If you watch the mainstream media these days, you’ll be certain of the following propositions.
- President Trump
Donald TrumpDOJ asks Supreme Court to revive Boston Marathon bomber death sentence, in break with Biden vow Biden looking to build momentum for Putin meeting DOJ tells media execs that reporters were not targets of investigations MORE’s campaign likely colluded with the Russian government in order to steal the 2016 election. - President Trump caused the Gaza border crisis by moving the American embassy to Jerusalem.
- President Trump is ripping children out of the arms of their illegal immigrant parents.
There is just one problem with these narratives: There’s no serious evidence for any of them.
First, take the Russian collusion narrative. We’re now more than a year into the Mueller investigation, and there’s been no hard evidence of serious coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. At best, we’ve seen attempts by some members of the Trump campaign to reach out to the Russians — Donald Trump Jr.
Don TrumpDonald Trump Jr. joins Cameo Book claims Trump family members were 'inappropriately' close with Secret Service agents Trump Jr. shares edited video showing father knocking Biden down with golf ball MORE was happy to hold a meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who was supposed to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonNSA leaker Reality Winner released from federal prison Monica Lewinsky signs production deal with 20th TV Police investigating death of TV anchor who uncovered Clinton tarmac meeting as suicide MORE, for example. But nothing ever came of that meeting. No information changed hands. Willingness to collude does not in fact equal collusion.
Next, take the claim that President Trump’s Jerusalem embassy move caused the Gaza riots. That’s obviously nonsense. Hamas had been engaged in promoting slow-rolling riots for months before the embassy moved. They broadcast their intentions to storm Israel clearly, and they announced that the vast majority of those killed in the protests were in fact Hamas terrorists. Finally, this week, Hamas began firing mortars into Israel en masse, to the complicit silence of the media.
Finally, take the widely-parroted claim that President Trump has been forcing children out of the arms of their illegal immigrant parents. Here’s the truth: That’s what the law requires. In 1997, the federal government — then run by President Clinton — came to a settlement agreement that forced the government to discharge unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors to guardians within 20 days. Similarly, the 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act requires unaccompanied minors to be settled with guardians in the United States while undergoing removal proceedings. And in 2016, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court decision extending those rules to accompanied minors as well as unaccompanied minors.
This meant that if illegal immigrant parents and children were arrested crossing the border, they could not be detained together by law: Within 20 days, children had to be remanded to the care of a guardian outside detention.
So Trump didn’t simply decide to separate families. President Obama separated families, too. The only difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump is prosecuting illegal immigrants more consistently than Obama did — meaning that more adults are being arrested, which automatically means that children will be separated from their parents.
Now, Democrats could work with Republicans to solve that problem: They could attempt to change the law to provide for keeping families together in detainment. Instead, they’ll simply bet on nasty headlines and hope that President Trump gives up on law enforcement in order to make those headlines stop.
And, boy, have those headlines been nasty. Ivanka Trump
Ivanka TrumpMichael Cohen predicts Trump will turn on family after revelation of criminal probe Eric Trump buys .2M home near father's golf club in Florida Melinda Gates tapped divorce lawyers in 2019 after Epstein links to husband: report MORE was once again attacked over her father’s policies — this time, because she dared to take a charming photo with one of her children over the Memorial Day weekend. This photo, Trump opponents in the media claimed, showed she was out of touch. After all, how many illegal immigrant mothers weren’t with their children that day?
The media’s obsession with crafting stories that damage Trump damage their own credibility far more. Trump makes mistakes — plenty of them. He pursues policies that are unpopular from time to time, as well. But the media can’t restrict their critiques to the reasonable. Instead, they seek to turn every molehill into a mountain, and every ant-hill into an avalanche.
In the end, Trump will be left standing — and it’s the media, who all too often place truth behind narrative, who will be left holding the bag.
Ben Shapiro (@BenShapiro), a lawyer and conservative commentator, is founder and editor in chief of The Daily Wire. The author of seven books, he hosts a daily political podcast, “The Ben Shapiro Show
