Last week, President Donald Trump held a rally in Asheville, North Carolina. The location surprised many, as Asheville is like the Austin of Appalachia. Tattooed, weed-smoking crystal purveyors do not usually tilt towards the Grand Old Party.
Predictably, the media downplayed the rally. Articles talked about the “small crowd” and mocked the campaign’s “heteronormative American family themes.”
Meanwhile, that same media proclaimed Harris-Walz to be the candidates of “joy,” which rings about as true as calling Adm. Rachel Levin a “woman of the year,” Biden “sharp as a tack,” or the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan an “extraordinary success.” But the American left is confident that the media will adore the emperor’s new clothes, and that if told enough times, you will, too.
Republicans and Trump supporters are joyful — you can see it at every rally Trump holds.
Even in Asheville, thousands of those joyful heteronormative American families showed up. A fellow military officer and friend of mine took his young family of four. Arriving hours early, they could not get anywhere near the 2,500-seat venue at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. Working his way through just a sliver of the crowd, he texted photos and video of the event in a group text we share.
What he showed was completely ignored by the legacy media.
Thousands of smiling people were in downtown Asheville waving Old Glory, chanting “USA!” and saying “God bless America” as they passed by my friend’s iPhone camera. On another corner he videoed “Koreans for Trump” singing patriotic songs. He even took a shot of the counter protesters. The media photographed the protesters close up, disguising the fact that they were so few in number. Looking at my buddy’s footage, it was clear there were less than 10, standing rather pitifully on Asheville’s Pack Square.
Even though I have worked in and around the media for 30 years, I found the contrast between my trusted friend’s pictures of Trump’s rally and how it was portrayed by our nation’s media professionals to be truly shocking.
Socialists, dictators, and communists — the enemies of freedom — seem particularly enamored of propaganda and brainwashing. In today’s age of instant imagery and global communications, it is hard to conceive that people actually believe a beaming Kim Jon Un that everything is fine in North Korea. Pay no heed that he is surrounded by children crying and grasping for food. How impressionable must one be to take at face value the Palestinian Authority’s claim that 40,000 civilians have lost their lives in Gaza or that Venezuela’s President Maduro won in a landslide election? Who thinks opening a second front in a war in which Ukrainians are outnumbered five-to-one is a sure sign of impending victory?
Perhaps it is easier to spot propaganda abroad.
Vice President Kamala Harris also visited North Carolina last week. You will not see media coverage lamenting the size of the crowd of about 250 people. Throngs did not fill the streets of Raleigh, which is four times the size of Asheville, to hear the vice president proclaim: “Now is the time to build a new way forward.” No member of the media asked the most basic of questions: “Hang on a minute, aren’t you the one in office now?”
America, which spent most of the 20th century fighting the lock-step propaganda of Pravda and the Kremlin’s vozhds, now finds itself on the precipice of electing a woman who believes in Soviet-era price controls: “I will work to pass the first ever Federal ban on price gauging on food.” She said “gauging” not gouging, but no journalist even asked if it was a verbal slip or a grander scheme to prevent Walmart from setting its own price for Corn Flakes.
What most struck my group of fellow officers is that while the legacy media may not be curious, the average citizen remains engaged. From Trump’s rallies to his interview with Elon Musk on X, there is a thirst for the truth.
That alone may be the most joyful news in 2024.
Morgan Murphy is a former DoD press secretary, national security adviser in the U.S. Senate, a veteran of Afghanistan.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
(Featured image credit: Courtesy Morgan Murphy)
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