#Another anti-Trump media lie and other commentary

Leftist: Another Anti-Trump Lie Exposed

Remember the media’s ironclad conviction that then-President Donald Trump had ordered peaceful protesters to be cleared out of Washington’s Lafayette Park with tear gas last summer, so he could stage a photo op? “It provoked weeks of unmitigated media outrage, presented as one of the most egregious assaults on the democratic order in decades,” recalls Glenn Greenwald at his Substack. That is, until Wednesday afternoon, when the independent Inspector General of the Interior Department, Mark Lee Greenblatt, issued his office’s findings into the incident. The upshot: “The media narrative was false from start to finish.” The US Park Police had cleared the park so a private contractor could install fencing — a decision made before officials knew of Trump’s planned visit to the park. Greenwald concludes: “The corporate outlets that most loudly and shrilly denounce ‘disinformation’ . . . are, in fact, the ones who spread disinformation most frequently.”

Urban beat: Anti-Police Agenda Faltering

Gotham’s worsening crime wave explains “the durable strength” of Eric Adams and Andrew Yang, “the most centrist candidates” in the Democratic primary for mayor, observes Colin Reed at the Washington Examiner. Both men “refused to jump on the ‘defund-the-police’ bandwagon that has swept over the progressive left — a decision that looks wiser by the day.” After all, “when the daily headlines involve graphic details of shootings and unthinkable violence,” it doesn’t take rocket science to see “why residents want more police on the street and more resources in the department, not fewer.” Democrats in Washington better pay attention.

Conservative: Media’s Hunter Hypocrisy

News broke last week that Hunter Biden used the N-word routinely in addressing his (white) lawyer — but the scandal has “predictably been ­ignored by corporate media who are typically more than eager to report on lesser-known individuals’ use of the same racial slur,” laments The Federalist’s Gabe Kaminsky. This is far from the first time “corrupt media outlets have turned a blind eye” to Hunter’s dark side. The New York Times publishes articles “fawning, romanticizing and protecting him from any [claims of] wrongdoing at all costs,” all while the leftist mob has targeted a country-music star, high-school cheerleader and NASCAR driver who have committed comparable offenses. The double standard isn’t “shocking, but appalling nonetheless.”

From the right: Trump’s Deserved Exile

Donald Trump’s “influence is waning in exile. Is that a bad thing?” asks Pedro Gonzalez at Spectator USA. For “all the bluster about” the former prez as a “threat to the established political order,” his “record is a mixture of half-truths and half-measures,” and his endorsements “align with the interests of the GOP establishment he claims to rail against.” It even turns out “Trump allowed ­advisers to talk him out of launching an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and taking measures to hold China accountable.” The latest evidence “Trump’s influence is dependent on his ability to serve establishment interests”: He has teamed up “with Newt Gingrich for a reboot of the Contract with America,” a “serving of tax-cuts conservatism with vague, empty culture-war calories — or the opposite of what” sent him to the White House.

Iconoclast: Warp Speed Revived Industrial Policy

“Operation Warp Speed was a triumph of public-health policy,” argues David Adler at American Affairs. But it also showed “what the US government can still accomplish when it comes to tackling a seemingly ­unsolvable technological challenge. It demonstrated the strength of the US developmental state, ­despite 40 years of ideological assault” from free-market fundamentalists who insist government has no role in setting a national course for the private economy. After all, the executive branch in carrying it out whittled down more than 100 choices to the final few candidates — and then invested heavily, either directly or by placing massive orders. Thus, “OWS was a triumph of American industrial and innovation policy.” 

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board