Remember the time the President responded to a national tragedy with a barrage of lies? When the administration diminished a national tragedy by wrapping it in a fake narrative? It happened, but it wasn’t last week, and it wasn’t President Trump. It was President Obama in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.

The war on truth promises to rage on this week. Democrats, the left-wing media and the Republican Establishment, all united by anti-Trumpism as their raison d’être, will continue to cast President Trump as the villain of the Charlottesville story. As if this story about neo-Nazis, white supremacist groups, Antifa, and ultimately a domestic terrorist named James Alex Fields Jr. weren’t villain-heavy enough.

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The media’s hysteria du jour was not about the violence that occurred in Charlottesville last Saturday — it was about the semantics of President Trump’s statements on the violence that occurred in Charlottesville. His remarks weren’t up to left-wing media standards. What a surprise. Teddy Roosevelt dubbed the investigative journalists of his day “muckrakers.” Today, we have a media full of muck-makers. They don’t gather muck; they create it in four easy steps:

Step one: Create a phony narrative.

Step two: Scream it into the echo chamber.

Step three: Smear anyone who tries to correct it.

Step four: Rinse and repeat.

Phony narrative number one: President Trump didn’t respond quickly enough to the events in Charlottesville. Which is to say, he didn’t respond faster than leftist pundits could yank out their phones and tweet “Why is the President silent?” Then he responded, which led to phony narrative number two: President Trump didn’t specifically name the groups and disavow them. That narrative lasted until Trump made another statement specifically naming the groups and disavowing them:

“Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups, are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.”

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That’s a strong and unequivocal statement. That should have led to the media saying, “Look, racist white supremacists, America is united against your message.” Instead, it led to phony narrative number three: It took so long for President Trump to say this because he secretly likes the groups that he just called evil, repugnant, anti-American thugs.

The next day, Trump reiterated that there were bad people on both sides, and we wound up with phony narrative number four: Disavowing the leftist share of the violence is morally reprehensible.

According to The Daily Caller, leftist groups threw “balloons filled with urine” and “pieces of concrete” and charged at the white supremacists with a makeshift “battering ram.” But those facts didn’t really mesh with the left-wing media’s narrative. The anti-Trump press was more interested in ditching those facts and portraying the counterprotesters like they were Captain America and the Avengers showing up to fight for truth, justice, and the American way (urine bombs notwithstanding).

The weeklong attacks on President Trump’s remarks were designed to exploit a tragedy and inflict political damage on the president. The real story is a violent clash between extremist groups. The real story is how the nasty comments section of an online political magazine came to life before our eyes in Virginia. The media’s story is that President Trump said the wrong words at the wrong speed.

Basically, they tried to accuse Trump of pulling a Benghazi. Remember Benghazi? Where four Americans were killed in a premeditated terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate and a nearby CIA compound. Remember how the Obama administration refused to call it a terrorist attack for two weeks? Remember how they kept insisting it was a “spontaneous” demonstration inspired by an insensitive YouTube video? Remember how Susan Rice carried that hole-filled narrative to the Sunday talk shows and ended up with a promotion?

In one of the 2012 presidential debates, President Obama lied and claimed he called Benghazi an “act of terrorism” the next day. When Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney called him on that lie, CNN’s Candy Crowley claimed the lie was true! It wasn’t. In fact, that bogus claim received four Pinocchios from The Washington Post’s fact-checker and was later featured in a Washington Post fact-checking retrospective, called “Obama’s Biggest Whoppers.”

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When President Trump claims he unequivocally called out the KKK, neo-Nazis, and racists the next day, that claim will be true. In fact, guess which part of President Trump’s Charlottesville remarks earned four Pinocchios from The Washington Post. It wasn’t the violence on “both sides” but his claim that the counterprotesters lacked permits.

According to The Washington Post:

“President Trump twice claimed that counterprotesters lacked a permit to demonstrate in Charlottesville. But they did have permits for rallies on Saturday — and they did not need one to go into or gather near Emancipation Park, where white nationalists scheduled their rally. No permits were needed to march on the U-Va. campus on Friday night. The president earns Four Pinocchios.”

Is that all you got, WaPo? A minor detail and likely an honest mistake. That botched fact is a mote compared to the Obama administration’s weekslong beam of Benghazi mendacity.

The left-wing media spent this week wrongly accusing President Trump of what President Obama actually did, and by doing that they blew the opportunity to showcase Trump’s disavowal of repugnant, evil, anti-American white supremacist groups.

They could have helped heal America. Instead, they chose to make muck.

Eddie Zipperer is an assistant professor of political science at Georgia Military College and a regular LifeZette contributor.

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Michael Vadon, Wikimedia)