Surprise: Bloomberg "Reporter" Misreports a Trump Official's Sarcastic Post Attacking White Supremacist Paul Nehlen to Falsely Cast It As an Endorsement of Antisemitism

Gee, I wonder why people are digging into the media's own social media history and looking for their own scalps to collect.

In one of the most shameful, egregious media failures of the year, a Trump appointee to the Department of Labor was forced to resign after a Bloomberg reporter started asking officials about a Facebook post spun as anti-Semitic, even though it was a clearly satirical post mocking the alt-right.

Earlier this morning, Bloomberg reporter Ben Penn proudly tweeted out a "scoop" about Leif Olson, who recently started as an adviser in the department's Wage and Hour Division:

SCOOP: Trump Labor Department's new sr adviser Leif Olson posted on Facebook that Jewish media "protect their own." In response to my request for comment on Olson's anti-Semitic post, @USDOL says they've accepted his resignation. https://t.co/68kDvaFn0h

— Ben Penn (@benjaminpenn) September 3, 2019

In reality, the Facebook post in question was the opposite of anti-Semitic. It was a clearly sarcastic post from 2016 about Paul Ryan crushing alt-right challenger Paul Nehlen. If the over-the-top language isn't a tip off, it's a fairly dead giveaway that Olson refers to Ryan having "suffered a massive, historic, emasculating 70-point victory."

When one of the commenters suggests Ryan must be a "neocon" and a Jew, Olson, clearly joking, responded, "It must be true because I've never heard the Lamestream Media report it, and you know they protect their own."

And yet Bloomberg used this to tear him down.

This even brought John Podhoretz back to Twitter, though, I admit, Podhoretz was probably just itching for an excuse anyway.

One more thing:

Guess who thinks that maybe Bloomberg was right and this guy should have been scalped: Right, of course. Famed First Amendment rights defender David A. French.

"If." Jury's still out, I guess.

posted by Ace of Spades at 12:18 PM

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