Eddie Scarry
June 2nd, 2020

Anti-Trump liberals (i.e., Democrats and the media) just have to find something — anything — wrong with the president, even if it means making it up.

The perpetually not-President Hillary Clinton on Monday shared a side-by-side photo of the White House, one lit up in a rainbow spectrum from 2015, when Barack Obama was in office, and the other appearing almost in pitch black with no lighting. “Elections matter,” tweeted Clinton.

Former Obama adviser David Axelrod shared the same image of the darkened White House, calling it “perfect symbolism,” because, “if ever the country needed the occupant of the White House to shed light, and not heat, now is the time. Sadly, the lights are out.”

Yet it turns out the photo passed off as a metaphor for Trump’s apathy toward police brutality and racism was actually, like the rainbow White House, from the Obama years.

So pervasive was that meme on social media that the Associated Press was moved to fact-check and let liberals know that, sorry, the slam dunk on Trump was actually an embarrassing rebound.

People even started saying Trump was “hiding in his bunker” and the lights went out — until a CNN reporter pointed out the main lights always go out at 11 p.m.

It’s not as if this hasn’t happened before. Recall the images of “children in cages” that were all the rage heading into summer 2018, passed off as demonstrable proof that the Trump administration was taking a needlessly callous hard line in locking up illegal immigrants.

Those photos ended up being from 2014, again, when Obama was president.

Indeed, based on some of the TV coverage, you’d think Trump had actually spat on the memory of George Floyd, the black man who died in Minneapolis while a white police officer kneeled on his neck.

In reality, Trump has been exceedingly sensitive and respectful to Floyd’s memory, calling his death a “tragedy” that “should have never happened.” He added that the incident “filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger and grief.”

Last week, just two days after Floyd’s death, Trump ordered FBI and Justice Department officials to conduct an expedited investigation into the matter. Yet the press ignores all this, suggesting instead that he’s refused to address the tragic episode at all.

Then the looting, destruction and violence sparked in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Louisville and Washington, DC.

That was apparently Trump’s fault, too.

CNN political analyst David Gergen said Tuesday that Trump’s referrals to himself as “the president of law and order” functioned as “race-baiting” and, in turn, “would deliberately incite violence.”

Liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote Monday that the riots and destruction we’re seeing “are the wages of Trump’s hate-filled incumbency.”

The always-hysterical Don Lemon on CNN said late last week that Trump has “contributed” to the “environment” we’re now experiencing.

It never ends, but these aren’t mistakes. This is how the national media are intended to operate in the Trump era. If they can’t find something wrong with him, they make it up.

Eddie Scarry is a columnist for the Washington Examiner.