After President Donald Trump falsely stated on Monday that the “dishonest press” refuses to report on terrorist attacks throughout the U.S. and Europe, the White House issued an inaccurate and often misspelled list of 78 terrorist incidents between September 2014 and December 2016. Although Western media covered nearly all of the attacks on Trump’s list, including the widely reported San Bernardino shooting, the Pulse nightclub massacre, and multiple attacks in France, the few incidents that went unreported involved failed terrorist plots or no casualties.
“Radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland as they did on 9/11, as they did from Boston to Orlando, to San Bernardino and all across Europe,” Trump stated during a speech on Monday while visiting U.S. Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. “You’ve seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported, and in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.”
Instead of supporting Trump’s false claims that the press does not report terrorist attacks, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer mystically interpreted the president’s words to mean the incidents were “underreported” even though Trump clearly said “not even being reported.” Spicer later released a list of 78 terrorist attacks between September 2014 and December 2016 that the White House claims went largely underreported.
For some reason the White House enumerated many highly publicized terrorist incidents on a list supposedly meant to display the media’s failure to cover terrorist attacks. The list includes the Garland shooting that resulted in the deaths of the armed suspects, the armed terrorist subdued by passengers on a train to Paris who were later personally thanked by Barack Obama, the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the San Bernardino shooting, the Paris attacks, the Pulse nightclub massacre, and last year’s Nice attack. Although the administration included the UC Merced stabbing attack that resulted in the death of the knife-wielding suspect inspired by ISIS propaganda, Trump did not bother to mention at least 18 other campus attacks that took place last year.
Significantly absent from Trump’s list are the Charleston church shooting committed by white supremacist Dylann Roof, who killed nine black people, and numerous terrorist attacks against majority-Muslim countries. The White House neglected to mention a suicide bombing in Iraq that resulted in the deaths of 292 people or the South Sudan gunmen who murdered 208 people and kidnapped more than 100 children in Ethiopia last year.
According to The Guardian and BBC, only four of the 78 incidents did not receive any press coverage due to the fact that the terrorist plots failed or no injuries occurred. More than half of the terrorist attacks on the heavily misspelled list involved two or fewer deaths or injuries.
Simply because Trump failed to watch or read the news for the past two years does not mean the press refused to report on terrorist attacks throughout the world. This list of terrorist attacks merely displays the incompetence and arrogance of the new Trump administration for the entire world to witness.
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