When will YOU no longer believe the MSM? – Part 1
This post is a warmup for a topic I have been wanting to cover for years, that of Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS. There are various stages and levels of TDS and various subcategories of people who suffer from it but, in my experience, everyone who suffers from TDS largely still believes the Mainstream Media or MSM. The MSM are often called other names such as legacy media or corporate media but the term also encompasses media sources and commentators that largely take their news or world view from MSM. Sometimes it helps to define the MSM so, given my audience is largely New Zealanders in NZ or kiwi expats in countries like Australia, Canada, the UK and the US, let’s look at specifically who I am talking about (Note: this is a non-exhaustive list):
New Zealand: TVNZ, 3 News, Radio NZ, Stuff (covering metro dailies), NZ Herald, Listener
UK: BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, most Fleet Street daily papers, Economist
Canada: CBC, CTV, Radio Canada, Global News, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Harpers
Australia: ABC, 7, 9 and 10 networks, SBS, SMH, Age, AAP
USA: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, NY Times, WaPost, most metro dailies, AP
Sentiment about Trump at these various global media outlets is universally negative with some reporters and columnists bordering on overtly hostile. Each of them feed off each other creating a narrative that obsesses on anything remotely negative and hides, minimises or distorts anything positive about Trump. Over the years as I have engaged with various sufferers from TDS and even discussions with intelligent, educated, conservative leaning folk who might support some of Trump’s policies but generally personally dislike the man, when I probe as to the reasons for their dislike, or as I drill down to the specifics of what about Trump they oppose and how they came to believe what they believed, in virtually every case the answer was that their negative views about Trump came from negative MSM coverage of him.
Conversely, when you examine Trump’s rise to power and his remarkable comeback, when you examine the political phenomenon simply known as MAGA (from Trump’s famous campaign slogan Make America Great Again), it is a story of voters migrating away from the MSM and seeking their news from more right leaning media, podcasters, commentators and social media influencers, the change of ownership of Twitter (X) combined with Trump’s relentless attacks on the MSM. The MAGA movement is populated with a broad coalition from traditional Republican voters, Independents, disgruntled former Democrats and first time or infrequent voters. At the heart of MAGA and the new foot soldiers of Trump’s power are the so-called Patriot community sometimes called the freedom community indeed the most conservative part of the Republican House members coalesce as the Freedom Caucus. A disproportionate number of the most influential new media commentators align with these communities and the restrictions and censorship during Covid became a common rallying point. New terms are used to define the political landscape with those who largely still follow and believe the MSM called “normies” and the process by which people who were once normies but now embrace Trump and his agenda is described as “red pilling”, a reference to the 2000 movie “The Matrix” where the central character Neo is offer a blue pill to remain in normal society or “the matrix” or a red pill to dive down the rabbit hole and learn about what is REALLY happening. When it comes to the so-called “rabbit hole”, again a reference to Lewis Carroll’s famous children’s novel “Alice in Wonderland”, the rabbit hole can be used to describe the fairly innocuous process of a former liberal discovering the conservative world is not as described by the MSM all the way to pursuing and believing a raft of conspiracy theories that span the gambit from 9/11 Truthers, anti vaxers, chem trails, who shot JFK’s to so-called Q-Anon and flat earthers.
I’m going to be blunt and not beat about the bush. The following list is by no means exhaustive, but it covers some of the biggest howlers the media has perpetrated. I am going to call what many media outlets, who followed each other like lemmings, published as lies. They were not spin, or biased interpretations or liberal slated commentary, in almost all cases, they peddled outright falsehoods, calculated lies deliberately designed to inflict maximum damage on Trump and his (and his closest supporters) electoral prospects. I will break my examples into two Parts and in this Part I will cover less consequential lies and in Part 2 I will cover some of the very consequential lies.
LESS CONSEQUENTIAL LIES
1 – Brent Kavanagh was a rapist
False media narrative
During the Senate confirmation hearings for Trump’s 2nd Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanagh, no less that 4 women made accusations of sexually inappropriate behaviour some of actual assault, mostly from his high school and college years. The claims were breathlessly reported by all MSM to the point of being shouted from the veritable rooftops and any attempt by Kavanagh, the Trump team and conservative media to attack and cross examine the claims were attempted to be shouted down by a MSM mantra, “women accusers must always be believed.”
Truth
Gradually over time, each of the four women’s stories began to fall apart under more intense scrutiny. Whilst the more fanciful outrageous claims were quite quickly refuted, the MSM clung to Christine Blazy Ford’s claim for as long as they could and were far less vociferous and prominent in publishing the eventually true claims of Kavanagh’s defenders.
