Unveiling the Secrets of Whipgate

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Maybe you’ve heard that line before, but it is so true with today’s liberal media mob.

Let’s back up a bit to get the timeline correct on the 15,000 Haitians that seemingly appeared out of nowhere and made tent cities at the southern border at Del Rio, TX. It is an intelligence failure for sure, but that’s the subject of another article and hopefully a congressional investigation.

Fox News had a drone that captured the emerging tent city in its earliest days. The media mob ignored the story because it put the Biden Administration in a bad light. In fact, they ignore or give cursory coverage to almost anything related to illegal immigration. The FAA then banned the drone, and that created quite a backlash as Fox News decried the censorship loudly. Our own government suddenly looked very Soviet-era as it tried to quash bad and embarrassing news. The FAA reversed course within a day.

The tent city border crisis was the fifth or sixth story one evening on NBC Nightly News, but it still wasn’t being covered as the human tragedy and U.S. government failure that it was. What changed and got the national media so interested in this crisis in Del Rio? Answer—agents on horses.

Only after scenes of border patrol agents on horseback who quite successfully thwarted most of the migrants from illegally entering the U.S. did the story catch wings. But the narrative wasn’t the Biden Administration’s immigration failure. It was those “out-of-control border patrol agents who whipped” innocent Haitians as they innocently crossed a river. Leftists were heard making the usual white supremacy and racist claims. Beatings by whips.

Whips? What whips? The whole story was debunked within hours. Agents don’t carry whips. The video clearly shows agents holding the long reins of the horses to keep control of the animal. Reins are also used to put a barrier between the animal and other people, in this case, the illegally crossing migrants, so that they did not get trampled.

No matter. Democrats started with their tweets. The predictable news outlets and liberal newspapers ran with stories of whips and beatings—even after the story was debunked. Vice President Harris said she was “deeply troubled.” Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the images “horrible” and followed up with, “I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate.”

Perhaps the only Democrat who tried in earnest to correct an out-of-control media, in this case in a CNN interview, was Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar. “Border Patrol has had those horse brigades for a while. They don’t carry whips, and they do not carry lassos. We cannot paint the Border Patrol with the same type of paintbrush. What are they supposed to do, just stand there and let everybody come in? They’re supposed to be enforcing the law.”

Cuellar has consistently spoken out against Biden’s ineffective border strategies and his dismantling of Trump’s policies. He is one of just a few Democrats willing to speak the truth. Cuellar understands border Democrats and even non-border Democrats cannot run on immigration in 2022.

If there’s anything we can learn from “Whipgate,” it is that there’s a continued need to rein in fake news. But a serious question lingers too. Why do liberals and their media allies like to paint law enforcement in such a negative light, even resorting to totally false reporting to do so? Maybe that’s worth probing too.

Jeff Szymanski works in political communications at AMAC, a senior benefits organization with 2.4 million members. He previously taught high school economics for 15 years.