| | | Remember the No-Tear-Gas Hoax?
Back in June, our Tim Miller wrote about the conservative media truthers who tried to cast doubt on eye-witness reports that tear gas had been used against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park. This included the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, "who, in a Tuesday-night article tweeted out by the president, asserted that 'tear gas was never used—instead smoke canisters were deployed.'"
On Monday, though, we heard from an Army National Guard officer who witnessed the incident first-hand.
A new statement by Adam D. DeMarco, an Iraq veteran who now serves as a major in the D.C. National Guard, also casts doubt on the claims by acting Park Police Chief Gregory Monahan that violence by protesters spurred Park Police to clear the area at that time with unusually aggressive tactics. DeMarco said that “demonstrators were behaving peacefully” and that tear gas was deployed in an “excessive use of force.”
...
As the federal and local police waded into the protesters, DeMarco said he saw smoke being used and that he was told by a Park Police officer it was “stage smoke,” not tear gas. But DeMarco said, “I could feel irritation in my eyes and nose, and based on my previous exposure to tear gas in my training at West Point and later in my Army training, I recognized that irritation as effects consistent with CS or ‘tear gas.’" He said he found spent tear gas canisters on the street later.
So this might be a good time to remind ourselves of the attempts to gaslight the public about the incident. (HT MMFA).
Besides Hemingway, there was also The Washington Examiner's Byron York, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume, and Laura Ingraham, who called it a “lie” that tear gas was used, insisting that “not only did law enforcement not use tear gas, the supposedly ‘peaceful’ crowd may not have been.”
Demonstrating how this right wing feedback loop works, the president tweeted out the misinformation from The Federalist.
And, of course, Fox did its part.
Fox News also waged an all-out propaganda campaign, keeping in sync with the Trump administration even as the party line kept shifting. While Fox’s early coverage glorified the use of tear gas and Trump’s walk to the church — calling it an “iconic moment” — within a day the network was parroting the administration’s denial that tear gas had been used, hinging on that supposed distinction of pepper agents.
Fox’s then-anchor Ed Henry even denied that “pepper spray and whatnot was used” at all, to which fellow news anchor Dana Perino responded: “Well, and I also think that when you're explaining ‘pepper balls’ versus ‘pepper spray,’ I mean, it's not necessarily a good one to have to do.”
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