OPINION:
Another day, another media hit on President Donald Trump, it seems.
This one, from The Associated Press, who apparently hired a freelancer who went above and beyond journalistic duties to sneak her way into a “closed press” fundraiser to report on Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway’s comments — and paint them in a negative light, of course.
The wire service added fuel to the fire by publishing the report without a byline.
Here’s the backstory, from Breitbart: Conway was speaking at a fundraiser in New Hampshire a few days ago that was closed to the press. An AP freelancer apparently wormed her way in to the event — a freelancer named Melanie Plenda.
This is what Plenda wrote of the affair: “President Donald Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway has told supporters in New Hampshire they should ’just ignore’ his critics and the incessant chatter about the scandals dogging him.” She also wrote that the attendees were “largely friendly” to Conway, but “some people in attendance withheld applause when Conway let loose with snarky comments about Democrat Hillary Clinton.”
New Hampshire GOP adviser Patrick Hynes told WMUR Channel 9 that the AP report was “grossly inaccurate,” and that it skewed both the reports on the attendees and “the enthusiasm with which Kellyanne Conway was greeted,” he said, Breitbart noted.
And Hynes slammed AP for “conspir[ing] to sneak this leftwing activist into an event for which they were not credentialed,” Breitbart said.
It was only after the fire died that officials were able to identify Plenda. And a glance at a screenshot of her Facebook page, captured in November 2016, days after Trump won the presidency, highlights her anti-Trump bias.
“No more crying from me,” Plenda then wrote, Breitbart reported. “Now is the time for action. We need to remember this feeling, the pain in our hearts, the fire in our bellies, because we need it to fight.”
The rant against Trump’s win continues for several more lines, calling on similarly minded anti-Trumpers to “support the ACLU,” to “run for office,” to “join advocacy groups” and so forth.
Guess Plenda chose to join the press as a freelancer and work to upset Trump’s administration from a front-row seat.
“There are a lot of us — roughly more than half the country to be exact — who said Trump’s vision of the future is not what we want our country to be,” she said in the November post. “We are not powerless. … [We can] take the teeth out of whatever Trump has planned for the country. Alright. Off I go.”
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