The Associated Propaganda — I mean, Associated Press (AP) — deliberately misquoted vice presidential hopeful J.D. Vance on Thursday before deleting the original post and publishing a weak, semi-updated version following backlash. By then, however, the AP’s exploitation of a devastating tragedy had successfully created fodder for Vice President Kamala Harris’ operations.
Speaking in Arizona on Thursday, Vance decried the deadly school shooting in Georgia that took place on Wednesday.
“If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance continued. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
But the AP used a snippet of Vance’s quote to distort what he actually said and mislead the public.
“JD Vance says school shootings are a ‘fact of life,’ calls for better security,” the original post on X said, with a link to Jonathan J. Cooper’s abysmal “reporting.”
Of course, that wasn’t what Vance actually said — it was just what the media wished he had said, so they printed it anyway.
The post was later deleted and replaced with an updated caption and headline.
“JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and says the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia,” the new post read.
The AP said the new post “replaces an earlier post that was deleted to add context to the partial quote from Vance.”
The Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway said the update is an “interesting way to say ‘we deliberately mis-edited his quote and only deleted the tweet — but not the story — when we got called out for our disgusting propaganda.’”
But by the time the AP was shamed into their mea culpa response, their original, misleading post had racked up more than 2.5 million views. Vice President Kamala Harris‘ team had also already exploited the fake report for campaign purposes.
“Yesterday, Vice President Harris said ‘it doesn’t have to be this way’ in response to another senseless school shooting. Donald Trump and JD Vance think school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and ‘we have to get over it.’”
But this is the very purpose of a propaganda press. Cooper and the AP didn’t just misquote Vance or tweet the misquote by mistake — they exploited the tragedy of two dead children and two teachers to generate election fodder for Harris.
Vance’s spokesperson, William Martin, told The Federalist the AP has long lost any credibility.
“This is yet another case of the fake news media brazenly lying about a Republican politician. Sen. Vance said exactly the opposite of what the Associated Press claimed. It should come as no surprise that the AP lost any and all credibility it had years ago, because they will lie about literally anything in order prop up the Democrats,” Martin said.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
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