2 – Jesse Smollett hate crime
False media narrative
Jesse Smollett was a prominent black actor who made his name in the Empire series and in January 2019 made a complaint to the Chicago Police Department claiming he had been threatened and subjected to racially motivated harassment one night as he was working home by supposed white supremacists who left a noose and said “this was MAGA country”. The MSM widely reported his claim with very little if any investigation happy to contribute to a narrative that Trump was racist as evidenced by his racist white supporters.
Truth
Smollett not only fabricated the whole story but served a one-year jail sentence after being tried and prosecuted for lying to police and wasting police time.
3 – Hands Up Don’t Shoot
False media narrative
In August 2014 an 18 year old black man Michael Brown robbed a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri (a poor mostly black suburb of St Louis) and was pursued by local police where a confrontation ensued and Brown was shot and killed resisting arrest. Aggressive black activists, uncritically reported by sympathetic MSM, alleged that Brown was shot in the back in cold blood with his hands in the air in an act of surrender. The chant “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” became a mantra repeated at many marches and demonstrations across the US and was enthusiastically intoned by many media figures in sync with the narrative of racist white cops killing black men.
Truth
Obama’s own Department of Justice fully examined all of the evidence and all witness testimony in the case and supported the truth: that Brown was a large and aggressive petty criminal who not only resisted arrest but had wrestled and manhandled the diminutive Officer Darren Wilson to the ground when he was shot by the officer in desperate self-defense. At no stage was Brown ever holding his hands up in a fake act of peaceful surrender. It was an entirely fabricated narrative.
4 – Trump encouraging bleach consumption
False media narrative
At the height of the Covid lockdowns, in a press conference Trump mused on possible alternative treatment modalities as there were limited treatment options prior to the launch of the C 19 vaccines. One experimental treatment Trump mentioned was using a laser UV light treatment that supposedly had the effect of disinfecting germs. MSM mashed up various comments and rushed to mockingly claim that Trump had told Americans that one way to treat Covid was to drink bleach. MSM reporting on this falsehood reached a fever pitch when a woman in Tucson fed bleach to her unwell husband and he died from ingesting the bleach.
Truth
Trump never said that anyone should drink bleach or anything close to it. He was describing the possible outcome of an experimental treatment protocol involving using laser UV light beams directed to infected areas. Trump hating liberals in the media repeated the falsehood for many months long after the truth was made clear.
5 – Trump overfeeding Japanese koi fish
False media narrative
When Trump was on an official visit to Japan in November 2017, the then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took Trump to a famous koi fishpond. Koi fish are the world’s most valuable fish combining exotic colours with longevity with some of them living for decades and some worth $10,000’s. The media claimed that Trump breached Japanese koi fish feeding protocol by over feeding the fish when he was shown in edited media clips throwing into the pond the remainder of the feed in the wooden box he was given. Trump was portrayed as lazy and culturally insensitive.
Truth
Trump was merely following the lead of PM Abe who also threw the remainder of HIS fish feed from the same type of wooden box into the pond moments before. Media edited out the footage of Abe preceding Trump in throwing in the remainder of the feed he had creating the impression of Trump impulsiveness when he was merely following the lead of his host.
6 – Trump tear gas use for photo op
False media narrative
When the BLM riots were occurring in Washington DC in June 2020, Trump was scheduled to visit a church in DC called St John’s Church. In that visit Trump held up a bible in a defiant fashion to the media and spoke about his faith commitment. The MSM claimed that Trump had specifically asked the National Guard to clear away protestors from Lafayette Square just so he could get the bible holding photo op to appeal to his Christian base. The inference was that Trump was abusing his power as Commander in Chief of the military for a purely partisan photo op.
Truth
The Department of the Interior Inspector General Mark Lee Greenblatt determined in an independent inquiry that the decision to use the National Guard to clear Lafayette Square was made to enable the installation of anti-riot fencing due to riots of a few days earlier overwhelming law enforcement. The decision to clear the Square was made BEFORE any National Guard hierarchy knew of Trump’s plans to attend St John’s Church.
7 – Trump grabbing Beast steering wheel
False media narrative
During the January 6th House Hearings, a former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson alleged when testifying that Trump tried to commandeer the steering wheel of the so-called “Beast”, the nickname given to the special Cadillac limousine that has been armoured and strengthened for the transporting of the President. It was part of the narrative of Trump’s reckless behaviour in DC on January 6th, 2021. The media went with anything however fanciful that made Trump look bad on Jan 6.
Truth
It was soon proven that Hutchinson lied under oath. Firstly, logistically it would’ve been next to impossible due to the bulletproof glass barrier between the passenger section of the limousine and the driver. Secondly, the two Secret Service agents who accompanied Trump in the Beast testified that Hutchinson was lying and, more sinister, the House Committee deliberately sat on this exculpatory evidence that would’ve quickly proven the story was fake.
