The Would-Be Massacre That Was a Wake-Up Call for the Press

Chuck Todd is terrified for his life. He announced he won’t attend any events with Donald Trump anymore. He doesn’t feel safe. It’s too dangerous. Trump, he insists, will throw everyone else under the bus to protect himself. That’s awfully convenient, considering the media is largely responsible for the collective mental health crisis in this country regarding Donald Trump. How do I know? I used to exist inside that insulated Doomsday Cult, and most of the people I know in real life still do. I can see what it’s done to them. Ten years of worry, fear, hysteria, and hatred have consumed them.When I talk to my mother, I know she exists in that world defined by hate, as she spends the last few years of what’s left of her life as part of this “all of society” effort to bring down the enemy of the Democrats, of Barack Obama. That’s all it is. But she has no idea because she takes them at their word, and her perception of reality is limited to the confines of the Doomsday cult. My mother is like I used to be, a committed soldier to believing everything that was pumped into my nervous system from my social media feed, to the headlines at the New York Times, to the opening monologues on Morning Joe, The Daily Show, and MS-Now. Like her, I trusted them. Like her, I couldn’t believe they would lie about something so serious. It had to be true, all of it.It’s just that it wasn’t true, and it was easy to figure it out. All it took was watching Trump’s rallies, listening to him talk, getting to know his supporters, seeing things from their point of view, and humanizing them. And yet, even suggesting such a thing, and you watch them flip out. I’ve always known all it would take is a little bit of courage from the legacy press to help people like my mom, and millions of Americans who believe the lies they pump out every day on behalf of the Democrats. Just a little bit of sanity would go a long way. But instead, they are playing with fire. They are assuming guys like Cole Allen can tell the difference between extreme hyperbole and the truth. Any column about the Left’s violence begins and ends with Trump, and all that means is they don’t get the message. At best, they “both sides” it, they can’t see what they’ve done to whole generations who actually believe they’re growing up in a dictatorship, a regime that disappears people off the streets, wants to turn every woman into a birthing slave, and is shooting protesters just for exercising their First Amendment rights. Who wouldn’t want to pick up a gun?At best, the Democrats came out of the potential massacre screaming about gun control, as though they’ve done anything to protect the students or the schools in 20 years, but all that does is change the channel away from common sense and empathy back to where they want it, right on target.Cole Allen took the press at their word, which is why he couldn’t understand how they could have dinner with a “rapist, traitor, and pedophile.” He has a point. After all, why would they if they really meant everything they’ve been telling us for ten years?Had he been better at breaching security — if he’d had a better weapon that could fire multiple rounds, there is a good chance members of the press could have been mowed down too, along with the very pregnant Karoline Leavitt, who thankfully just welcomed her baby into this world. It feels like a miracle for anyone paying attention. The press didn’t seem to get it. None of them even took a pause, except to blame Trump, to say he was nice for a second there, but then turned hostile again at Norah O’Donnell on 60 Minutes. The media focuses intensely on acts of violence by the Right and has for ten years, while ignoring violence from the Left. They do this without even thinking about it, which is why Americans conclude the Right is more violent. The media told them. So why wouldn’t it be true?Alex Pretti and Renee Good shouldn’t have been shot, but they were attacking federal officers. They aren’t the violent ones to the media. It’s ICE, the Gestapo. If you aren’t aware that there are two sides to every story in America now, what in the world would you think? You wouldn’t just be terrified. You would be radicalized. You would think violence is the only answer because everything else has failed.The press, however, should have better discernment. If they could just tell the truth for once, or at least try to correct the record, maybe we wouldn’t be here now, where yet another assassin felt he had no other choice but to do the world a favor by killing Hitler. It was the job of the media to push back on the hyperbole and hysteria, but instead they became the delivery device, injecting irrational fear and rage into the veins of this country every second of every day - in airports, gyms, gas stations, and in the living rooms of people who still watch the news, like my mom. Why don’t they