“Do You Think It’s Okay To Attack Trump Supporters?”

The message asked a straightforward question: “Do you think it’s okay to attack Trump supporters?” It was accompanied by a video by American Voices captioned, “This is getting scary!” In the top right corner of the video is the name of its producer, Daily Caller News Foundation, and across the front is promised the outrageous spectacle of Trump supporters being attacked and that being deemed “okay.”

So many things are activated in just one second, and without even playing the video. Because you don’t need to watch it to recognize that it is an inflammatory piece of media designed to rally one side of a fraught political conflict. Both the producer and the distributor are ideologically extreme advocacy operations, one of which masquerades as a journalistic organization and the other of which breeds in the Facebook swamp.

The number of instances in which Trump supporters attack opponents comes immediately to mind, as does all the times when the President himself, both as a candidate and now the Commander in Chief, has urged violence against protesters. So much content could be marshaled to argue with this video.

But it was sent by a personal relation, and it asked only one question. So instead of sending back links to opposing videos or articles about the bald bias of The Daily Caller I decide to just answer the question and leave it at that.

“Of course I don’t.”