Conservative columnist Ben Shapiro said Tuesday that coverage of the alleged attack on actor Jussie Smollett, along with the troubling questions that have followed, proves the media has its own agenda to push -- even if the facts don't line up with it.
”When a story is too perfect to be true, it usually is, and this is one of those cases,” Shapiro told Dana Perino on Fox News’ “The Daily Briefing.”
The media fallout has continued over the emerging allegations that “Empire” actor staged his own assault, telling authorities that two pro-Trump white men assaulted him in particularly brutal fashion.
Perino began the segment by noting that there was an alleged hate crime on a Jewish man in Brooklyn that received minimal coverage compared with the Smollett allegations, which garnered widespread media coverage and comments from numerous Democratic presidential candidates.
“The amount of attention paid to the assault on the Jewish man in New York was nil. The media legitimately did not cover it. The amount on Jussie Smollett was enormous and that’s because there’s a narrative to be promoted,” Shapiro said.
“Jews are twice as likely to be targeted as African-Americans, they’re twice as likely to be targeted as gay Americans,” Shapiro said, adding that “every hate crime is obviously awful and evil.”
Shapiro took publications like The New York Times to task for promoting one hate crime report over others.
TREVOR NOAH: SMOLLETT DESERVES AN EMMY FOR 'GMA' INTERVIEW
The Times released an article yesterday noting the rise of hate crimes in New York City -- specifically anti-Semitic hate crimes.
There were 186 anti-Semitic hate crimes reported in 2018 in New York alone.
“In order to maintain the idea that America is a racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic place what you actually have to do is ignore hate crimes against the group most likely to be targeted and instead focus on hate crimes against groups less likely to be targeted in order to maintain the narrative,” Shapiro told Perino.
He also took presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., to task for weighing in early on the Smollett story and backtracking yesterday.
“That tells you the narrative that Kamala Harris and so many on the left want to promote which is that Jussie Smollett story is happening, the actual story is happening all over the United States,” Shapiro said. “If this thing falls apart we just sort of pretend that it never was an issue in the first place. Then we look for other instances to prove America is a really terrible place and that Trump supporters are really awful people.”
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Harris said “the facts were unfolding," offering no further comment on Monday.
When the Smollett story first broke, Harris tweeted the attack was “an attempted modern-day lynching.”
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