Trump SupporterÕs House
Vandalized
Post Tries to Ignore It
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I was watching the Fox5 10 pm news on Wednesday,
March 9, out of Washington, DC, when I saw the shocking report of a womanÕs
house having been vandalized—apparently for political reasons—in nearby
Gainesville, Virginia, in Prince William County. She had awakened that morning to
discover that her two signs supporting Donald Trump for president had been
stolen from her front yard and that the words ÒCan you see the new world
through the tear gasÓ and ÒRevolutionÓ had been prominently spray-painted in
black on separate sides of her modest white frame house.
This looks very much like a thuggish and
criminal attempt to intimidate people who support a particular candidate for
president into silence, and, as such, it is very newsworthy. Such acts should be exposed and
denounced, the sooner the better. I
checked my home-delivered Washington Post
the next morning to see what, if anything, they might have about the
matter. Nothing. I went online to see what other news
coverage there might be. It was
only on the Fox5 web site.
Perhaps The
Post didnÕt learn about the crime until it was too late to get it into my
paper delivered to western Fairfax County, I thought, giving them the benefit
of the doubt, but that was no excuse not to have it on their web site. Since they hadnÕt put it on their web
site, things didnÕt look promising for Friday morningÕs
delivered Post, and, sure enough, they
still had nothing about the vandalism.
The Punch to the Face that WasnÕt?
Meanwhile, The
Post joined the national news organs with a headline ÒTrump supporter charged
after sucker-punching protester at North Carolina rally,Ó a similarly
deplorable incident that, unlike the vandalism, did not occur in The PostÕs backyard:
The videos, which appeared on social media
early Thursday and are shot from different perspectives, show an African
American with long hair wearing a white T-shirt leaving TrumpÕs Wednesday-night
rally as the audience boos. He is being led out by men in
uniforms that read ÒSheriffÕs Office.Ó The man extends a middle finger
to the audience on his way out.
Then, out of nowhere, the man
is punched in the face by a pony-tailed man, who appears to be white, in a
cowboy hat, black vest and pink shirt as the crowd begins to cheer. The
protester stumbles away, and then is detained by a number of the men in
uniforms.
Closer examination of the video reveals that the
elderly, pony-tailed man appears not to have punched the young black man in the
face, at all. Rather, he struck him
intentionally only with his forearm in the upper part of the body near the
younger manÕs face. It looks like a
glancing blow administered for maximum show but to little effect, sort of like
what we see in professional wrestling matches. In a related article The Post reveals that the older man, John McGraw, an Air Force
veteran, has been a Òcowboy actionÓ reenactor. A 2009 article from the mountain town
of Hendersonville, NC, about McGraw is still more revealing. We learn that he is an Air Force
veteran, that he had been a serious boxer in his youth, that he has deep and
old ties to Las Vegas, where he was a friend of Sammy Davis, Jr., among a
number of celebrities, and that at the time of the article he was still working
as a sham gunfighter in wild west reenactments. One can easily imagine that he has
engaged in sham fistfights as well for the entertainment of tourists:
He
worked with jet engines on the base and began a boxing program, spending as
much of his free time as possible in the ring. McGraw became a Golden Gloves
amateur boxer. He never weighed more than 138 pounds, but defended titles in
several weight classes including light weight, welter
weight and middle weight.
When he
wasnÕt on the base working or boxing, McGraw hung out at the former Showboat
Hotel and Casino in Vegas. He met Sammy Davis Jr., Lee Marvin and boxers Joe Louis
and Rocky Marciano, among others. He credits Davis with getting him interested
in whatÕs known as single-action shooting. The entertainer was good with a gun,
McGraw recalls.
ÒI knew half the people in Vegas. I never
thought anything about it. We were all just the same bunch,Ó he says. ÒVegas
was a little town in the Õ50s.Ó
After
finishing his time in the Air Force in 1959, McGraw stayed in the Las Vegas
area and continued boxing.
--
During summers at the Pisgah View dude ranch in
Candler, McGraw and other members of the local Single Action Shooting Society
dressed in their cowboy duds and staged a mock shoot-out for guests.
--
HeÕs on call for a
handful of stunt agencies that need firearms or horse-handling experts for
films.
Now compare the worldly man depicted in this
article, this person with connections to the Deep State mecca of Las Vegas and to big time show
business, to the ignorant sounding (ÒHe might have been ISIS.Ó) hayseed who was
immediately interviewed after the incident, supplying inflammatory remarks (ÒNext
time we might have to kill him.Ó), and you have to be an extraordinarily
credulous person not to be more than a little bit suspicious. He might not have been the least bit
representative of the thousands of Trump supporters at the rally, but you know
that the press very badly wants you to think that he was. You also know that he knows how to throw
a real damaging punch, and such a punch doesnÕt result in the fist being curved
back toward the punch thrower, as one can see on the video.
