Sarah Sanders calls out The Washington Post for ‘exploiting’ tragedy to attack Trump

Sarah Sanders calls out The Washington Post for ‘exploiting’ tragedy to attack Trump

October 29, 2018 by Ben Marquis


In the wake of a mailbomb scare targeting prominent Democrats, followed closely by a murderous mass shooting at a synagogue in Pennsylvania, the liberal media cranked up their outrage and sought to blame President Donald Trump’s rhetoric for both the threatened and actual violence that had occurred.

Chief among those in the frenzied anti-Trump media mob was The Washington Post, which seemed to point directly to Trump as at fault for both incidents on the front page of its Sunday paper — but that didn’t sit well with White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who called out the Post for their choice to “exploit” a tragedy to pin the blame on Trump in a tweet on Sunday.


Exploited by media
But Breitbart noted that The Washington Post was nowhere near alone in attempting to pin responsibility for the terrorizing incidents on Trump.

Countless other media figures and organizations did the same over the weekend, accusing the president of both being anti-Semitic and encouraging threats of violence against left-leaning politicians.
Julia Ioffe, a correspondent for GQ magazine, argued in a tweet that Trump’s rhetoric made the anti-Semitic attack “possible,” while CNN contributor Symone Sanders tweeted that Trump was “truly a morally inept monster” for having the audacity to continue with a planned speech — worse, he made jokes while addressing the audience — later on the day of the shooting.
Perhaps one of the worst takes on the day came from CNN contributor Ana Navarro, who seemed to vicariously blame First Lady Melania Trump in a tweet decrying Trump’s rhetoric on a host of issues she deemed important.

Ignored Trump’s response
But perhaps in their rush to condemn Trump for an incident that he had no involvement in whatsoever (the synagogue shooter hated Trump for being too friendly to Jews), all of these media figures exploiting the situation to attack Trump missed the president’s own forceful and unmistakable condemnation of what had occurred.
In a pair of tweets on Saturday, Trump said: “All of America is in mourning over the mass murder of Jewish Americans at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. We pray for those who perished and their loved ones, and our hearts go out to the brave police officers who sustained serious injuries…”
“This evil Anti-Semitic attack is an assault on humanity. It will take all of us working together to extract the poison of Anti-Semitism from our world. We must unite to conquer hate,” the president added.

Sarah Sanders is absolutely right in wondering if there is any sort of tragedy that The Washington Post — or any other major media outlet, for that matter — won’t ignobly exploit simply as a tool to attack and excoriate the president.
President Trump is about as far from being anti-Semitic as you can get, but that hasn’t stopped the media from attempting to portray him as such — and it is as disgusting as it is flat out wrong.