Newsweek, whose home page of late devotes every square pixel to anti-Trump-pro-liberal articles, featured a Harriet Sinclair piece Thursday on President Trump’s then-upcoming speech to the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. Or, as the magazine’s hit-piece of a headline called it, “Donald Trump To Speak At Hate Group's Annual Event, A First For A President.” Seriously? And the headline didn’t exaggerate the hostile tone of Sinclair’s story. (Newsweek ran a similar "hate group" headline after Trump's speech.)
Typically, Newsweek relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center for its “hate group” designation. The SPLC, a civil-rights organization turned cynical left-wing fundraising operation, has an unearned reputation for being the media’s go-to source for “hate groups” – i.e., any social conservative faith-based organization that SPLC doesn’t approve of.
Amazing in its absence from a story linking FRC and the Southern Poverty Law Center is any mention of Floyd Lee Corkins, who in August 2012, using SPLC’s “hate map” as a guide, burst into the headquarters of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., with a backpack full of sandwiches from Chick-Fil-A (another pro-faith, anti-gay marriage company) with the intention of assassinating the employees of the social conservative Christian organization. The building manager stopped him, but not before getting shot himself.
Sinclair wrote:
President Donald Trump will be the first sitting president to address the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described as a “rogues' gallery of the radical right.”
She hinted where the scurrilous headline came from:
The anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, labeled as a hate group by the SPLC, has hosted its annual summit since its inception in 2006.
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Speaking of the president’s decision to attend this year’s 12th annual event, SPLC President Richard Cohen told The Independent: “By appearing at the Values Voter Summit, President Trump is lending the legitimacy of his office to a hate group that relentlessly demonizes LGBTQ people and works to deny them of their equal rights.”
Sinclair has a low and very passive standard for what she calls “attacks.”
Trump’s attacks on the LGBTQ community have not gone unnoticed, with the president rescinding Obama-era protection for transgender students that allow them to use the bathroom that matches the gender they identify with. Trump also suggested a ban on transgender troops in the military, and failed to recognize Pride Month or National Coming Out Day, unlike his predecessor.
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It is not clear what topic Trump will address during his speech, but the group’s overwhelmingly negative attitude towards the LGBTQ community has prompted questions about whether a president should be attending a day of glorified hate speech.
Newsweek actually followed up with a similar piece by Michael Edison Hayden on Friday on Trump’s actual speech to FRC with a similar headline: “Trump Tells Hate Group Americans ‘Worship God,’ Not Government.” No mention of Corkins.
