Trump falsely claims media ‘didn’t report’ Orlando massacre
The Trump administration has falsely accused the media of “ignoring” the Orlando massacre – despite Trump himself failing to pay a visit in the wake of the tragedy.
49 innocent people died in the shooting in Orlando’s gay Pulse nightclub last June, with more were injured – making the incident the biggest mass shooting in US history.
The incident and subsequent response received wall-to-wall coverage throughout the media, with more than 150,000 articles penned about the Pulse nightclub to date.
But President Trump has a different version of events, according to a combative document released from the White House.
Citing a rise in terrorist incidents as the basis for his Muslim ban, Trump claimed in a speech: “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported, and in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.”
The White House followed up by releasing a list of 78 terrorist attacks that it claimed had been ignored by the Western media.
Incredibly, this included the Orlando massacre, with its release listing: “ORLANDO, FL, US. June, 2016. TARGET: 49 killed and 53 wounded in shooting at a nightclub ATTAKER [sic]: US person”.
Its briefing claimed the listed incidents “have not received the media attention they deserved”, in an attack on liberal news outlets.
PinkNews has published more than 200 stories about the Orlando massacre, suspending all other coverage in the days after the shooting to dedicate resources to covering the aftermath of the shooting around-the-clock.
The Trump White House claims that the media ignored the Orlando massacre are particularly galling, given Trump himself failed to pay a visit to the site of the tragedy despite being the presumptive Republican nominee for President at the time.
While Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton paid a visit to the site and met privately with first responders, survivors and the families of victims, Trump failed to do so – but exploited the tragedy at a rally to claim that there would be mass killings of gay people if he lost the election.
In a speech directly after the massacre he rallied against “politically-correct special interests”, adding: “Ask yourself, who is really the friend of women and the L-G-B-T community, Donald Trump with his actions, or Hillary Clinton with her words? Clinton wants to allow Radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country—they enslave women, and murder gays.”
Even though the attacker was a US citizen, he used the incident to call for a ban on Muslims visiting the US, claiming: “Hillary Clinton can never claim to be a friend of the gay community as long as she continues to support immigration policies that bring Islamic extremists to our country who suppress women, gays and anyone who doesn’t share their views.”
