It’s a fact of life politicians don’t always agree what is written about them in the media.
And they really don’t like it when a statement misrepresents what the politician intended to say.
That is the case when a spokesman for JD Vance, the candidate for vice president on the Republican ticket, took The Associated Press to task for a headline regarding the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Georgia, per Fox News.
Four people — two students and two teachers — were killed in the shooting Wednesday.
The headline, published Thursday, implied Vance viewed the school shooting as a mere “fact of life.”
That is not the case, Vance spokesperson William Martin told Fox News Digital exclusively.
“This is yet another case of the fake news media brazenly lying about a Republican politician. Senator Vance said exactly the opposite of what the Associated Press claimed,” Martin said. “It should come as no surprise that the AP lost any and all credibility it had years ago, because they will lie about literally anything in order prop up the Democrats.”
He went on to attack Vice President Kamala Harris’ policies on school safety.
“Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has called for all police officers to be removed from schools, putting children all over America at risk,” Martin said. “It’s yet another example of how Kamala Harris’s weak, failed, and dangerously liberal agenda makes her unfit for office.”
The quote in question came from a rally in Phoenix promoting former President Donald Trump.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said.
“But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools,” he added. “We’ve got to bolster security, so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able.”
In its headline, the AP wrote, “JD Vance says school shootings are a ‘fact of life,’ calls for better security,” which came across as callous, Fox reported.
The AP replaced the headline with the new one stating, “JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and calls for better security.”
“This post replaces an earlier post that was deleted to add context to the partial quote from Vance,” the AP posted.
