The left-wing media establishment has finally fallen in love with Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, agreeing that former President George W. Bush, in office for eight months, blew the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
This week’s Mainstream Media Scream features pundit Jonathan Alter on the MSNBC weekend show “Up With Steve Kornacki” crediting Trump for offering “great contributions” in the campaign when he barks at the Bushes.
Alter:
“This is one of Donald Trump’s great contributions to this campaign, whatever else he’s doing that we all object to. He is calling out the Bush people for Orwellian, deceptive, historically amnesiatic thinking, right? For Jeb Bush to say, ‘My brother kept us safe,’ is not true, you know. Facts are stubborn things, as other politicians have reminded us.
“Not only did it happen on his watch, but there was something called the Hart-Rudman Report — Senators Hart and Rudman — tried to get to the White House in early 2001 to say, ‘We are about to get attacked.’ They had been studying it for years. They couldn’t even get in the door to meet with the national security advisor. These are two former United States senators. Then, over the summer of 2001, Bush at Crawford, Texas, gets a report — ‘Al-Qaeda Planning Attacks in the United States’ — they were warned. The idea that he kept us safe is not true.
“Now, just one other thing on this. That doesn’t mean he was responsible for the attacks. so when the Republicans try to counterattack on this, they say, ‘Oh, you’re blaming Bush,’ nobody is blaming Bush. They’re just saying, ‘Stop telling us he kept us safe when it’s not true.'”
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our pick: “To the press corps, Donald Trump is a raving maniac – until he resurrects old left-wing thinking about blaming former President George W. Bush, in office for barely eight months at the time of the terrorist attacks, for 9/11. Then Trump is making a ‘great contribution’ to the campaign. For Alter, it’s liberalism first, journalism second.”
Rating: Four out of five screams.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
