NEWSWEEK HAVING A NORMAL ONE TODAY: Great Moments in Protection Racket Media: Attacking Mickey D’s for Hosting Trump. Ed Morrissey writes:
Alternate headline: Newsweek Digs for Literal Dirt.
Does Newsweek have a running feature on fast-food health inspections? Or do they only do that when Donald Trump charms a battleground state a couple of weeks before an election?
Trump, a big fan of McDonald’s food and a self-professed germophobe, wore an apron over his shirt and tie but did not wear gloves or a hairnet during his visit, stating that his hands were “nice and clean.” According to the Meidas Touch, he went straight to work without washing his hands.
Employees not washing their hands was one of the reasons that restaurant failed its most recent inspection.
I’d guess that, as a self-professed germaphobe, Trump uses enough sanitizer on a regular campaign day to render an entire city block bacteria-free. He might have even improved matters by shaking hands with the entire staff.
Put that point aside for right now, though. What does a previous health inspection for a locally owned fast-food joint have to do with this campaign appearance? Nothing at all, except that it provides a media outlet a way to make Trump look bad and to counter-act any positive impressions of the event.
Did that work? We’ll see, but color me skeptical, as the story reflects much more poorly on Newsweek than Trump, especially with this note:
Newsweek has contacted McDonald’s and the Trump campaign for comment outside business hours. This article will be updated if a comment is received.
Ahem. Was this news about a failed previous health inspection so important that Newsweek couldn’t wait until the business opened to publish it? Why not wait for a response? Did Newsweek expect to get scooped by the New York Times or the Joy Reid show?
Also today, after Trump appeared in a skybox at the Sunday night Jets-Steelers game in Pittsburgh, a separate young (also British-based*, curiously-enough) Newsweek scribe spent nearly 400 words to tell her readers, “Trump Appears to Post Fake Image of Himself as a Star NFL Player,” in the same obsessively dull police blotter-style journalistic tone:
Trump’s torso and arms also appear to have been altered to appear more muscular than they do in other photos and videos of Trump in sportswear, such as those posted by Trump Golf’s Instagram account in July.
According to an image detector search through “Is It AI?” the photo is 81 percent likely to be constructed by AI.
Another AI image detector site, AIimagedetector.org, also concluded that the picture was likely AI-generated, stating the picture is approximately 30 percent human and nearly 70 percent AI-generated.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign for comment via email outside of business hours, as well as to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Gosh Newsweek, you’ve got Trump dead to rights with this one!
(Also, an American football fan would have noticed that Trump’s AI image has him wearing the Steelers’ current jersey style. However, Pittsburgh wore their ‘70s-era throwback uniforms last night, which have a different font than the numbers depicted in the Trump AI. The Bad Orange Man might have convinced America’s voters that the Steelers drafted him straight out of Hamburger University if it wasn’t for that one key detail…)
* Old and busted: Make America Great Again. The new hotness? Make Fleet Street Fun Again!