Litany of Retraction

"There isn't anything I can do to him that he hasn't already done to himself."
--Keith Nelson (Some Kind of Wonderful)

Last weekend Donald Trump called out a Washington Post reporter for photos that falsely reported an underwhelming crowd at a recent Trump rally down south. \The report was later retracted.

.@DaveWeigel @WashingtonPost put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived @ the venue, w/ thousands of people outside, on their way in. Real photos now shown as I spoke. Packed house, many people unable to get in. Demand apology & retraction from FAKE NEWS WaPo! pic.twitter.com/XAblFGh1ob

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017

Subsequent apology by the reporter adds to the list of nearly daily retractions (another weekend whopper here) by mainstream media outlets for negative press on the president that has been proven wrong. Fake news, quite literally.

This Twitter exchange captures the situation well:

I was a reporter in Washington during all of Watergate and I totally agree with this. https://t.co/48qCFlzdlN

— Brit Hume (@brithume) December 9, 2017

I remember Watergate pretty well, and I don't remember anything like this level of journalistic carelessness back then. The constant stream of 'bombshells' that turn into duds is doing much more to damage the media than anything Trump could manage. https://t.co/SA3Frx4KNE

— Walter Russell Mead (@wrmead) December 8, 2017

Through a litany of retraction caused by lowering journalistic standards in a quest to destroy someone they don't like, mainstream media outlets are destroying themselves.