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Newspaper Desperately Changes Headline After Wrong Trump-McCain Story Goes Out

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Largely owing to their anti-Trump atmosphere that’s been dominant in news coverage since 2015, there was no shortage of media outlets that jumped at the chance to use the death on Saturday of Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain from brain cancer to attack and smear President Donald Trump.

Trump was criticized as heartless and uncaring after he posted a tweet offering condolences and sympathy to McCain’s family, even as it was obvious to everyone that he would have been criticized as fake and hypocritical if he’d issued some sort of lengthy statement offering effusive praise for a bitter rival who made no bones about the two men ever being friends.

According to Breitbart, one of the worst offenders in this respect was the U.K. Daily Mail, which published an article on Sunday that really took the wrong tone and direction in the aftermath of McCain’s death, as in bolded letters it unfairly criticized the president for playing golf “only 17 hours after” the senator’s death had been announced.

(Considering the Daily Mail is normally a conservative-leaning publication with a readership to match, the story was skewered by many readers, as the comments under the article showed.)

Indeed, the Daily Mail’s story was written as if Trump’s golf outing on Sunday was some sort of horrific and unpresidential snub of McCain’s death the previous day, and disparaged his offer of condolences to McCain’s family — who’ve been as publicly critical of Trump as much as the senator was — as little more than a “meager tweet” that meant nothing.

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Interestingly, the U.K. Daily Mail must’ve realized the wrong track it had taken — possibly when more senior editors got involved in its coverage — and the story’s headline was changed 12 hours after it was first published. It is still the same article, though, as the URL slug beneath the altered headline remained the same.

However, despite changing the headline to no longer mention the golf outing, the outlet nevertheless proceeded to add additional complaints against Trump — that he issued a tweet about former President Barack Obama getting credit for the economy while failing to make an official statement about Saturday’s shooting in Jacksonville, Florida — while still slamming the president in the body of the piece for daring to hit the links the day after a bitter rival had passed away.

“POTUS was spotted arriving at the golf course on Sunday morning, less than 17 hours after the death of McCain,” wrote reporter Megan Sheets. “The president has remained somewhat quiet about the Arizona Republican senator’s death, drawing criticism from both sides of the aisle after he posted a meager tweet with his condolences for the family that failed to acknowledge the impact McCain has had on American political life, and his record as one of the nation’s most celebrated war heroes.”

The article further appeared to criticize the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., for taking his own children out for a round of golf at a different Trump Organization golf course on Sunday afternoon.

Are you sick and tired of the liberal media bashing Trump over anything and everything?

To the Daily Mail’s credit, it did mention that McCain had specifically prohibited Trump from attending or speaking at his funeral or memorial service and did note some of the vicious back-and-forth between Trump and McCain over the past few years.

But it would appear that the Daily Mail’s focus on Trump’s golfing the day after McCain died was deemed “wrong” by a significant portion of their readership, as was evidenced in the comment section on the post.

Indeed, virtually all of the “Best Rated” comments were critical of the Daily Mail’s ridiculous take on the matter. Several wondered if Trump was supposed to just sit at the White House and cry, while several others noted that the media would’ve called Trump a hypocrite if he’d offered up high praise for McCain, a sort of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of situation for the president.

Others pointed out that the public feelings both men had for each other were too well known for anything exceptionally nice to be accepted as genuine, while still others suggested the condolences and sympathy for the family Trump had offered were sufficient — and the media should stop bashing Trump at every possible opportunity.

These two are good examples:

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In the end, the Daily Mail attempted to smear the president as being disrespectful of a man’s death by using that same man’s death to pathetically attack the president. Thankfully, the organiation was called out by their own readers.

Hopefully, other news outlets will get the same treatment in the days ahead.

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Ben Marquis is a writer who identifies as a constitutional conservative/libertarian. He has written about current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. His focus is on protecting the First and Second Amendments.
Ben Marquis has written on current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. He reads voraciously and writes about the news of the day from a conservative-libertarian perspective. He is an advocate for a more constitutional government and a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, which protects the rest of our natural rights. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with the love of his life as well as four dogs and four cats.
Birthplace
Louisiana
Nationality
American
Education
The School of Life
Location
Little Rock, Arkansas
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Politics




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