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Column: The Anniversary of Bush-Trashing Hurricane Katrina 'News'
One reason that many Republican voters took a shine to Donald Trump in 2016 was the way he showed no respect to the national chattering classes of the Democrat-media complex. George W. Bush was a kinder, gentler Republican – and they compared him to Hitler. No matter which flavor of Republican was elected, the “objective” media savaged him.
We’ve reached the 20th anniversary of deadly Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed an estimated 1,836 Americans. But misinformation landed first. NBC and MSNBC tremendously hyped Democrat Mayor Ray Nagin’s Today show estimate of 10,000 dead in New Orleans.
Appearing on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, NBC anchor Brian Williams offered a sermon: “These were Americans, and everyone watching the coverage all week, that kind of reached its peak last weekend, kept saying the same refrain: How is this happening in the United States? And the other refrain was, ‘Had this been Nantucket, had this been Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, how many choppers would have–’" Then Williams was drowned out by applause.
Williams the serial exaggerator also claimed he could see bodies floating outside his hotel room in the French Quarter, but the New Orleans Advocate reported that the area had been largely spared in the catastrophe and experienced little flooding.
This happened all over TV. CNN anchor Aaron Brown baited Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio): "Do you think black America's sitting there thinking, if these were middle class white people, there would be cruise ships in New Orleans, not the Superdome?" On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann suggested Bush looked like a “21st century Marie Antoinette.” Let them eat King cake?
CBS Sunday Morning commentator Nancy Giles attacked Bush for failing to come to the Superdome to show black victims "he gave a damn." Giles declared if most Katrina victims were white, "they would not have gone for days without food and water, forcing many to steal for mere survival. Their bodies would not have been left to float in putrid water. They would have been rescued and relocated a hell of a lot faster than this. Period."
The Washington Post offered a front-page headline quoting a woman saying "To Me, It Just Seems Like Black People Are Marked," as if even weather systems have a racial animus.
Former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines bashed Bush in the Los Angeles Times: “The churchgoing cultural populism of George Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about the House of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in their attics and their sons and daughters die in foreign deserts."
Even an NBC concert for hurricane relief carried anti-Bush messages. Rapper Kanye West went on an unscripted verbal rampage that ended with "President Bush doesn't care about black people."
Seven years later, when Superstorm Sandy ravaged the East Coast, it became a political strength for President Obama. Two days before the 2012 election on Meet the Press, Savannah Guthrie saw God’s hand at work: “Here was a moment handed to [Obama] seemingly from above where he could look like that strong, independent, steady in a storm, very appealing to the middle of the road voters, and I might add to unmarried women voters who are going to be very key in this election.”
New Orleans had a Democrat mayor, and Louisiana had a Democrat governor. But all perceived government failures in the Katrina aftermath were singularly assigned by the media to Team Bush. Even in disasters, they pretend reality has a liberal bias.
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