc. is not limited to supporting just that association as it is just one member of community of race based Hispanic organizations such as the National Council of La Raza. These groups that Judge Curiel actively supports are hardly politically impartial groups that support border security.
The same one-way heritage based prejudice that stops the press from calling a black defendant prejudice when he objects to a white judge is on display in the failure of the press to exercise its declared mandate to scrutinize a presidential candidate and a President in office. As the Republic put it, “Any political figure in this country is expected to undergo media scrutiny and answer questions.” We’re still waiting for that media scrutiny standard to be applied to Barack Obama. Don’t tell us he’s been vetted. We know virtually nothing about him except that he has a Kenyan father which makes him ineligible to be president under the John Jay “natural born Citizen” standard Jay proposed and was written into the Constitution. It requires both parents to be American citizens so the President would not be subject to foreign influence by a dual loyalty question regarding another national heritage. Location of birth was not a consideration because the children of ambassadors overseas are natural born citizens.
It should be recognized (especially by the media if they are doing their job) that the U.S. Supreme Court recently recognized the principles upon which Trump based his criticism of Judge Curiel . The Court upheld (probably unwittingly) this principle in Foster v. Chatman, Warden. In that case the conviction for a self-confessed murderer 30 years ago by a black defendant was reversed by the Court. No showing of prejudice by the white judge or jury was alleged or presented to the Court. Notwithstanding that no jury prejudice was shown or alleged the Court found prejudice in the jury selection – people that had nothing to do with the trial. Evidently in order to have found prejudice in the trial, which is the real question before the Court, the Court must have presumed prejudice based on the heritage of the white judge and jurors. The jury selection process was only a “pretext” (as the Court liked to say) for finding “prejudice by heritage”. Thus the Supreme Court has ruled on, upheld and applied the Trump Doctrine for Justice.
Chester Arthur was the only other person that was ineligible and served; only he burned all his records instead of paying millions to have his life history sealed to avoid the expected and necessary “media scrutiny.” Scrutiny that never came and (because of the double media standard) in all probability never will. The press did not treat him the same or equal to a white candidate for fear of being labeled racist. They treated him as less than equal by not requiring him to, or believing he could, live up to the same standard. That’s ironic because from what little has been revealed he is 3 times more Arab African than Black African. That might explain his why his unquestioned policies have been so detrimental to the Black American community, but we’ll never know. Without media scrutiny we will never find out.
The paper alleges that Trump called for a “religious test”. That might be a half-truth; that is also a false statement. Trump knows as well as any fair minded informed thinking person knows that within the tenants of Islam are principles that, if one is an orthodox Islamist, must be complied with. Among those tenants are that they cannot assimilate into another culture or national identity; that they must overthrow the laws of that nation and replace them with Sharia law; that violence and lying are permissible to advance the religion of Islam; women are not equal to men; and that crimes such as pedophilia, rape, stoning women and non-believers or unwanted clitoridectomy are desired principles to live by. Refusing to assimilate, accept local laws, overthrow the government, commit violence and mass murder and violate our laws are acts of sedition and treason. The banner of being a religion is just their political camouflage. Such beliefs and conduct are antithetical to acts of religion in civilized society.
The orthodox Islamists that are known as Radical Islamic Terrorists follow those tenants and are being openly and knowingly brought into our country by Obama’s policies as well as being snuck across the Mexican border by the drug cartels (for these published factual findings see the November 2014 House Subcommittee Report “A Line in the Sand: Countering Crime, Violence and Terror at the Southwest Border”). The people that hold these beliefs requiring acts of sedition and treason must be ferreted out and prevented from entering our country. Those Muslims that do not adhere to these orthodox principles of the Islamic faith should be allowed into our country – but how do we sort them out? That is what Trump is proposing to figure out.
This is not a religious test – it is a test to preserve our liberty and American culture. Yes there is a genuine American culture. In the past, immigrants sought to learn and assimilate into our culture – not oppose it or overthrow it. If anyone wilted from Trump’s honesty, it was the press when the bias and entrenched unfairness of half-truths (that the public reads, hears and recognizes every day) was brought into the sunlight. Mind you, there are good journalists, but they appear to be as common as conservative professors.