For reasons that defy rational understanding, Republican presidential nominee and razor-burnt sasquatch Donald Trump is in the news Friday, talking about the 1989 Central Park Five case in the way that only he can: wrongly and badly. Trump’s take on the brutal rape and assault is objectively untrue, and he continually promulgates his objectively untrue take on the matter in public fora. How should we in the media refer to him, when he does this? It seems pretty simple to me, but over at CNN, there seems to be a bit of a struggle.
So let’s help them out, I guess?
Here are the basic facts of the Central Park Five case. In 1989, five teenagers ― four of whom were black, the other Latino ― were arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned for a crime they did not commit: the assault and rape of a 28-year old woman who was jogging in New York’s Central Park. In 2002, their sentences were vacated when another man confessed to the crime and DNA evidence exonerated the wrongly accused five, whose convictions hung almost entirely on circumstantial evidence and coerced confessions. At some point, the Central Park Five said, “Well, someone owes us a lot of money for all of that unjust imprisonment,” and in 2014, they won a $41 million settlement from the city.
Why is this of any particular interest to Donald Trump? Well, shortly after the assault occurred, Trump took out an advertisement in the New York Daily News in which he called for the restoration of the death penalty in the case. He’s never been willing to accept that the Central Park Five have been properly exonerated. When the city settled, Trump penned an op-ed for the same paper, calling the settlement ― which we’ll remind you were the hard-won reparations of five wrongly imprisoned men! ― was a “disgrace.”
The facts of the case really mean nothing to Trump. And this week, he decided that with just a few weeks left in the campaign season, and with much ground to cover after Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton started moving ahead of him in the polls, this was a good moment to re-inject his bad ideas about the Central Park Five case into the news cycle, telling CNN’s Miguel Marquez, “They admitted they were guilty ... The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”
Again, most of that is either incorrect or irrelevant, given the fact that the actual man who committed the actual crime has since been held accountable.
Now, CNN has an article on its website titled, “Reality Check: Donald Trump And The Central Park 5.” A “reality check” would seem to promise the reader an unvarnished look at the facts. For the most part, the article fulfills that promise ― up until the end, anyway. That’s where this reality check goes wildly off the rails:
Since Trump obviously still believes that the Central Park 5 are guilty, it cannot be said he is lying or even misleading. But he is undoubtedly holding steadfast to an opinion in the face of DNA evidence to the contrary and the fact that the Central Park 5 have been exonerated by the legal system.
Good lord. That is a mess of hand-wringing and needless flinching. Normally, a person who willfully promulgates misleading things can definitely be called a liar. It’s super easy. This really shouldn’t result in this ridiculous trainwreck of semantics on the website of a major news organization.
Yet somehow, CNN has decided that a pass of some kind should be given because “Trump obviously still believes that the Central Park 5 are guilty.”
What reporting was done, by CNN, to confirm that this is, indeed, Trump’s obvious belief? I’d like to know, because it’s not actually all that obvious. I think that I’m on safe ground doubting that Trump “believes” this when he could just as easily be willfully lying. Does CNN have the ability to astrally project its reporters into Trump’s consciousness? Because if so, I would have expected them to provide us with a lot more scoops about the Trump campaign than they have hitherto offered.
Perhaps I am being too hard on them. After all, a child who believes in Santa Claus’ existence (spoiler alert) isn’t exactly lying when publicly proclaiming that St. Nick is coming with gifts. Children believe that because their parents lie to them. CNN seems to want to hold Trump to that standard: “How can he be lying if he really thinks the Central Park Five are guilty? Is it really fair?”
But here’s the thing: Donald Trump doesn’t persist in these beliefs because the authority figures in his life are telling him that reindeer are magic and elves are real. The well-known, authoritative facts of this matter are that five people were wrongly convicted of a crime that another man committed.
That is what is true. So it’s weird to see CNN constructing this elaborate means of mitigating Trump’s toxic and false pronouncements on the Central Park Five case. Oh, the poor dear just can’t help himself. You see, he really BELIEVES it, it can’t be helped. This creates a standard where if a public figure just does a convincing enough job at pretending to believe untrue things, they can just keep disseminating lies without any real consequence.
But look, if you really think that Donald Trump sincerely believes things that aren’t true, then you should follow that diagnosis to its logical conclusion and use the appropriate word to describe him. That word is “delusional.” Donald Trump is either a liar, or he is delusional.
For further reflection, here’s another thing worth remembering: Donald Trump isn’t your crackpot uncle or your weird neighbor ― he is running for president. What’s more, he founded his entire political identity on a similar straddling of lies and delusion ― his well-known birther exhortations.
It’s just getting to be a little bit late in the day to see people in the media tripping themselves up over this, you know?
~~~~~
Jason Linkins edits “Eat The Press” for The Huffington Post and co-hosts the HuffPost Politics podcast “So, That Happened.” Subscribe here, and listen to the latest episode below.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularlyincitespolitical violence and is a
Before You Go