8 – Border Patrol agents whipping migrants at the border
False media narrative
Media published footage of Border Patrol agents on horseback cracking whips to supposedly coral Haitian migrants trying to cross the border. The intention was to paint Trump’s border enforcement as overly harsh and draconian.
Truth
Close examination of the footage showed the Border Patrol Agents on horseback were using the whips to control the horses, a standard operating procedure but the media ran with the hoax because it made Trump look bad.
9 – Trump sends nuke codes after Mar-a-Lago
False media narrative
When then Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump for supposedly illegally removing classified documents when he left office and returned to Mar-a-Lago, media repeated breathlessly false rumours that Trump disclosed nuclear codes in a fundraising email he sent out after the the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.
Truth
The email supposedly containing nuclear codes was judged to be a fake and sent out in a Trump hating social media post but was, for a short period of time, reported on by MSM.
10 – Trump mocked a disabled reporter
False media narrative
During the 2016 campaign Trump was alleged to have made a dismissive gesture when answering a question from a disabled reported called Serge Kovaleski.
Truth
The media coverage failed to mention, or show examples of, Trump making the exact same dismissive gesture of exasperation to a bunch of people he disagreed with who were all able bodied. Trump did not single out Kovaleski because of his disability.
11 – Colin Powell’s name removed at Arlington
False media narrative
Media claimed that Trump had General Colin Powell’s name removed from the list of famous Generals honoured at Arlington National Cemetery because Powell was a RINO and a big part of the Bush/Cheney era, two Republicans that Trump has publicly expressed dislike for. This painted a picture of Trump’s supposed venal and vindictive nature.
Truth
The claim was a pure fabrication. Powell’s name is still there and was never removed. Once again, the media ran with a falsehood designed to make Trump look bad.
12 – More plane crashes under Trump 47
False media narrative
Soon after Trump’s second inauguration there was a spate of plane crashes that the media tried to blame on Trump’s restructuring and funding re-prioritization at the Department of Transportation. The claim was made that, in the midst of the DOGE inspired aggressive paring down of the numbers of Federal employees, that Trump had fired Air Traffic Controllers thus contributing to an unsafe flying environment resulting in this spate of plane crashes.
Truth
Another media fiction. First, there were more crashes in the same early period of Biden’s Presidency in 2021 (55) than the same period under Trump’s in 2025 (36). Second, whilst there were some rationalisations at the DOT, the numbers of ATCs have INCREASED since Trump took office in an attempt to alleviate a huge shortage of ATCs. Third, how could Trump’s fake firings be the reason why a plane crashed at a CANADIAN airport! Once again, anything to make Trump look bad.
13 – ICE raided an Elementary school
False media narrative
Activist pro illegal Trump hating teachers in Chicago alleged to media that ICE performed a raid at an elementary school.
Truth
The media ran with this juicy tidbit without doing any rudimentary fact checking. First, not only did senior ICE and Homeland Security officials deny it but second, there was no evidence ever presented of this fact and if there was, you can guarantee the media would’ve run it.
14 – Astronauts not stranded
False media narrative
When Elon Musk used one of his Space X rockets to rescue US astronauts stranded for months in the orbiting space station, told by the Biden era NASA that they didn’t have the resources to run a rescue mission, in order to try and protect former Biden Admin staff from the negative optics of a then pro-Trump businessman finally rescuing these astronauts after the Trump admin approved the mission compared to when Musk’s offer to Biden to rescue the astronauts was not authorised, media tried to gaslight and say that the astronauts never really needed rescuing.
Truth
NPR described them as stranded in 2024 under Biden. Musk released his correspondence about the plight of the astronauts with Biden Admin’s NASA people confirming his version of events and making a mockery of pathetic media attempts at trying to pretend there was no crisis.
15 – Physicians group opposed RFK nomination.
False media narrative
A “Physicians Advocacy Group” was widely cited by MSM as opposing Trump’s nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr as Health and Human Services Secretary.
Truth
The “advocacy” group was a partisan astroturf group recently formed by accepting fake signatories and funded by prominent Trump hating left wing donors like Bill Gates
16 – Trump disrespects Pope at funeral
False media narrative
Many media outlets panned Trump for supposedly disrespecting Papal and Catholic Church tradition by not wearing a black suit at the funeral of Pope Francis being the customary colour for mourning and reinforced this narrative by showing footage/shots of Trump in his blue suit surrounded by male dignitaries in black suits
Truth
The Trump hating media failed to show more panoramic footage/shots that revealed a good number of prominent male dignitaries also in blue suits including none other than Prince William.
There are 100 examples of similar media hoaxes of the less consequential type. In Part 2 I will cover some of the big and most consequential lies the MSM have told about Trump.