The Trump administration has released a list of massacres it claims were largely ignored by the mainstream media.
Listed among them is the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando last June where 49 people were killed—the worst mass shooting in US history.
The document reads: “ORLANDO, FL, US. June, 2016. TARGET: 49 killed and 53 wounded in shooting at a nightclub ATTAKER [sic]: US person”.
The list of 78 attacks—both domestic and overseas—appears to be the administration’s justification for President Trump’s attempt to ban immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The list only includes events that are believed to be carried out with Islamist motives, omitting a number of deadly shootings, including the recent attack on a mosque in Quebec.
Press secretary Sean Spicer told journalists travelling on Air Force One that Trump “felt members of the media don’t always cover some of those events to the extent that other events might get covered.”
Journalists have hit back at these claims, with the pretty readily available proof that the events were extensively reported on.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper showed footage of him reporting on the Paris attacks in 2015, the San Bernadino shooting the same year and in Orlando in June 2016.
“Not only did we cover many of the attacks on that list the White House has released, we covered them heavily. I know because I was there on the ground reporting a number of them," says Cooper.
At the time, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton visited the site of the shooting in Orlando and met with victims, families and first responders.
Trump decided not to visit the site of the tragedy but instead used it as an opportunity to say he was the ‘real friend’ of the gay community.
“Ask yourself, who is really the friend of women and the LGBT community, Donald Trump with his actions, or Hillary Clinton with her words? Clinton wants to allow Radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country—they enslave women, and murder gays,” said Trump.
Speaking to troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida on Monday, Trump said that the media were failing to cover terror attacks.
"It's gotten to a point where it's not even reported, and in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn't even want to report it."
