President Trump’s response Sunday afternoon to criticism of his executive orders on refugees and immigration accused the news media of getting the story wrong. There was no \u201cMuslim ban.\u201d There was, instead, a policy that honest reporters ought to have recognized.
\u201cMy policy,\u201d Trump wrote, \u201cis similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.\u201d
The seemingly out-of-nowhere argument had come from a viral story on the Federalist, a conservative news and opinion site. Originally published in November 2015 , when Trump proposed \u201ca complete and total shutdown of all Muslims\u201d entering the country, it had been repopularized this weekend as the furor built. A viral story at Breitbart News, about the same program, had been shared more than 15,000 times on Facebook by the time the White House issued its statement. Gateway Pundit, a conservative blog that is now sending a reporter to White House briefings, scored a hit with a nearly identical story.
As The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has reported , the comparison was slightly inapt; the 2011 program was more narrowly tailored, affecting refugees only, after a specific security breach. But on Twitter, it had become a key plank of the conservative defense. Friday’s orders, the most controversial decisions of the Trump presidency so far, began a familiar response from an increasingly balkanized media. In the mainstream press, the story was the protests happening at international airports across the United States, the legal effort to free stranded travelers, and the criticism Trump was receiving from his own party.
But in the conservative media that has been most supportive of Trump \u2014 and where his chief political adviser Stephen K. Bannon hails from \u2014 the executive orders have been received as tough and necessary, and a source of irritation for all of the right people. At Breitbart News, which Bannon ran until joining Trump’s campaign, multiple stories pinned the negative response to the executive orders on the billionaire and liberal donor George Soros. Legal actions undertaken by immigrant rights groups were quickly tied to Soros’s money.
\u201cThe ACLU is massively funded by Soros\u2019s Open Society Foundations, including with a $50 million grant in 2014,\u201d wrote Breitbart News’s Aaron Klein. \u201cThe National Immigration Law Center has received numerous Open Society grants earmarked for general support. The Urban Justice Center is also the recipient of an Open Society grant. \u201d
A similar story , by Breitbart News’s Lee Stranahan, spotlighted the role of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in promoting the airport protests \u2014 doing so \u201cas Trump protects [the] nation.\u201d
\u201cThe Council on American-Islamic Relations is also increasingly a part of America\u2019s institutional left infrastructure and was one of the partners behind the recent Women\u2019s March in Washington that drew hundreds of thousands, along with feminist groups like Planned Parenthood,\u201d Stranahan wrote.
At every turn in the story, Breitbart noticed a reason to be skeptical of the political backlash. Judge Ann Donnelly, who sided with the American Civil Liberties Union against the executive orders, was described as an \u201cObama-Appointed, Schumer-Allied Judge.\u201d A story about the teary news conference at which Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N. Y.) announced Democratic plans to oppose the orders was headlined \u201cTrump Week One: Schumer Weeps.\u201d
Gateway Pundit, whose star has risen since Trump secured the nomination, took a similarly jaundiced view at the opposition to the executive orders. One story argued that protesters were hypocrites: \u201cFLASHBACK: DEMOCRAT President Franklin D. Roosevelt Put Japanese AMERICAN CITIZENS In Internment Camps After 1 Attack.\u201d Another recapped the protests at JFK International Airport through a reporter who tweeted that he had been threatened. The ACLU’s stay on the executive orders was covered through the story of customs agents refusing to give lawyers access to detained travelers: \u201cBIG LEAGUE: Customs Agents Ignore Liberal Judge, Enforce Trump\u2019s Travel Ban!\u201d
The coverage was just as positive on Fox News Channel, the network that the president said, in a midweek tweet, was covering him fairly. On Saturday, two of the network’s shows covered the new policy as a clear story of media overreach. On \u201cWatters’ World,\u201d Ed Henry, Fox News’s chief national correspondent and a former White House Correspondents Association president, described the policy as a political success.
\u201cIt hasn’t been a Muslim ban for months,\u201d he said. \u201cThis may be part of the brilliant Trump negotiating style. Throw something that’s radical, that’s out there. Have all the critics focus on that. Then you start moving to the middle on something that’s really not that radical. Hey, let’s enforce our immigration laws. Let’s make sure there’s real vetting so that terrorists don’t come into the country. That’s not so crazy.\u201d
On \u201cJustice With Judge Jeanine Pirro,\u201d the policy’s reasonableness was to take for granted that former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Trump supporter from the start of the 2016 campaign, concisely explained how the \u201cMuslim ban\u201d Trump had campaigned on became Friday’s executive orders.
\u201cWhen he first announced it, he said Muslim ban,\u201d Giuliani said. \u201cHe called me and asked me: Put a commission together, show me how to do it legally. … We focused, instead of on religion, danger.\u201d
On Sunday’s episode \u201cMedia Buzz,\u201d the press-watch show hosted by former Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz, the subject shifted entirely to whether the media were getting the story wrong. At one point, Kurtz looked dismissively at the studio’s window, saying that \u201cout at the Capitol, behind our guests, about 200 protesters are gathering to protest this.\u201d That was several hours before tens of thousands of protesters marched from the White House to Congress.
\u201cIsn’t this almost exactly what he said he would do during the campaign?\u201d Kurtz asked a panel of reporters. \u201cThe entire media establishment said, ‘This is suicidal.’… Maybe they are missing those in the country now who think this is a good idea?\u201d
Conservative commentator Guy Benson, a sometime critic of Trump, agreed that the coverage had been skewed. \u201cThere are hundreds of millions of Muslims living worldwide not affected by this ban \u2014 for example, Muslims in Indonesia,\u201d he said.
Later on Sunday, as other networks went long on protest coverage, Fox News republished and retweeted a poll conducted weeks before the actual executive orders.
Poll: Nearly Half of America Voters Support Trump’s Immigration Order https:\/\/t.co\/ybonwad1Fg pic.twitter.com\/4sZZ1JBVIY
\u2014 Fox News (@FoxNews) January 29, 2017
The weekend that unfolded across conservative media looked almost nothing like the one unfolding across newspaper front pages or most of cable news. The president’s statement was not the only evidence of the impact. On Sunday night, after a number of Republicans had gotten attention for criticizing the executive orders, Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.) released a statement defending them and criticizing the media.
\u201cIt is important to note that in 2011, President Barack Obama issued a six month ban on Iraqi refugees entering the U. S.,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u201cThere was no outrage from the liberal media then.\u201d<\/p>\n

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