Lucas Tomlinson
Fox News anchor Shannon Bream soon concluded the segment, “All right, Lucas, on the road with the president in Nantucket, thank you very much,” again confirming that Tomlinson was the reporter following Biden around for the Fox team.
Tomlinson had previously appeared Saturday night on Fox’s The Big Weekend Show, in which he and the co-hosts discussed that he had asked Biden those questions. But by Sunday morning, Tomlinson’s depiction of the event on Fox’s flagship “straight news” show had become that Biden “continues to face questions” that Tomlinson himself had been asking.
Numerous commentators and media critics on X (formerly known as Twitter) called out Tomlinson’s report from Sunday morning, including describing it as the “epitome of astroturfing a political attack.” The ridicule piled on further against Tomlinson:
- Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote: “It’s kind of a perpetual motion machine: 1. Report that X ‘continues to face questions;’ 2. Continue to ask those questions; 3. Report that the questions continue; 4. Repeat…”
- The Poynter Institute’s Tom Jones wrote that Tomlinson’s behavior was “deceitful and disingenuous.”
- The conservative media outlet Newsweekran with an understated and deadpan headline, “Fox News Reporter Appears to Leave Out Key Point in Attack on Biden's Age.”
- Tomlinson’s tweet now features a community note on X itself: “This post lacks context. The reporter that asked the question is this reporter, Lucas Tomlinson.”
On Monday, Fox anchor Dana Perino briefly played the clips of Tomlinson’s questions to Biden, with Perino declaring that Biden was “finding no escape from his dismal polling during his Nantucket getaway” — again, with Perino failing to acknowledge that the clip was of a Fox reporter.
Fox anchor Harris Faulkner later played the video clip again, presenting a seemingly new spin from the network on what had just happened by declaring that “the president was not happy about some of the questions from our very own Lucas Tomlinson.” (In fact, people are mocking Tomlinson for the dishonest manner in which he’d presented his question to viewers.)
Tomlinson’s actions over the holiday weekend (followed by Perino and Faulkner’s public obfuscation) should serve as a reminder that Fox is not a news organization at all, but is instead a partisan propaganda organ that exists to spread the network’s chosen political narratives.
Tomlinson’s conduct also needs to be placed in the context of double standards by Fox News — and indeed, a lot of mainstream media outlets, as well — which have sought to portray Biden as too old while simultaneously downplaying or ignoring former president and likely 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump’s numerous misstatements. Moreover, the two men are nearly the same age, a fact that news outlets also tend to ignore.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters
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Trump Denies Secret Service Meeting Over 2A Comments: Another Lie?
Yesterday, after an onslaught of criticism directed towards GOP nominee Donald Trump for his comments that “Second Amendment people” might be able to “do” something about Hillary Clinton, CNN began reporting that the Secret Service had met with the Trump campaign. According to the CNN website, a “U.S Secret Service official confirm[ed] to CNN that the the USSS has spoken to the Trump campaign regarding his Second Amendment comments.”
CNN claimed the official stated that there had been “more than one conversation” about the comments and that the campaign had responded that Trump had not intended to incite violence.
This came a day after the Secret Service itself Tweeted about its knowledge of the Trump comments:
Shortly after CNN’s piece was published, Trump himself jumped back into the controversy and Tweeted out the following:
CNN, for its part, did state, “the Secret Service’s communications director Cathy Milhoan has not confirmed the conversations between the campaign and the Secret Service, but said in a statement Tuesday that ‘the U.S. Secret Service is aware of Mr. Trump’s comments.'”
Shortly after Trump’s comment, Reuters released a report which seemed to contradict CNN: “A federal official on Wednesday said the U.S. Secret Service had not formally spoken with Republican Donald Trump’s presidential campaign regarding his suggestion a day earlier that gun rights activists could stop Democratic rival Hillary Clinton from curtailing their access to firearms.”
Trump then hit back at CNN again on Twitter, but mis-characterized the text of the Reuters article:
However, the Reuters article does not directly contradict CNN, nor was it written as characterized by Trump: It doesn’t state that no conversations ever happened, just that there had not been “formal” talks.
Interestingly, CNN added a clarifying line to their initial article about the events. An archive.org shot of the CNN piece shows it as it was first written. The current version of the article, however, includes the line, “But it’s unclear at what level in the campaign structure the conversations occurred.”
So did the Secret Service discuss the violent comments with Trump’s campaign? By all accounts, except Trump’s own, it seems likely that they did. Reuters only indicated that no formal discussions had taken place, not that no discussions had taken place at all. Further, CNN appears to be standing by their story with only a clarification that the structure of the communications and campaign was unclear.
This is also not the first time the GOP nominee would have lied about something critical to his public persona. Trump recently lied to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about his relationship with Vladimir Putin. Despite acknowledging on numerous occasions they knew each other and had spoken, Trump claimed he had “no relationship” with the Russian leader, except that Putin had “said very nice things” about him. Politifact rated the claim to Stephanopoulos a “full flop.”
Trump also claimed at one time that he received a letter from the NFL complaining about the presidential debate schedule. The NFL completely denied Trump’s claim.
Trump’s lies are so famous that they have even been exhaustively cataloged, so it does not seem unlikely that he is lying about this, as well.
Photo: Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the media during a news conference at the construction site of the Trump International Hotel at the Old Post Office Building in Washington, March 21, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Bourg