From ‘majestic’ to ‘monument for two slave house owners’: CNN makes about-face on Mt. Rushmore in its protection of Obama & Trump

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In its newest try to tar US President Donald Trump’s occasion at Mt. Rushmore, CNN framed the enduring monument as a homage to slavery, regardless of beforehand dubbing it a salute to “4 nice presidents.”

CNN correspondent Leyla Santiago took to the airwaves on Friday to report on the president’s rally to mark Independence Day on the memorial later within the night, placing heavy emphasis on its hyperlinks to slavery and abuses of Native People whereas implying the positioning was chosen for these causes.

“Kicking off the Independence Day weekend, President Trump shall be at Mt. Rushmore, the place he’ll be standing in entrance of a monument of two slave holders and on land wrestled away from Native People,” she mentioned, noting Trump would concentrate on what he referred to as “the trouble to tear down our nation’s historical past.”

Whereas the published was factually right – former presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been certainly slave house owners and the monument was constructed on land sacred to the Lakota – it stands in clear distinction to the community’s earlier protection of the memorial. When Vermont Senator and two-time presidential candidate Bernie Sanders visited the positioning in 2016, CNN referred to as the large stone carving “a monument to 4 nice presidents,” describing how Sanders took in “the majesty of the second” as he deemed the positioning an instance of “our nation at its finest.”

Equally, when Barack Obama visited the monument on the marketing campaign path in 2008, the community characterised it as “fairly a sight” and “majestic” – not a phrase about slave house owners or the historic brutalization of Natives by the US federal authorities.

For a lot of netizens, the incident illustrated an ongoing double normal in company press protection of the president, with reporters routinely manufacturing scandals out of occasions and actions beforehand deemed uncontroversial for different political figures.

“I was a Democrat. I voted for Barack Obama, however I say this [with] all due respect. F**ok CNN!” one commenter mentioned after Friday’s broadcast, evaluating the community to “that child in highschool that nobody favored as a result of they all the time tried to instigate fights between different college students.”

The row comes as anti-racism activists name for the removing of historic statues and monuments across the nation, arguing they have a good time slavery, the Confederacy and abuses of Native People, amongst different issues. Protesters have tried, in some instances efficiently, to topple plenty of statues by power, prompting Trump to warn of 10-year jail phrases and that “severe power” could be unleashed in opposition to vandals. These threats culminated with an govt order signed final week setting out stronger penalties for individuals who deface statues, which shall be enforced on Independence Day weekend by particular anti-vandal models deployed by the Division of Homeland Safety.

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