TOW #2 9/18

Trump Makes his Birther Lie Worse

This article discusses the most recent story surrounding Donald Trump. Earlier in Trump's campaign, he made hints and claims that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. These hints actually began with Trump’s first campaign in 2011. This weekend however, he claims that Obama was, in fact, born in the U.S. He then pointed fingers at his opponent Hillary Clinton, saying she began the rumor that Obama was not. The article was written by Gail Collins. She has worked for The New York Times for twenty-one years and was the first woman to hold the position of “Editorial Page Editor.”

The New York Times has a predominately liberal audience, and because of this, one would expect negative bias to be present in an article discussing the republican presidential nominee. However, the article is mostly composed of quotes said by Trump himself. The only bias that is present is the author’s response to those quotes. She uses sarcasm throughout the article. She quotes Trump from 2011 when he said “Three weeks ago I thought he was born in this country. Right now I have some real doubts. I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding,” she then remarks that “We never did learn what they found. But Trump has continued to get some of his most startling information from ‘people’.” She uses sarcasm later when responding to a quote from Former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, that Trump had changed his mind two or three years ago. Collins points out that this is the same time that Trump tweeted “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

It is clear that Collins has an opinion about Donald Trump, and not a positive one. She is also writing to a mostly-liberal audience. Her prolonged sarcasm is used to make Trump look unintelligent to support her own ideas as well as satisfy the liberal audience. Her sarcasm, although used with bias, is based entirely off of facts. Trump did say all the things Collins sarcastically quotes him of saying and he said them when she says he said them. This makes Collin’s article extremely effective. If someone were to refute her work in defense of Trump, they would first have to attack Trump’s words.