Former President Donald Trump is long gone from the White House. But the “fake news” lingers on.
As The Free Press reported on Tuesday, the FBI admitted that it had returned three of Trump’s passports that were seized during the raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 8.
But if you paid attention to CBS News’ top on-air personality Monday evening, you might have believed Trump wasn’t telling the truth.
Trump had complained about the seizure on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday afternoon.
“In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else,” Trump claimed. “This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!”
Sticking to the media narrative that Trump must never be trusted, CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell wasn’t buying it.
“NEW: According to a DOJ official, the FBI is NOT in possession of former President Trump’s passports,” O’Donnell tweeted Monday evening after Trump aired his grievance. “Trump had accused the FBI of stealing his three passports during the search of his Mar-a-Lago home.”
O’Donnell then tried to swivel, tweeting about 20 minutes after her initial comment, “We are also learning tonight that if any items not contained in the warrant were retrieved during the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, they will be returned.”
Roughly 40 minutes after her first tweet, Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich blew up the whole story.
He tweeted a copy of an email that Trump’s lawyers had received from Jay Bratt, who serves in the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
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“We have learned that the filter agents seized three passports belonging to President Trump, two expired and one being his active diplomatic passport. We are returning them, and they will be ready for pickup at WFO at 2 pm today. I am traveling, but you can coordinate further with [redacted] copied above. Thanks,” Bratt wrote to Trump’s lawyers.
Here’s the problem with O’Donnell’s fib.
According to Twitter, her first tweet drew almost 42,000 likes, and more than 10,000 retweets, many no doubt by journalists and liberal activists eager to share her “scoop.”
Yet her second tweet, when she tried to hedge the first one, received just about 7,200 likes and 941 retweets.
Clearly, the news giving her an out on the issue of the seized passports did not go nearly as far as her first claim, thus feeding the perception that Trump was making it up.
Meanwhile, the tweet is still posted, and O’Donnell does not appear to have apologized or corrected the initial tweet.
The New York Post reported on Tuesday that CBS insiders were livid because O’Donnell violated the company’s “strict two-source protocol” by relying on just one DOJ official.
“It’s journalism 101,” an unnamed CBS source complained to the Post, calling O’Donnell’s actions an “embarrassment” for the network.
O’Donnell just showed that the media’s uncritical willingness to swallow any anti-Trump nonsense relayed by often anonymous officials inside the government, which during the Trump administration put the country through four years of hell, remains the standard operating procedure.
When it comes to Trump and the liberal media, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Free Press.
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