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The Left’s Bombshell Backfire Factory

Democrats and their media mouthpieces revel over the word “bombshell.” Since President Trump was elected, this term has been thrown around so many times that it has lost its desired impact, which is to garner national attention about a breaking news story, invariably about the impending demise of the president. Clearly, the Left and the Trump-bashing media have made every effort to amplify the importance of such stories in the hope that they can thwart the president and his policies.

Despite their unceasing efforts, they have failed miserably time and again. Their alleged “bombshells” have consisted of nothing more than assumptions, hearsay, and unsubstantiated allegations that are both unpersuasive and untrue.   

The most recent effort to attack the president came from yet another uncorroborated “bombshell” story in The Atlantic. As reported by Townhall, Jeffery Goldberg’s supposed scoop has it that:

President Trump is accused of skipping a trip to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside of Paris in 2018 because the 1,800 U.S. Marines who died there were “suckers” for “getting killed.” The piece also claims the president was lying about a bad weather call that cancelled the trip.

As expected, the major media outlets ran with this story as if it were gospel because it created a negative perception of the president in the eyes of the American public. The problem,  of course, is that it relied entirely on “anonymous sources.” Therefore, there was no way to gauge the credibility of these alleged sources or even to determine whether any of these sources actually exist. Not only was the story based on sources cloaked in secrecy, but it was also immediately refuted by several sources close to the events: 

[N]early a dozen current and former government officials have gone on the record to state the story is false. Further, official government emails about the visit being called off due to bad weather and logistical issues, have been published by the White House.

 The fact that many Democrats and the liberal media simply accepted the allegations in this story as true is concerning, yet unsurprising. After all, this has been their modus operandi since the president was elected. It has never been about truth or the facts. Rather, assumptions, falsehoods, hearsay, and uncorroborated allegations have ruled the day as long as they could potentially hurt the president.

This is not the first time that the Left has pushed an uncorroborated, false, or disparaging story to hurt the president or those close to him.

During the presidential impeachment hearings, Democrats and the media willingly accepted and believed that President Trump engaged in a quid pro quo with the president of Ukraine, despite the absence of any evidence, the fact that one of their star witnesses admitted that no such evidence existed, and the fact that much of the public testimony consisted of second and third-hand information, hearsay, or baseless assumptions. 

During Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, the Supreme Court justice was forced to defend himself against uncorroborated and unsubstantiated “bombshell” allegations of sexual assault merely because he was a Trump-appointed constitutional conservative. The alleged “bombshell” also had no factual basis. The main accuser’s motivation was exposed as questionable based on later comments made by her attorney while other accusers admitted to fabricating their stories. 

Yet when Jussie Smollett claimed he was beaten up and that he was the subject of a hate crime (another “bombshell”), Hollywood Democrats and some media outlets used this uncorroborated and unverified story to shower blame on the president. Along those same lines, many media outlets and Democrats also blamed MAGA hat-wearing student Nick Sandmann and other students from Covington Catholic High School as the aggressors against the supposedly peaceful Native American, Nathan Phillips, who taunted the students. That “bombshell” also turned out to be incorrect. 

While the Democrats and the left-wing media quickly and easily accept uncorroborated information as “factual” when it potentially hurts the president or those close to him, they are less willing to do so in other circumstances. For example, when Tara Reade filed a police report and accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, some Democrats were unwilling to help Reade while others immediately came to Biden’s defense without calling for an investigation. Reade presented her story to the campaigns of both Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) but there was no interest there in her story.

Why would Democrats so readily discount Reade’s allegations while accepting the uncorroborated claims in The Atlantic, Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, and the Smollett and Sandmann cases? Are Democrats saying that one kind of story is more “credible,” or “worth believing” than another solely because of who it is about or who it might impact, despite the absence of any factual support? Are those on the Left willing to assume someone’s guilt or innocence solely on the basis of the individual’s political affiliation? 

Sadly, if the end result promises to hurt the president or those close to him, the answer appears to be a resounding yes

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About Elad Hakim

Elad Hakim is a writer, commentator, and a practicing attorney. His articles have been published in The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, The Epoch Times, The Western Journal, American Thinker, and other online publications.

Photo: iStock/Getty Images

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