White House Lists Terror Attacks the Media ‘Underreported’

The White House released a list of 78 terror attacks across the globe late Monday that it claims were “underreported” by mainstream media outlets.

During an earlier address Monday at MacDill Air Force Base, the president hammered the “very dishonest press” for their tendency to produce negative coverage concerning him while downplaying the threat posed by “radical Islamic terrorism.”

“At a time when so many on the Left — including the media — were tiptoeing around the reason why the people targeted in the Orlando massacre were targeted, Donald Trump took a leadership role and called the Pulse atrocity what it was.”

“We are up against an enemy that celebrates death and totally worships destruction … You’ve seen what happened in Paris, and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening,” Trump had said. “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.”

Immediately following Trump’s speech, the media and liberal pundits pounced on the president’s accusations.

“I’m sure viewers of @TheLeadCNN and @CNNSotu to say nothing of @CNN in general will find intriguing the notion that we don’t cover terrorism,” CNN host Jake Tapper tweeted Monday, before tweeting a picture Tuesday of a portion of Trump’s transcript, adding, “As the spinners try to change the false charge the president made so it’s easier for them to defend, here are his words.”

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To make Trump’s point, the White House published the list of 78 terror attacks that occurred throughout the world beginning in September 2014 Monday evening. More than 750 people were killed in the attacks listed and more than 1,700 people were wounded.

“Here’s the list the White House sent of attacks they feel ‘did not receive adequate attention from Western media sources,'” CNN White House producer Kevin Liptak tweeted Monday.

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One of the most deadly attacks listed includes the bombing of a Russian plane over Egypt in October 2015 that resulted in 224 deaths. The attack in Paris in November 2015 that killed 129 people also topped the list. Of the 26 listed countries, France sported the most attacks with 14 while the U.S. featured 11 attacks. Other countries featured on the list include Afghanistan, Algeria, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bosnia, Britain, Canada, Chad, Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer later clarified to reporters while traveling on Air Force One that the president believes the terror attacks listed were not “unreported” but were “underreported,” according to The Washington Post.

“He felt members of the media don’t always cover some of those events to the extent that other events might get covered,” Spicer said.

But because the White House’s list included such widely reported events as the Paris attacks and the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, many in the media were quick to dismiss Trump’s criticism alleging “underreported” attacks.

“The mainstream media is a corporate-owned, 100 percent agenda-driven propaganda machine,” Eddie Zipperer, an assistant professor for political science at Georgia Military College, told LifeZette in an email. “The media is [sic] on an anti-Trump crusade that transcends truth and ethics. Trump keeps interfering with their monopoly on information dissemination, and they can hardly stand it.”

Trump ran his presidential campaign largely on boosting national security and addressing the threats the U.S. faces head-on. When the Orlando shooting took place in June 2016 at the Pulse nightclub, Trump quickly denounced the massacre that killed 49 and wounded 53 as an act of “radical Islamic terrorism” while calling out former President Obama and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for their unwillingness to call it what it was — in that case and in many others.

“At a time when so many on the Left — including the media — were tiptoeing around the reason why the people targeted in the Orlando massacre were targeted, Donald Trump took a leadership role and called the Pulse atrocity what it was: an act of radical Islamic terrorism against the LGBTQ community,” Gregory T. Angelo, president of Log Cabin Republicans, a national organization that works to “make the Republican Party more inclusive, particularly on gay and lesbian issues,” told LifeZette in an email.

After Trump lambasted them for their political weakness, both Obama and Clinton ultimately uttered the words “radical Islam.”

“So there’s no magic to the phrase ‘radical Islam.’ It’s a political talking point,” Obama said a couple days later, adding that Trump’s point was a “political distraction.”

Obama, key figures in his administration and the mainstream media had a history of reticence in using the words “radical Islamic terrorism.”

When a radicalized Muslim killed 13 soldiers in an Army base in Fort Hood, Texas, Obama dismissed the event as “workplace violence.” When two radical Muslims massacred 14 in San Bernardino, California, Obama used the opportunity to lecture Americans against making “any decisive judgments in terms of how this occurred” to avoid offending non-radical Muslims and immigrants. And when the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered by Muslim terrorists, it took Obama several days to label the attack as “Islamic terrorism.”

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“We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests that entire religious communities are complicit in violence. Where does this stop?” Obama said in June. “The Orlando killer, one of the San Bernardino killers, the Fort Hood killer — they were all U.S. citizens.”

But they were all also radical Islamic terrorists, and Trump has had no qualms about calling them what they are.