Charles Hurt Rips Media for J.D. Vance ‘Clickbait’ Headlines: ‘The Damage Is Done’

MCENANY: “Well, in the wake of the heartbreaking and deadly shooting in Georgia, the left-wing media is exploiting the tragedy to twist Senator J.D. Vance’s words about the shooting. Watch this, this is The Associated Press. They accused Vance of calling school shootings ‘a fact of life.’ You are looking at the headline, it reads: ‘J.D. Vance says school shootings are a fact of life, calls for better security.’ But wait, here is what he actually said.”

[Clip starts]

Vance: “Then we have to think about how to make this less common. Now look, the Kamala Harris answer to this is to take law-abiding American citizens’ guns away from them. That is what Kamala Harris wants to do, but we have to ask ourselves, we actually have been able to run an experiment on this because you’ve got some states with very strict gun laws and you’ve got some states that don’t have strict gun laws at all. And the states with strict gun laws, they have a lot of school shootings. And the states without strict gun laws, some of them have school shootings too. So, clearly, strict gun laws is not the thing that’s going to solve this problem. What is going to solve this problem, and I really do believe this is — look, I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re — if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we’ve got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who walks through the front door — (applause) — we’ve got to bolster security so that if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to.”

[Clip ends]

MCENANY: “Now, under pressure, the AP quickly fixed their headline, deleting their tweet and adding that Vance laments school shootings. But that didn’t stop the Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, NBC from stirring the pot with headlines like these. Morning Joe admitted that Vance had been taken out of context.”

[Clip starts]

GEIST: “The truth of the matter is he’s right, that at this moment this is a fact of life. And in fairness, his full comment was ‘I don’t like that this is a fact of life.’ He said we don’t have to like the reality we live in, but it is the reality we live in.”

[Clip ends]

MCENANY: “So, wait, Vance is right. Where are all the headlines slamming Willie Geist for saying that? But even the facts said right to their faces could not stop Morning Joe from pushing their agenda, even when it involves the loss of four lives.”

[Clip starts]

BRZEZINSKI: “That comment that he made right there is another very, very stark example of the difference between these two campaigns, Harris-Walz versus Trump-Vance. They see it, Trump-Vance, as a fact of life. And Kamala Harris immediately said after the shooting, this is a choice we’re making, and we have to make a different choice. People don’t want this to be a fact of life.”

SCARBOROUGH: “No, mothers don’t — mothers don’t want to fear —“

BRZEZINSKI: “Nobody wants to choose this.”

SCARBOROUGH: “Fathers don’t want to fear sending their children to school.”

[Clip ends]

MCENANY: “You know, this went viral last night. I want to get to the AP and the absurdity of what they did in a moment. But, Kennedy, this is the loss of four lives. This is a tragedy. This is — every parent’s heart broke, and anyone who has an impetus to jump on J.D. Vance and politicize this and take out of context when he was lamenting a situation, acting like he said something cavalierly, I just don’t know where that person comes from.”

Kennedy: “No, and they’re the ones who are making the argument that because school shootings are a fact of life, like we have to confiscate all guns. You know, that’s the argument that they are making themselves. But what’s disgusting about this is a lot of these newsrooms are so hyper-politicized and, you know, didn’t learn any lessons from 2016 and 2020. And instead, they are going to use subtle language in any way they can to move their chosen candidate forward and to make sure they demonize the person that they don’t want in the White House by taking phrases like this out of context. Because it’s clearly not what he said. And you know, this is actually the more emotional J.D. Vance has been on the stump so far and it obviously means something to him as a father. And taking things out of context and abstracting doesn’t solve any of the problems we have right now and especially, as we talked about in the last block, the mental health epidemic we have among young people and, you know, particularly young boys.”

MCENANY: “Yes, no doubt. Harris, he said very clearly, I don’t like that this is a fact of life. The AP: ‘J.D. Vance says school shootings are a fact of life.’ It is journalistic malpractice.”

FAULKNER: “Look, The Associated Press took down the information that they had posted, but not before more than two million people had seen it.”

MCENANY: “Bingo.”

FAULKNER: “So, I mean, you want to say they quickly took it down? I don’t think two million saw it within 10 or 30 seconds. I think they thought about it and said, well, I guess we better talk — take it down because the ratio is getting tough for them, in terms of of journalism that says you’re lying here. Taking things out of context, you’re lying. Why would you do that? Why would you purposefully put these words in someone’s mouth and make it look a certain way? What is the complicit goal in this? Are you in cahoots with the left? Do you want to make him look bad? I mean, it just brings up more questions. OK, so we’ll take it down. We don’t know what those two million people did with it. I mean, maybe they reposted it on their own. There’s no — I mean, does anybody want to do the intro on that? Like, that’s a lot. They certainly don’t. They want to, you know, Wash their hands of it. All of it is because we tolerate it, though. And that’s a time for someone like, you know, a social media platform to say, look, we really do require the facts. We’ll hold our breath.”

MCENANY: “You know, this —“

FAULKNER: “Besides Elon.”

MCENANY: “Besides Elon. There’s the media and then there’s the Democrats, Charlie. Here’s the Democrats. They’re still doubling down on the lie. Kamala Harris: ‘School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn’t have to be this way.’ Kamala Harris Headquarters: ‘J.D. Vance responds to the deadly shooting of Georgia by saying it’s a fact of life.’ Hillary Clinton: ‘We know regular mass shootings aren’t a fact of life (Vance), or something that we just have to get over (Trump).’ They’re just doubling down on these lies, acting like these two candidates don’t care about children and shootings, and they very clearly do.”

HURT: “Yeah. And I think it’s because of what you just said, Harris. It’s because, you know, the damage was done as soon as they posted it. And, of course, it cost them nothing to take it back down. But, you know, The Associated Press has enjoyed, you know, for many, many years has been sort of the most authoritative, most immediate voice for disseminating the news. And this is what they’ve become. They’re after clickbait, is what they’re after. They’re trying to come up with the most, you know, the most clickbaity sort of headline that they can come up with and they — and they do a very good job of teeing off so that everybody on the left knows the notes to hit and then they all start hitting them and then they could pull it back later and — but the damage is done.”

FAULKNER: “So when do we believe them?”

MCENANY: “Never. Do your own research.”

HURT: “Exactly. I got to the point where I don’t believe them ever.”