Credit where credit’s due. A day after spreading the abject lie — and it spread like wildfire — The New York Times published a correction, or something vaguely resembling one.
On Thursday the paper wrote that during a White House meeting with sheriffs opposed to sanctuary laws, the president said that immigrants are animals. In today’s column, the Times concedes — grudgingly — that his comment was made with respect to “dangerous criminals trying to cross into the United States illegally” and specifically “the brutal transnational gang MS-13” (the Times’s words).
Here’s the video that prompted the “animals” remark and the feeding frenzy in the media and Congress that followed:
And here’s the money statement from the Times’s “apologia”:
News accounts of the meeting published in The Times and elsewhere later noted that Mr. Trump had been discussing dangerous criminals, including MS-13, when he used the word “animals.”
But the Gray Lady wasn’t finished taking its licks. Before the article is over, another country is heard from:
… [A] top Mexican official said that Mr. Trump’s language was offensive whether he was referring to gang members or not. [Emphasis added]
“President Trump referred to some immigrants — perhaps he had criminal gangs in mind, I don’t know — as animals, not as persons,” Luis Videgaray, the Mexican foreign minister, said in an interview with Televisa, a Mexican network. “In the opinion of the Mexican government, this is absolutely unacceptable, and we are going to formally communicate this to the U.S. State Department today.”
So who exactly are MS-13? The question may not be as open-and-shut as you think. During the kerfuffle over Parkland and gun control, author Stephen King let slip his belief that MS-13 is a firearm. Joy Reid added that “nobody that [sic] doesn’t watch Fox has heard of MS-13.”
A trip through the LU morgue offers a few insights into the group the president called “animals.” Consider this piece from Fox News:
Three members of the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13 showed no remorse Tuesday as they laughed and joked in a New York courtroom while the family of one of their alleged murder victims – a teenage girl — grimly looked on.
Enrique Portillo and brothers Alexi Saenz and Jairo Saenz laughed, smiled and joked with each other as prosecutors said they were waiting to hear from the U.S. Justice Department about whether they can pursue the death penalty.
The family of 16-year-old Kayla Cuevas, the Brentwood, N.Y., girl they are accused of slaughtering in cold blood alongside her friend Nisa Mickens, 15, glared at them from the gallery, the New York Post reported.
Or this, from Breitbart:
As many as 10 members of the gang MS-13 stabbed a man more than 100 times in a Maryland park, ripped out his heart and buried him, officials say. [Emphasis added]
Court documents released Wednesday reveal gruesome details about the killing of a man officials in Montgomery County still have not been able to identify.
Miguel Angel Lopez-Abrego, 19, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
A ranking gang member told police Lopez-Abrego was the first person to stab the victim, court documents say.
Another article reports that machete attacks, which culminate with scalping the victim, have been trademarks of the gang, while another notes ominously that impressionable young illegals are beginning to contract out their murderous services to MS-13.
Is this a widespread problem, as the president intimated? In April, an ICE sting nabbed 475 gang members, more than a fifth of whom had been resettled by the U.S. government as unaccompanied minors.
Is it fair to call these people “animals”? I would submit that doing so is a slur on animals.
