Review of

PragerU Video: The Charlottesville Lie

Our summary of Steve Cortes' claims: Steve Cortes argues that the media lied when they reported that, after the Charlottesville protests, President Trump referred to the neo-Nazis as “fine people.” He argues that Trump’s statements were taken out of context. As further support, Cortes points out that Trump has Jewish family members, and that it’s not possible that Trump could believe there are “fine” Antifa thugs.

Conspiracies and common sense

Leslie Xiao Baltimore, MD Published 24 Nov 2019

There is a pretty convincing takedown of Steve Cortes’ central claims about what Trump and the media actually said at what points in time. The summary: whether or not it was just a verbal gaffe, Trump really was saying there were “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis.

A much bigger issue, though, is the magnitude of the conspiracy that Cortes proposes. How could he possibly argue that ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the others all participated in the giant lie?

Just think about it. When the Charlottesville story unfolded, was there not a single reporter—either from a mainstream OR conservative-slanting news organization—not a single reporter who noticed that the public story about Trump was inaccurate? And not a single member of the Trump administration who noticed it and publicly corrected the record?

Cortes explicitly claims that all of these news organizations knew about this supposed lie, and yet all of them kept it secret. You can almost picture them grinning, winking, and nodding at one another.

When publishing his video, Cortes may have believed that there is a conspiracy-loving audience out there who would not engage in this kind of common-sense reasoning about his claim. Even if there is media bias against Trump, no one should ever have taken Cortes’ accusations seriously.

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