Report: CBS News, Frank Luntz Cut Muslim-Americans’ U.S. Criticism From Focus Group

by JOHN NOLTE21 Dec 20150

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump hasalready exposed a 14 year-old DC Media  cover up involving numerous Muslim-American celebrations of the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Now, according to a new report, in their never-ending quest to disqualify Trump and make serial-liar Hillary Clinton president, CBS News has apparently been caught red-handed cutting footage from a focus group mediated by Establishment Republican Frank Luntz that shows American Muslims criticizing the United States:

The Intercept:

[I]n interviews with The Intercept, two Muslim Americans who took part in the group complained that CBS edited out parts of the discussion where they raised their own concerns — including critiques of U.S. militarism, surveillance, and entrapment.

They also said that Frank Luntz, the right-wing pollster who led the focus group, silenced members of the group when they criticized discriminatory U.S. government policies.

One  woman claimed that she brought up Luntz’s Jewishness:

For example, [Sarah] Harvard wrote that after Luntz asked the group whether they were Americans or Muslims first, she chose to demonstrate the offensive nature of the question by asking, “Well, are you an American or Jewish first?”

From the sound of it, Luntz was far from objective. One participant said:

He kept saying how he felt bad that no one listens to Muslims and how he wanted to give us an opportunity to talk to the general population. But how can that happen when we’re manipulatively edited to have us fit their own narrative and agenda?

According to Ms. Harvard’s own Facebook post, Luntz did not just edit out the inconvenient moments that didn’t fit his desired narrative, he went so far as to silence her when she tore into the American government as a racist institution that has “killed many Muslims.”

He also had silenced me and other participants who have routinely brought up the fact the government has enacted in state violence against the Muslim community — whether that may be through entrapment cases and surveillance programs — and our concerns about institutional racism. He shut me down when I said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton has killed many Muslims under the administration when we were discussing Trump, and ironically for a GOP strategist, he shut me down when I talked about how Democrats have enacted some of the most deadliest and discriminatory policies against Muslims. He also decided to stop letting me speak when I started talking about how Muslims should start focusing on combatting government policies rather than rushing to condemn terrorism or Islamophobia exclusively. They also cut out portions of where participants talked about media accountability when discussing Islam.

As you watch the segment below, it is painfully obvious that Luntz and CBS News had an agenda to show this group as one-dimensional patriots who are victims of discrimination, which is in and of itself a bigoted portrayal.

These are real people with real beliefs. Like all people, the American Muslim community is made up of complicated individuals with their own complicated view of the body politic. From the looks of it, rather than treat people like people, Luntz and CBS News instead chose to treat them as politically correct playthings that could be manipulated into political weapons against Donald Trump.

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Note how at the end of the segment Luntz  closes by bashing Trump and talks at length about how he didn’t want to manipulate the group. And yet, by removing their criticism of America and the reference about his own Jewishness, that is exactly what he did.

There are few things more racist than patronizing condescension.

P.S. Obama National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes is the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter@NolteNC               

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National Security, Big Journalism, 2016 Presidential Race, CBS News, Frank Luntz