Donald Trump recruited former UKIP leader Nigel Farage to his cause yesterday, trying to highlight similarities between the successful Brexit movement and his troubled campaign.
But his fans are just too gosh-darned stupid to know about anything which happens outside of ‘Murrica – at least if you believe the liberal media outlets covering it.
Reporters for the likes of the Guardian and New York Times did their best to hint that the good people of Jackson, Mississippi, were incapable of grasping a political event which happened ~in another country~.
And armchair reporters piled in on social media to affirm the point – even in the absence of much proof, and plenty of examples to the contrary.
The Guardian went hardest, with correspondent Matthew Teague relaying the following after at least 30 seconds’ research:
“Before the rally, a quick survey of the crowd at random showed that eight in 10 people had never heard of Farage or Brexit.
“One woman said she had learned of him in the lead-up to the rally, and the other said, ‘He’s from the Brits. That’s all I know.'”
The Times weighed in too, vaguely suggesting: “There was the occasional moment at the rally, however, when the declared parallels between the Brexit vote and the Trump campaign seemed to be lost on the crowd.”
The two pieces led to a full article on the apparent stupidity of those in attendance, courtesy of The Independent, which branded the affair a gaffe.
However, the accounts were contradicted, oddly enough, by a BuzzFeed reporter in the audience who actually asked audiences what they thought.
Reporter Cora Lewis interviewed 12 people from the crowd (scroll down), who were named and photographed, and almost to a man gave cogent opinions on Farage’s speech and the widely-reported Brexit phenomenon.
23-year-old Sloan Gray said: “The vote demonstrated that that they should be caring about the people in their own country, not the illegal people pouring in.”
Anthony Hawkins and Paige Higgins also weighed in. Lewis reported: “Both said they believe that Farage’s appearance at the rally helped give Trump’s campaign more authority and credibility.
Hawkins said “You’ve got to have some weight to get someone like that to come out here… It shows Trump is a heavyweight”, while Higgins knew enough about Farage’s backstory to quip that he had time to visit other countries because he is recently retired.
Admittedly, they didn’t poll everyone, so you can’t know for sure. But the picture seems a lot more nuanced than these major outlets pre-formed supposition suggests.