Had you asked me a year ago to name a reporter still worth a damn, The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin would have been near the top of that (very short) list. Throughout the Obama-era, Rogin was one of the few willing to report honestly about Barry’s many foreign policy failures and lies. Unfortunately, just like CNN’s Jake Tapper, the arrival of Donald Trump changed Rogin into something unrecognizable. A once-respected reporter is now just another smug, snarky spreader of Fake News.
Rogin’s smug and snark can be found on his Twitter feed. His Fake News, however, is found all over the pages of the left-wing Washington Post. In a ten-day spree, Rogin has completely blown three major stories. We’ll start at the beginning:
1. The State Department’s Entire Senior Administrative Team Just Resigned – January 26
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era. …
Rogin is so shameless in trying to further his Trump-Chaos-Narrative, that even the left-wing Vox felt the need to clear the matter up. The truth is that Rogin’s story of a resignation revolution, a “mass exodus,” is in reality … standard operating procedure.
Here’s Vox: [emphasis mine]
A Viral Washington Post Story About State Department Resignations Is Very Misleading …
For one, the initial headline was misleading — the word “management” strongly implied that all of America’s top diplomats were resigning, which was not the case. For another, Kennedy’s “entire” team hadn’t left when the story was posted, a point that became clear after simply taking a look at State’s organizational chart. …
The State Department said that the four officials had submitted their resignations at the start of the new administration, as is standard practice with all political appointees throughout the executive branch of the government. Reporters who have covered the State Department for years said the Post report was overstating a normal feature of a transition. The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), a sort of union for foreign service officers, also stepped into the fray, releasing an unusual public statement that said the entire thing was overblown.
Before we get to number two, let me backfill with some context…
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is a Democrat, but a free-thinking one; a woman with a mind of her own who frequently makes the Democrat Party look bad. For instance, early last year, because she believed the Democrat National Committee was rigging the game to give the presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton (Wikileaks later proved her 100% correct), Gabbard resigned as vice chair of the DNC and endorsed Bernie Sanders.
Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, is also — and this is probably her biggest sin in Rogin’s eyes — liked and respected by President Trump and his chief advisor, Steve Bannon. This makes her the kind of Democrat the national media is always most desperate to destroy — an apostate. The fact that she is a woman makes that crusade even more urgent.
Now that you know the background, let’s have a gander at Rogin’s Fake News attack on the Congresswoman…
2. Exclusive: The Group [Rep. Tulsi Gabbard] Said Paid For Her Syria Trip Hasn’t Existed In Years – Jan 29
That is Rogin’s tweet from last week, which linked to his Washington Post story. Basically, Rogin accused Gabbard of lying about who funded her recent trip to Syria, where she met with that country’s leader, the ruthless dictator Bashar al-Assad.
The Washington Post piece has since been corrected and rewritten, but when I read the original piece, Rogin’s subtext was pretty clear: that Syria had paid for the Congresswoman’s “propaganda tour” and she (an Assad puppet) has been caught lying about it.
There was just one problem. With respect to how her trip was funded, Rogin had no idea what he was talking about. He got it as wrong as you can get it. Brace yourselves for something truly astonishing… A Washington Post reporter, one with all the resources of the Washington Post at his disposal … got the name of the organization wrong.
Rogin’s big gotcha was based on a now-defunct group called ACCESS.
But ACCESS wasn’t the name of the group Gabbard claimed paid for her trip.
The name of the actual group is AACCESS.
Watch how this unfolded in real time:
Eventually, the Washington Post was forced to add this correction to the top of the piece:
Correction: An earlier version of this op-ed misspelled the name of AACCESS Ohio and incorrectly stated that the organization no longer exists. AACCESS Ohio is an independent non-profit organization that is a member of the ACCESS National Network of Arab American Community organizations but is currently on probation due to inactivity. The op-ed also incorrectly stated that Bassam Khawam is Syrian American. He is Lebanese American. This version has been corrected.
In just three days, Rogin published two massive, humiliating pieces of Fake News. You would think, then, at this point, the Post’s editors would give Rogin a week or two off to get his head together.
Well, you would be wrong.
Rogin’s biggest piece of Fake News was yet to come…
3. Inside the White House-Cabinet Battle Over Trump’s Immigration Order – Feb 4
Three(!) corrections have already been added to this piece, and it has been re-written to a point where the original story hardly exists.
Here are the corrections:
Editor’s Note: Prior to publication of this column, The Post sought comment from the Department of Homeland Security but not from the White House. We should have done both. The article has been updated. – Fred Hiatt
UPDATE (Feb. 4, 6:13 p.m.): The article has been updated to reflect comments from White House press secretary Sean Spicer. The article previously stated that Stephen K. Bannon visited Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly’s office on Jan. 28. Spicer said Bannon did not make such a visit. He also said that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Bannon did not participate in a 2 a.m. conference call on Jan. 29. The article also previously stated that President Trump approved a pause in executive orders pending new procedures. According to Spicer, it was White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, rather than the president, who approved the new procedures, but not a pause.
UPDATE (Feb. 5, 8:55 a.m.): This post has been updated.
If the Washington Post resembled anything close to a legitimate newspaper, this Fake News hit-job would have been completely retracted.
Let me close with a few points…
1. Naturally, all three of Rogin’s Fake News stories instantly went viral throughout the entire MSM.
2. Imagine if in the course of 10 days, The Daily Wire, Fox News, or Breitbart News had published three massive pieces of Fake News like the ones listed above. The entire National Media-Complex would be 24/7 in its efforts to put the specific New Media outlet out of business, and by extension, delegitimize all of us.
3. The real reason Rogin doesn’t have to worry about getting it right, is simple: In the mainstream media, there is no pressure to get it right (for legions of examples, see here and here). Their only goal is to throw everything against the wall in the hope it sticks to the White House.
Our national media is guided only by this single standard…
Truth, facts, and accuracy are not required in the amoral quest to stop President Trump.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.