by digby
Donald Trump says a lot of ridiculous things. He lies a lot. He is a white nationalist demagogue. I am glad to see the media covering him as that. However, there was one story last week that was blatantly unfair to him and I think it’s probably not a good idea to let these things go when the media does it, even if it’s Trump. It was the crying baby story:
Donald Trump didn’t actually kick a baby out of a rally this week in Virginia, according to the eyewitness report of a journalist sitting nearby and the mother of the baby herself.
In a widely-circulated video that spurred headlines criticizing the GOP nominee, Trump was seen saying first that he loved the baby who had begun to cry during his rally, then just a minute later saying that the mother should “get the baby out of here.”
“I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking,” Trump said.
But Daniel Dale, a reporter for the Toronto Star sitting behind the crying baby in question, said the mother was never asked to leave and that the entire episode was Trump’s sense of humor being blown out of proportion.
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The mother was already on her way out when Trump made his second statement.
“One minute later, though, the baby began to cry again. This time, the mother quickly decided to take the baby out of the room. Trump, looking in our direction, appeared to notice that she was on her way to the exit,” Dale wrote.
“To my eyes, it certainly was not an ejection — it was an unusually barbed endorsement of the mother’s own decision to depart,” he continued.
He also noted that the mother and her child returned to their seats after a short time, with the baby quieted and sucking on a pacifier.
It wasn’t even a “barbed endorsement of the mother’s own decision.” He was joking sardonically. I loathe the man and I could see that and understood that he was just kidding when he made the remark.
I wouldn’t put it past him to be mean to babies and certainly it’s reasonable to think he’d be mean to the mother. But in this case, he was just innocuously joshing. The press misrepresented it.
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