Anyone familiar with Chris Cillizza’s work at the Washington Post and MSNBC understands that he is a left-wing crusader, and oftentimes a snarky, frivolous one. In other words, he’s pretty much just like everyone else in the DC Media. No one, therefore, should be surprised that Cillizza would declare Donald Trump a liar while declaring it a “triumph” when Hillary Clinton is caught lying about Benghazi. We should all be concerned, though, when Cillizza engages in the kind of hate-rhetoric that could get someone hurt.
There is no question Trump exaggerated when he spoke of “thousands and thousands” of American Muslims cheering the fall of the World Trade Center. While it is true he has not retracted the comment, he has also not repeated it. Based on contemporaneous reporting at the time, Trump stands by, and should stand by his general claim that some number of American Muslims celebrated that terrible day. Countless numbers of witnesses back him up. Polls of American Muslims certainly buoy this sentiment.
In his never-ending quest to elect Democrats, Cillizza is not capable of reporting this kind of nuance. He’s an ideologue who must declare Donald Trump a liar, which is fine. But when Cillizza brands a major presidential candidate “dangerous” and a “real danger,” that is the kind of hate-rhetoric that can get someone hurt.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are serial-liars. Although he identifies as an “objective journalist,” the fact that Cillizza admires this quality in them, and even sees it as a “triumph,” is just the usual-usual DC Media partisanship. Declaring Trump a “real danger” is, however, going way-way-way too far.
The hate-message Cillizza is sending out to the world is that the next president of the United States could be dangerous — a “real danger.” We’re a big country, and as we have seen in the Obama era, there are a lot of nuts out there of all stripes eager to do violence — eager for the national publicity the DC Media awards certain killers, eager to be heroes to a certain cause.
Stopping — I want to be careful with my language — a “real danger” from becoming president is the stuff of movies, where the person who does so is seen as the hero. This thinking is part of our popular culture and was recently resurrected with the Baby Hitler meme that Cillizza himself helped spread — and did so within the context of the current presidential campaign.
We all understand that Cillizza and the DC Media desperately want to preserve Barack Obama’s legacy with a victory for Hillary Clinton. We all understand that the DC Media despises Republicans, most especially those like Trump, who refuse to play the media’s game and fall into their traps. We get this…
The danger zone is when a Chris Cillizza fails to recognize a political opponent’s humanity, and abuses his Power at the Washington Post to brand a target on that person’s back by “othering” them as a “real danger.”
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC