The press went after FBI Director Kash Patel this week for snorkeling near the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, calling it a desecration of sacred ground. There's just one small problem — their own reporting admits this has been standard practice since the Obama administration. They literally disproved themselves. In the same story.
You almost have to admire the commitment to self-destruction.
The Associated Press kicked things off by breathlessly reporting that "when Kash Patel visited Hawaii last summer, the FBI took pains to note the director was not on vacation," before clutching its pearls over what it called a "VIP snorkel" around the USS Arizona. The AP noted that "with few exceptions, snorkeling and diving are off-limits around the USS Arizona," clearly hoping you'd stop reading right there and conclude Patel had done something monstrous.
But then — and this is the chef's kiss — the very same AP report acknowledged that "since at least the Obama administration, the Navy and the park service have quietly allowed a handful of dignitaries" to do exactly what Patel did. PBS ran virtually the same line. So the thing they're accusing Patel of doing is a thing that's been happening for over a decade, under multiple administrations, with full approval from the Navy and the National Park Service.
They knew. They reported the exculpatory fact. And they ran the hit piece anyway.
The New York Times, never one to miss a pile-on, quoted William M. McBride — a Navy veteran and professor emeritus of history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis — calling the idea of a high-ranking government official getting an escort from Navy SEALs for a swim near the memorial "horrifying." Horrifying! A decorated Navy veteran and history professor apparently never heard that this has been quietly approved policy since Obama was in office.
Or maybe he did know, and the Times just didn't bother to mention that part in the same breath. Hard to say which is worse.
Let's be clear about what we're talking about. The USS Arizona is the final resting place of more than 900 sailors and Marines who gave their lives at Pearl Harbor. Nobody — not Patel, not us, not anyone — treats that lightly. But the accusation here isn't that Patel disrespected the site. The accusation is that he did something other officials have been doing since the Obama years, and the press decided it was only outrageous when a Trump appointee did it.
Former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and Admiral Samuel J. Paparo Jr., the head of United States Indo-Pacific Command, were also mentioned in the broader context of the visit. This wasn't some rogue midnight swim. It was a coordinated visit involving senior military and government officials.
As RedState's Brad Slager pointed out, the press managed to include the very evidence that dismantles their own narrative — and published it anyway, banking on the assumption that you'd only read the headline and the first three paragraphs. That's not journalism. That's a con.
This is what they do. Every single time. They find something a Trump ally did, strip it of all context, present it as unprecedented, and then bury the paragraph that proves it's been done before deep enough that most readers never get there. It's a formula at this point.
The media didn't catch Kash Patel desecrating anything. They caught themselves lying — again — and were too arrogant to notice they'd published the receipt.
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