With less than two weeks until Election Day, Democrats and their media allies have thrown out multiple allegations against former President Donald Trump that immediately fell apart under basic scrutiny.
The first two allegations were featured in a single article in The Atlantic, one from anonymous sources denied by on-the-record insiders who were present, and the other from former White House chief of staff John Kelly, whose claims have also been denied by others.
The Atlantic article, by the outlet’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, began with a claim from anonymous sources that Trump, as president, “became angry” when he learned how much a funeral for a murdered soldier would cost. Trump had spoken to the soldier’s family and offered to help pay funeral costs after 20-year-old Vanessa Guillén was killed by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood in April 2020.
But Goldberg cited anonymous “attendees” and “contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant” to claim that Trump was angered when the family sent the White House a funeral bill for $60,000. Trump, according to Goldberg’s anonymous sources, told his staff, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f***ing Mexican!”
People who were in the room have since come out to deny the claim, including Guillén’s sister and the family attorney, as well as Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Meadows’ former spokesman also told The Atlantic that Trump “absolutely did not say that,” but Goldberg wrote in his article that the spokesman “denied having heard Trump make the statement.”
The story was already hard to believe because anyone willing to disparage Trump would not need to hide behind anonymity to make such a claim. People who disparage Trump are given media positions, book deals, and praised as heroes, so it makes no sense Goldberg would need to provide anonymity to anyone.
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The second allegation in Goldberg’s article was from Kelly, who has a history of making wild allegations against Trump without evidence. Kelly alleged that Trump would regularly praise Adolf Hitler’s generals – a claim he made to reporters writing an anti-Trump book in 2022 as well. The timing of Kelly’s alleged recollection of the claims is notable – just two weeks before the election, he suddenly remembers conversations with Trump from more than four years earlier.
Despite the questionable sourcing, the claim allowed the media and Vice President Kamala Harris to rehash their tired “Trump is Hitler” accusations, with Harris even calling a press conference to make the claim.
On Wednesday, two former advisers to Vice President Mike Pence’s also disputed Kelly’s claims, The Daily Wire reported. Pence’s former National Security Adviser, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg and his chief of staff Nick Ayers, both publicly denied Kelly’s claims.
“Vice President Harris is a fraud. I was in the White House at a senior level much longer than General Kelly. He is complicit in this fraud and has lied to the American people. His lies, as well as John Bolton’s, are a disservice to [the] Nation at this critical time. So are the VP’s,” Kellogg wrote on X.
Ayers also called Kelly’s claims “patently false.”
“I’ve avoided commenting on intra-staff leaks or rumors or even lies as it relates to my time at the White House but General Kelly’s comments regarding President Trump are too egregious to ignore,” Ayers said on X. “I was with each of them more than most, and his commentary is *patently false.*”
Finally, former model Stacey Williams alleged during a Harris campaign event that Trump had groped her 31 years ago. The timing of her allegation – just two weeks before the election – and the forum in which she made it – a “Survivors for Harris” campaign event – call into question the validity of her claim. Trump has been famous for five decades, and the claim was never mentioned during his previous two presidential campaigns. Multiple women have come forward with dubious claims of harassment against him, yet she waited until 2024 to make hers.
Her allegation also attempted to tie Trump closer to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, even though there is more evidence that prominent Democrats were close to Epstein than Trump.
Williams is also a former activist for President Barack Obama, making her claims even more questionable. And they were published in The Guardian, the same outlet that published dubious sexual assault allegations against Trump just before the 2020 election – accusations that couldn’t get traction from legacy American news outlets.
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied the story in no uncertain terms: “These accusations, made by a former activist for Barack Obama and announced on a Harris campaign call two weeks before the election, are unequivocally false. It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign.”
Journalist Mark Halperin also said on his podcast “The Morning Meeting” this week that he and likely others have been pitched a story that, if true, would “end Donald Trump’s campaign” but added that he didn’t believe the story was true.
“Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic just happened to publish his story two weeks before the election with accusations against Donald Trump, some of which have been disputed for the first time, some of which have been disputed for quite some time. And the point I was making is there’s all sorts of things being floated out there. Maybe Jeffrey Goldberg just happened to finish the story two weeks before the election,” Halperin said.
“I know of one story that’s been pitched to a major newspaper and to me, and for all I know, to many others, that I don’t believe is true,” he added. “But if it’s true, as I said yesterday, it would end Donald Trump’s campaign, just as if the accusations, now thoroughly debunked, contributed by American intelligence to Russia about Tim Walz, if those were true, it would end his campaign.”
Halperin didn’t say who was pitching the likely false story or what the story was in order to discredit it if a less scrupulous outlet publishes the claim.
“What we’re seeing in the final days — is the point I was making — is, actors who want a certain outcome, are on social media and in pitches to reporters, and in the case of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, writing himself, are trying to affect the end of the race because they’re so desperate to try to pull a Comey,” Halperin continued, referring to former FBI Director James Comey reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server just days before the 2016 election.
NEW: Mark Halperin clarifies himself after he went viral for stating he had been pitched a story that would “end Trump’s campaign.”
Halperin says the comment was made to warn people of “actors” who are trying to influence the election.
Halperin added that he isn’t pursuing the… pic.twitter.com/9QZ7T7w20C
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 23, 2024
By pushing dubious claims that are denied by all involved, the media is showing the Harris campaign to be desperate and fearful of defeat. One wonders what the internal polls are saying.
