Monday, May 16, 2016

NYT Gives Former Trump Girlfriend the Walter Block Treatment

In early 2014, Walter Block talked to the New York Times as part of a profile they were doing on Rand Paul.  The result was a total distortion of what Dr. Block had said.

They took his words out of context and also distorted them, to make him and Rand Paul look bad.

A former Donald Trump girlfriend just experienced the same thing.

Politico reports:
The New York Times' article published Saturday with the headline "Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private" begins with an anecdote from a woman named Rowanne Brewer Lane, who as a 26-year-old model was asked by the businessman to put on a swimsuit during their first meeting at a Mar-a-Lago pool party. 
"But the 1990 episode at Mar-a-Lago that Ms. Brewer Lane described was different: a debasing face-to-face encounter between Mr. Trump and a young woman he hardly knew. This is the private treatment of some women by Mr. Trump, the up-close and more intimate encounters," the Times wrote.

On Monday morning, Brewer Lane appeared on "Fox & Friends" to dispute the Times' framing of her account. 
"Actually, it was very upsetting. I was not happy to read it at all," Brewer Lane said. "Well, because The New York Times told us several times that they would make sure that my story that I was telling came across. They promised several times that they would do it accurately. They told me several times and my manager several times that it would not be a hit piece and that my story would come across the way that I was telling it and honestly, and it absolutely was not."
Asked what the reporters got wrong, Brewer Lane said they took her quotes and "put a negative connotation on it."
"They spun it to where it appeared negative. I did not have a negative experience with Donald Trump, and I don't appreciate them making it look like that I was saying that it was a negative experience because it was not," Brewer Lane said.
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked to clarify if Brewer Lane knew him well and that they dated for several months.
"That's correct. Yes, and he was never -- he never made me feel like I was being demeaned in any way. He never offended me in any way. He was very gracious. I saw him around all types of people, all types of women. He was very kind, thoughtful, generous, you know. He was a gentleman," Brewer said.
Read the opening line of the story, "Donald J. Trump had barely met Rowanne Brewer Lane when he asked her to change out of her clothes," Brewer Lane was asked whether that was true or false. False, she said.
"If anybody would ask me, how did you meet Donald Trump? You are going to get the story of how I was at a pool party at Mar-A-Lago with my agency and a lot of other people and it was a night party and I had a photo shoot that I had done all day and I had another photo shoot the next day, and I almost didn't go, but my agent asked me if I would please come up and just enjoy for a while and so I did, and I didn't wear a bathing suit. I didn't have a swimsuit," she said.
"I came from a shoot like I said, and I started talking with Donald and chatting with him over the course of the first maybe 20 minutes I was there, and we seemed to get along in conversation nicely, and it just very normally and naturally evolved into a conversation. We started walking around the mansion. He started showing me the architecture. We were having a very nice conversation, and we got into a certain part of it and he asked me if I had a swimsuit. I said I didn't. I had not really planned on swimming. He asked me if I wanted one. I said OK, sure. And I change into one, and the part where I went back out to the pool party and he made a comment now that's a stunning Trump girl right there, I was actually flattered by. I didn't feel like it was a demeaning situation or comment at all, and that's what I told the Times, and they spun it completely differently."
Earhardt asked, "Wow, why did they do that?"
"Well, obviously they feel like that they need to do something to make him look bad or go along with their article, you know. I don't know how many people have spoken out about it," Brewer Lane continued. "I'm very happy that I can, because I have the right platform to do this. I don't know how many other girls feel like they were misquoted, but I know that for a fact I was, and I don't want that out there. That's not how it -- that's how it was. That's not how it felt, and it's just not what I want out there. He was a very good guy, Donald, and I think he's doing a good job in this race and I think that some people have a problem with that."
Asked whether Trump ever mistreated women, Brewer Lane said, "Not that I've ever seen. Absolutely without a doubt, no."
Brewer Lane said she hasn't had time to reach out to Trump to set the record straight with him, nor has she spoken with the other women quoted in the article to hear their impressions.
"I would love to find out from here out, you know, if I could -- if I'm helping set the platform for this, that's fantastic, because I read it this morning and I didn't sleep all night, and I'm here talking about it now because it's important to me," Brewer Lane said. "I don't like what they did, and if Donald sees it and knows that, you know, he doesn't have to worry. You know, there's a god."
The New York Times: "All the News that We Can Distort."

Remember, it was NYT that also reported and pushed hard the fabrication that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And they employ Paul Krugman as an economics columnist.

 -RW

3 comments:

  1. If you've ever seen what the writer of the story Michael Barbaro looks like, this should come as no surprise. Looks like a typical journalist who didn't play sports in high school.

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  2. I was not aware until yesterday that the U.S. Court of Appeals had reversed (at least temporarily) the lower court judgment against Prof. Block.

    The district court found that Block could not establish a probability of success [a bizarre standard, emphasis added] on either his defamation claim or his false light claim. As a result, the district court granted the special motion to strike, dismissed Block’s complaint, and awarded defendants attorney’s fees.

    *********************

    Lacking the benefit of our recent guidance in Lozovyy, the district court did not consider defendants’ Article 971 motion under the proper standard: It did not purport to address whether Block established a genuine dispute of material fact. Instead, the district court analyzed whether Block established a “probability of success” on his claims, and in doing so arguably resolved disputed questions of fact. Accordingly, we VACATE and REMAND for the district court to apply the standard set out in Lozovyy to defendants’ motion to strike. 2015 WL 9487734, at *8. On remand, the district court should consider whether Block has established a genuine dispute of material fact on each element of his claims.


    http://600camp.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Block-v.-Tanenhaus.pdf

    Of course, Block “has established a genuine dispute of material fact on each element of his claims”.

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  3. Trump can't go after the NYT for libel because he is so well-known as a public figure, but Block could if he had the money. Trump should declare war on the Times by paying the legal fees of Block and others who have been slandered. Hello Roger Stone?

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