Anti-Trumpers Denying “And They’re Rapists”—Joshua Green's DEVIL'S BARGAIN
06/13/2018
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF

Joshua Green's book Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency; was reviewed here by Jeremy Cooper. See Steve Bannon And Trump’s Populist Victory: Lessons For The Dissident Right.

I just want to deal with Green's treatment of the Trump announcement statement that included the "And they're rapists" quote.

It gets mentioned a lot, mostly in scare quotes, referring to the horror of the MSM and Conservatism, Inc. See this iPhone screenshot:

greendevilsbargain

Note that "normal" campaigns are supposed to panic when their candidate comes out against rape. That's not all the references, but here's what the last one says, since it mentions a citation:

"Although it wasn’t included in the sound bites broadcast on the evening news, Trump, just after he delivered his notorious “rapists” line, had given a citation for the charge. “I speak to border guards,” he said, “and they tell us what we’re getting.” Trump really did do this, and it was an early example of the Trump-Bannon-Breitbart nexus that operated continually throughout the campaign, in varying degrees of public acknowledgment. While Trump was unquestionably his own chief strategist (and often a shrewd one), he had a constant thirst for input, whether it came in the form of cable-news punditry, phone calls with friends, or visits with politically sympathetic groups like the border guards.

One reason Bannon decided to establish a Texas bureau was to help Breitbart develop sources among the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and border patrol officers stationed at the U.S.–Mexico border. Many of them held fiercely restrictionist views on immigration that mirrored those of Breitbart’s editors and left the agents increasingly at odds with the pro-reform sentiment building among the leaders in both parties. By letting it be known that Breitbart was, as Bannon put it, “a safe pair of hands,” the site became the go-to destination for border agents seeking a sympathetic media outlet in which to express their views or vent about immigration matters that they believed the mainstream media was purposely suppressing. This is how Breitbart became one of the first outlets to publicize the child migrant crisis at the U.S.–Mexico border in the summer of 2014: border agents took snapshots of overcrowded detention facilities and provided them to Breitbart, whose alarmist stories (“Border Open for Criminals as Agents Forced to Babysit Illegals”) were amplified by the Drudge Report and spread to dozens of mainstream outlets."

Once again, this isn't an attempt to confirm or deny the prevalence of Mexican rapists, it's an investigation of how Trump found out--and how Breitbart was reporting what the MSM wouldn't. Fail again!

Print Friendly and PDF