Trump Turns Wake Of Fallen Officer Into Campaign Attack Ad Against Biden — With Media’s Help
Former President Donald Trump has spent the week shamelessly exploiting the tragic death of NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller, using his visit to the wake as a cudgel to attack President Joe Biden. He did so with the lusty help of a partisan media eager to chase a cheap conflict.
Trump’s wake visit provided a neat split-screen. Biden, after all, was in New York Thursday night for a star-studded fundraiser hosted by Stephen Colbert and featuring former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, which just so happened to coincide with the memorial service. You can probably guess how the New York Post framed the news that the presumptive nominees of the 2024 election were in New York for very different reasons.
Jonathan Lemire reported on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Trump’s “aides were very clear yesterday that they liked the split-screen of President Biden being at Radio City music hall with two other presidents for a big-dollar, glitzy fundraiser, while Donald Trump was out in Queens and then Long Island, meeting with the family of a slain officer,” adding that Trump and his allies were trying to make crime a “central theme” in the election.
“Split screen,” you say? Bret Baier opened Thursday’s Special Report by noting “a split screen in New York today as the current and former president are both in the state for very different reasons.” Cut to Fox & Friends Friday morning; the split screen was mentioned on air half a dozen times, all in the context of the narrative that the Trump camp was so eager to get out.
Fox’s Greg Gutfeld made a similar point Thursday evening, saying, “I look at the fundraiser, and it reminds me of Live Aid. Or you, instead of trying to save a starving nation, they’re trying to save a starving presidency. I don’t think you’ve ever seen a more perfect example of the sparkling, obscenely aloof.”
If you weren’t watching Fox News Thursday night, CNN This Morning aired that clip of Gutfeld dinging the Democratic fundraiser, after which Kasie Hunt incredulously asked her panel, “Is he right?” Mark Preston replied, “When it comes to the split-screen moment? He is right in the sense that it doesn’t necessarily look good,” before conceding that Biden has been to many funerals. Huh?
What’s so bizarre about this attempt from conservative media to cast Trump as a paragon of noble empathy is that his life and career has been defined — in the pages of the New York Post and beyond — by a complete and utter lack of empathy. Trump is a famed opportunist. That a cynical media proved itself so willing to be duped by this spectacle is an indictment of how cheap our partisan coverage has become.
Did Trump visit the grieving family of Officer Brian Sicknick? Has he expressed any sympathy for the dozens of Capitol Police injured during the attack of January 6th? Does anyone genuinely believe Trump visited Officer Diller’s wake because he genuinely “backs the blue”? Beyond the rhetoric, it’s worth looking at his track record with attending the wakes of fallen officers.
Professional anti-Trumper and political internet influencer Ron Filipowski looked into it and found that eight officers have been killed in the line of duty so far this year. Trump didn’t attend the memorial services for any of them. In most instances, he held a political rally during those services.
Should the media ignore the former president attending the wake of a fallen officer? Of course not. The simultaneous visit of the two presidential candidates to New York City for different reasons is a story worthy of reporting. Yet responsible reporting would at least include the context that this is a political stunt, not a righteous one. I will go a step further and call it a nakedly shameless exploitation.
If Biden were to do the same, I’m confident that conservative media would have a field day.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
