WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump continued to turn attention to the media in the aftermath of the spate of suspected mail bombs sent to CNN and some of his prominent critics, this time complaining that the cable news network was casting blame on him.

“Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, ‘it’s just not Presidential,’” he tweeted.

His CNN bashing is not unusual, nor is it all that surprising when it was sent: 3:14 a.m.

But Trump’s response to the discovery of the 10 suspicious packages, including those intended for former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has been in large part another way to air his grievances about the way he and his administration have been covered. On Thursday at the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders complained that 90% of coverage of the president is negative, while calling it “ridiculous” to suggest that Trump’s rhetoric was in some way responsible for the mailing of the threatening packages.

Trump and his media allies have pointed to the overheated rhetoric of those on the left, including the hounding of members of the administration as they eat at D.C. restaurants.

As events were unfolding on Wednesday, including the evacuation of CNN’s headquarters in New York, CNN President Jeff Zucker said that “there is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media.”

Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican who has been a Trump critic, said that the president has a special responsibility with his command of the bully pulpit.

“He’s not capable of being a unifier,” Kasich told CNN. “In fact, I’ve become convinced he doesn’t know how to accept personal responsibility and always finds somebody else to blame.”

He cited Trump’s overheated rhetoric at rallies.

Kasich said, “When you get into a place and the crowd gets revved up, there’s always somebody on the edge that might do something very stupid. And we … now have a heightened sense of threats and panic and ‘The caravan is coming and they are going to be in your home,’ and all of this stuff, and you rev people up, and what happens? Someone out there who is unstable does something crazy. That is what I think we are seeing here.”

Source: https://variety.com/2018/politics/news/trump-slams-cnn-mail-bombs-1202998275/

The post Trump Blasts CNN for ‘Blaming Me’ for Suspected Mail Bombs first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The FBI is currently investigating the devices and has not yet identified a suspect or motive.

While the news was still unfolding Wednesday, radio host Rush Limbaugh aired the theory on his show. When a caller said “my gut is telling me this is a left wing smoke screen,” Limbaugh didn’t disagree, suggesting that a Democrat was more likely to have sent the explosives than a Republican because “things are not working out the way they thought” for the party.

Right-wing commentator Bill Mitchell went further, calling the bomb scare “false flag BS” and flooding his Twitter feed with claims that Democrats are to blame.

“Tip to Democrats: If you’re gonna mail fake bombs to yourself, don’t do it in bomb-shaped envelopes without a postmark. Looks fishy,” he tweeted.

Ann Coulter, the provocative author and commentator, tweeted her observation that, “From the Haymarket riot to the Unibomber, bombs are a liberal tactic.”

The false flag theory also spread to a wider audience on Fox News Wednesday when a former FBI profiler, Jim Fitzgerald, brought up the “false flag” possibility on air. He said, “It could be someone in there, some Democrat, low-level person … who just decided, you know what, I’m going to put this out, because two weeks before a major election, who’s going to look like the bad guy here? The Republicans.” Host Martha MacCallum replied, “Fascinating.”

MacCallum later pointed out in a tweet that Fitzgerald “cited different avenues investigators will pursue to catch this bomber, starting with the most obvious: a republican who is out to get democrats” as well as the “less likely he said, insider angle.”

Michael Flynn Jr., son of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and a proponent of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, initially called it a “total false flag operation” before deleting his tweet. “If I’m wrong about this being a political stunt, I’ll own up to it,” he wrote, calling the timing shortly before the midterms “HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS.” He also retweeted a quote that said the incidents have “Soros astro-turfing written all over it,” insinuating that liberal donor George Soros was secretly behind the plot to bomb himself and others.

Another prominent conservative voice, Michael Savage, said, “It’s a high probability that the whole thing is set up as a false flag to gain sympathy for the Democrats… and to get our minds off the hordes of illegal aliens approaching our southern border.”

What is a false flag?

The term originally referred to pirate ships that flew flags of countries as a disguise to prevent their victims from fleeing or preparing for battle.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, it’s a concept frequently used by the “anti-government extremist ‘patriot’ movement” to discredit terrorist activities. “‘False flag operations are incidents staged by a government but blamed on some other government or entity as a pretext to curtail civil liberties or justify military action,” the ADL explains.

In the online context, conspiracy theorists often point to “false flags” when an official explanation doesn’t fit their world view.

Sarah Sobieraj, a sociology professor at Tufts University, told CBS News that the dissemination of such a theory without evidence can be “toxic,” especially with midterms coming up soon.

“The very foundation of democracy is that citizens’ ability to make informed decisions on their own behalf in the voting booth,” she said. “When disinformation interferes with that premise, it’s becomes un-American.”

The post Some conservatives call “false flag BS” on pipe bomb packages sent to high-profile Democrats first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.