One of the top contenders for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is the subject of a new smear campaign by the mainstream media, which is attempting to rewrite its own history to make Cotton look bad.
After the far-left Salon rag ran a blatant hit piece on Cotton, Newsweek followed suit by going back and rewriting one of its own stories from 2015 to reflect the false claims made by Salon.
Liberal "news" outlets have been piling onto Cotton in recent days over his military service, taking issue with a congressional campaign flier that indicated Cotton "volunteered to be an Army Ranger."
Cotton did, in fact, graduate from Ranger School and was awarded the coveted Ranger tab. He later served with the famed 101st Airborne Division, witnessing combat in Iraq.
At no point has Cotton ever claimed to have served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, a Special Operations unit that is separate from Ranger School. However, it is a common mistake in the media to interchange the two, with many news outlets on both the left and the right referring to Ranger school graduates as "Army Rangers."
Newsweek did this in 2015 by claiming that two women who completed the Army Ranger School's intense training programs went on to "become Rangers." After the Salon story criticizing Cotton for his campaign flier, however, Newsweek quietly went back and retroactively changed the story to read that the two women were "allowed to wear the coveted Ranger tab on their uniforms."
At no point did Newsweek make any type of public statement about the change, but rather did it in secret hoping that nobody would notice.
"Newsweek reported in 2015 that for 'the first time in the Army Ranger School's 64-year history, two women have completed the intense training program and will become Rangers,'" reported the National Review, outing Newsweek for committing fraud while fomenting revisionist history.
"The same 2015 Newsweek story ... acknowledged that 'the 75th Ranger Regiment does not allow female Rangers.'"
The fake news brigade is at it once again
Newsweek later added a "correction" to the bottom of said article indicating that the change was made "to note that completion of the course allows one to wear the Ranger tab, but does not make one a Ranger."
Several critics, including Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler and former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss called out Newsweek on Twitter for trying to fool the world with this blatant corruption.
"Someone needs to build a database that keeps track of all of the memory-holing done by the U.S. press," added Quillette founding editor Claire Lehmann.
Cotton later appeared on the Fox News "Special Report" program to address the controversy. He explained that this is nothing more than a political hit job by Salon and Newsweek, both of which are completely misrepresenting him.
"I graduated from the Ranger School," Cotton stated. "I wore the Ranger tab in combat with the 101st Airborne in Iraq. This is not about my military record. This is about my politics."
"Ranger Regiment legends like Gen. Scotty Miller or Gen. Craig Nixon have used the term to describe both alumni of the Ranger Regiment and graduates of the Ranger School, as did the secretary of the Army, as did most of my buddies in the Army ... as did most of the liberal media, until a conservative veteran was using the term that way."
Cotton went on to tell Bret Baier that people might disagree with him, but that this is fine, and he respects their views. What is most important, he says, is that he respects the service of all Rangers, as well as all soldiers "who volunteered to serve our country."
For more related news about fake news outlets like Salon and Newsweek, be sure to check out Propaganda.news.
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