RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.racket.news/p/the-trump-trap

A brief note on headlines inspired by the Charlotte murder of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska: “A Gruesome Murder in North Carolina Ignites a Firestorm on the Right” by the New York Times, and “How the lives of a Ukrainian refugee and a Charlotte man with a criminal history converged in a fatal stabbing,” by CNN:

When you cover everything in the world through the lens of Donald Trump, and Trump must not only always be wrong but the avatar of ultimate evil, outlets like the Times and CNN are forced forever to find opposing angles to anything he criticizes. A horrific murder can’t just be that, but an “accelerant for conservative arguments about the perceived failings of Democratic policies.” CNN’s account was like the screenplay to Crash, about how “the paths of two people fatally converged,” culminating in an act “decried by the Trump administration and conservative politicians as an example of the violent crime they say plagues many Democrat-led cities.”

Forget about attacker Decarlos Brown’s mental health, these stories (and others, like the Axios report “Stabbing Fuels MAGA’s crime message” and Brian Stelter’s bizarre outburst about the reaction being “baldly racist”) show the press is in the grip of severe monomania and madness. Nothing exists outside of Trump, the subject of every line of every story. Incredible, and unsettling, to watch.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/msnbc-apologizes-for-pundits-inappropriate-insensitive-remarks-about-charlie-kirk/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=first

MSNBC has apologized for “inappropriate, insensitive” comments made on air about Charlie Kirk in the immediate aftermath of his assassination.

During a segment with Katy Tur, guest Matthew Dowd called Kirk one of the most “divisive” figures who “is constantly pushing hate speech.”

“Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which then lead to hateful actions,” Dowd said. (He also said, before Kirk’s death was confirmed, “We don’t know any of the full details of this yet — we don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration.”)

On Wednesday evening, MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler issued a statement condemning his comments:

During our breaking news coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Matthew Dowd made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable. We apologize for his statements, as has he. There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise.

Dowd’s statement, though, was hardly the only troublesome treatment of the Charlie Kirk shooting in the media. Even Tur’s comments were out of place: She worried on air that the Trump administration would use Kirk’s assassination as “justification” for further crackdowns on crime. “After one of the DOGE employees was allegedly attacked in Washington, D.C., that’s what Donald Trump used as justification to send federal troops into Washington, D.C., to get things under control — the carjacking situation, he used that. And I know it’s hard to predict the future, but you can imagine the administration using this as a justification for something,” she said.

Charlie Kirk was at Utah Valley University on Wednesday as part of his American Comeback campus tour. Kirk set up a table, as he does at his campus events, and invited students to come forward, ask questions, and prove his opinions wrong. The hellish tragedy that then unfolded was caught on video: Kirk was asked a question about transgender shooters, and when he began to answer, he was shot in the neck.

Democrats, Republicans, media pundits, and the hundreds of thousands of Kirk’s followers who watched the scene have, for the most part, been unified in condemning the attack. But some directed their ire at the wrong target.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said in response to Kirk’s murder that Donald Trump’s rhetoric has “fomented” political violence and that January 6 “tripped a new era” of political violence.

A New York Times obituary (“Charlie Kirk Right-Wing Force and a Close Trump Ally, Dies at 31”) of Kirk called him “a fixture in the Trumpian media sphere” who “tweeted relentlessly with a brash right-wing spin, including inflammatory comments about Jewish, gay and Black people. Even some conservatives found his approach distasteful.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/09/10/why-the-media-ignored-the-north-carolina-train-murder/

A brutal murder on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina has shocked social-media users – but only, it seems, those on the right. And that is because, despite the horrific video of the attack on a defenceless young woman going viral, much of the mainstream American media did not deign to cover the story.

Why? I submit it is because the perpetrator – a homeless, mentally ill, African American man with a history of repeat offending – belongs to one of the liberal media’s victim-identity groups. He is therefore beyond criticism – or, at the very least, an awkward case to discuss, given he may well have been roaming the streets because of the witless, soft-on-crime policies of today’s liberals. Indeed, in January, a North Carolina magistrate judge allowed Brown to remain free ‘on a written promise’ that he would return for his next court appearance, according to the Daily Mail.

The footage recorded on 22 August shows Iryna Zarutska boarding a train in Charlotte, after finishing a shift at the pizzeria where she worked. She takes a seat in front of a man identified as Decarlos Brown Jr. Moments later, he takes out a knife, stands up behind her and raises his arm to attack, as she sits with her back to him, completely unaware. After he stabs her, Brown is then shown walking down the aisle of the train, leaving a trail of blood as he goes. Zarutska died at the scene. She was 23 years old, and had fled Ukraine for safety in the US after the Russian invasion in 2022.

Zarutska’s terrible and senseless murder has further revealed just how divided the US is. Liberal progressives and conservative right-wingers are now not just politically alienated from one another – they also live in two separate realities, with worldviews that are fed by two entirely different news ecosystems. As many, including Elon Musk, have commented on X, the lack of coverage in the national papers stood in stark contrast to their feverish reporting on similar incidents in which the victim was black.

After days of social-media commentary, some mainstream outlets did decide to cover the reaction to the event – but not the event itself. They effectively dismissed the actual murder as a crime story of local interest only.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/09/03/despite-nasty-media-coverage-voters-still-give-trump-solid-grades-for-his-leadership-ii-tipp-poll/

With ongoing efforts to halt the Russia-Ukraine war, interest-rate fights with the Fed, and continued talks over tariffs, among other things, President Donald Trump is one of the busiest chief executives ever. But how’s he doing? Republicans like his leadership, but Democrats don’t, and independents are lukewarm, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Each month, I&I/TIPP asks the following question about Trump’s leadership: “Overall, is your opinion of Donald Trump generally favorable, generally unfavorable, or are you not familiar enough to say one way or the other?”

In September’s national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Aug. 27-29 by 1,362 adults, 43% of Americans described Trump’s leadership as favorable, while another 47% called it unfavorable. Another 10% said they were either “not familiar enough to say” (6%) or “not sure” (4%).

The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.9 percentage points.

But the responses were, as often, politically fragmented.

Republicans, for instance, gave Trump 78% favorability, just 15% unfavorable. Democrats were almost perfectly opposite: 16% favorable, 78% unfavorable. Independents were again in between (but still negative) at 31% favorable, 53% unfavorable.