For one day, the Left was Nancy Reagan’s biggest fan.
News outlets, like high-profile media giant Bloomberg, fell for a bogus report–purporting to be from Drudge Report–that Nancy Reagan had officially endorsed Hillary Clinton for President.
Bloomberg had to officially add an editor’s note: “This story has been retracted. We fell for a hoax. Apologies.”
What an understatement.
The story, posted on a site called Drudgereport.com.co–which is not the actual web address of conservative news aggregator Drudge Report–claimed that Reagan made her “controversial” endorsement on a History Channel documentary series, “First Ladies in their Own Words.” They claimed Reagan said it was time for a female president, and that she would be supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Aside from the clearly-fake website looking nothing like the actual Drudge Report, the series “First Ladies in Their Own Words” didn’t air on the History Channel–it aired on C-SPAN–and didn’t include any 2016 presidential endorsements for anyone.
But somehow, the mainstream media picked up the story, and ran with it. Liberals across social media, too, shared the story en masse, giddily sticking their finger in conservatives’ eyes over what they considered a historic betrayal. Except it was all false–every single word.
Erick Erickson, at RedState, summed up why this narrative somehow took hold:
“The press… [is] partisan. And they fall all over themselves not to see the geriatric terrible campaigner [Hillary Clinton] behind the curtain as they establish a mythology for 2016. Bloomberg fell for the Nancy Reagan story because they’re liberal hacks and they want to believe their own mythology.”
It’s sad that, rather than fact check–or at least check the legitimacy of the news source they’re quoting; any moderate conservative could tell that this site was clearly not the actual Drudge Report–the mainstream media would jump on a clearly-false story, just to further their narrative for 2016.
Of course, the voters will have the final say in 2016: and, with Hillary Clinton tanking in the polls in key swing states, it’s going to take more than fake endorsements from high-profile Republicans to win this election for the Democrats.