The Post in its coverage, of
course, played it straight and stuck to the script. All Trump rally disrupters—who might
be compared to Duke fans at a UNC pep rally trying to shout down Coach Roy
Williams—are always characterized simply as ÒdemonstratorsÓ or
ÒprotestorsÓ as though they were just peacefully exercising their First
Amendment rights. And anyone with
the gumption to suggest that the little scene played out in Fayetteville might
have been staged is likely to get the ÒHow dare you?Ó treatment from the press,
which is #2 in the Seventeen Techniques for
Truth Suppression.
The Post Resolves Its Dilemma
Now letÕs get back to the vandalism story. At three pm on Saturday, buried deep in
the local section of its web site, The
Post came out with ÒTrump supporterÕs
Virginia house vandalized,Ó as though it was something that had just happened. One can only imagine the handwringing
that went on at the newspaper in the intervening three days. Clearly, they wanted to black the story
out, or they would have routinely reported it as the important news that it was
as soon as they knew of it. The
fact that it happened within The PostÕs
distribution area could reflect rather poorly upon the paper, after all. So unrelentingly vicious and negative
has the newspaper been in its reporting and commentary upon TrumpÕs candidacy
that itÕs hardly a reach to say that it bore some responsibility for the crime. Dilbert creator Scott Adams has gone so
far as to suggest that the national press is encouraging violent
attacks
upon the candidate himself.
Such arguments have certainly been made when the
shoe was on the other foot. I can
recall that in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing * many in the mainstream
press, including The Post, blamed the
ÒincitementÓ of the anti-government rhetoric coming from the militia movement. And the press is not the least bit shy
in blaming TrumpÕs truculent rhetoric for any act of violence that might take
place in association with a Trump rally.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The vandalism itself also reflects badly
upon opponents of Trump and tends to engender sympathy for him and his
followers. With its anti-Trump
agenda, The Post obviously prefers to
direct attention to things having precisely the opposite effect, like the
likely manufactured incident at the rally in Fayetteville.
On the other hand, obvious news suppression also
reflects poorly upon the newspaper.
Corey Stewart, TrumpÕs Virginia campaign chairman, is also the chairman
of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, and it is certain that the
incident did not escape his attention.
At some point, The PostÕs attempt
at a blackout of the news out of obviously ulterior motives could become an
embarrassment. They settled upon
the expedient that they had used in ÒreportingÓ upon the nearest rally that
Trump has had to Washington, DC, the one in Manassas, Virginia, on December 2,
2015. They would report it on their
web site, but only on their web site, and provide no mention of it on their
home page so the story would not be easy to find. I checked the print edition one last
time on Sunday morning, after their Saturday afternoon online coverage, and,
once again, the story was missing. As far as the print edition of the paper is
concerned, the crime never happened, so none of its pundits need express any
opinion about it.
Summing up, The
Post has covered its a-- without actually covering the story. If you already know about the anti-Trump
mischief and you do a Net search for ÒTrump supporterÕs house vandalized,Ó because
of its large circulation The PostÕs
article is the first one you see, as if they had been all over the story, which
they were not. To the contrary, what
they were all over was the likely phony, racially charged Òsucker-punchÓ story
in Fayetteville.
* In breaking news, I see that President Obama
has nominated Merrick Garland, the man who railroaded the chosen patsy in the bombing of the Murrah
Building, to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court. He would be a fitting Deep State
replacement for Antonin Scalia. Naturally, The Washington Post loves the man. (added March
17)
David Martin
March 16, 2016
Addendum 1
Concerning the so-called sucker puncher, John
McGraw, all the news reports say routinely that he is from Linden, NC. Since Linden is a small community in
Cumberland County near Fayetteville, it would have been a simple matter for him
to have attended the local Trump rally.
However, the postmistress in Linden, where they deliver to some 2,000
addresses in Linden and the surrounding area, tells me in a phone interview
that neither she nor anyone with whom she has spoken has heard of the man. We know from the Hendersonville
newspaper cited above that he was living in the mountains in the general
Asheville area as of seven years ago when the profile article was written. It is 264 miles from Asheville to
Fayetteville and it is not a common migration route. Perhaps heÕs living in the Linden area
with a daughter. He couldnÕt be
living with a son of the same last name, because there are no McGraws who get mail in Linden. But the man is obviously a very colorful
character who, one thinks, would have stood out in a place like Linden.
David Martin
March 18, 2016
Addendum 2
On the afternoon of Friday, March 18, news on
the radio, television, and major web sites was reporting that Donald TrumpÕs
son, Eric, had received a threatening letter
containing a white powder. This news was
nowhere to be found in the Saturday, March 19, Washington Post, delivered to my driveway in the morning. I could find no mention of it on The PostÕs home page, either. On the other hand, one of the paperÕs
ÒDrawing BoardÓ cartoons, a compendium of the weekÕs ÒbestÓ from around the
country, this one by Drew Sheneman, shows a demonic
looking Trump saying, ÒI want to make America great again and nothing evokes
AmericaÕs storied past like sucker-punching a black guy.Ó
This is not news, folks. This is propaganda.
David Martin
March 19, 2016
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