The Slatest

Today in Conservative Media: The Left Hated Otto Warmbier

Friends and supporters of Otto Warmbier, the 22-year-old college student who was released from a North Korean prison on Tuesday, gather together to show their support for the Warmbier family June 15, 2017 in Wyoming, Ohio. 

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A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

On Tuesday, conservatives heaped criticism on pieces published by liberal outlets in the wake of the now late Otto Warmbier’s capture in North Korea. “While Otto Warmbier Languished in North Korea, Salon and HuffPo Mocked Him for ‘White Privilege’,” read one Heat Street headline:

Salon called him “America’s biggest idiot frat boy” in a piece covering Larry Wilmore’s equally cruel coverage of him. Salon then promoted the piece in a tweet, saying, “Frat boy Otto Warmbier gets the ‘Nightly Show’ treatment he so richly deserved.”

[…]In an extensive piece at HuffPost, writer La Sha smuggly wrote, “North Korea proves your white male privilege isn’t universal.”

“While an American was rotting in a North Korean prison,” Heat Street’s Brooke Rogers concluded, “these partisan hacks delighted in the tragic circumstances that would lead to his death— because he was a white male.”

National Review’s David French highlighted the same pieces in a post arguing that the ridicule of Warmbier was “symbolic of the left’s hate problem”:

It’s too easy to say, “This is how we get Trump.” The issues go far beyond Trump. This is how we get polarization. This is how we get cocooning. This is one way that Americans learn to hate each other. This problem preceded Trump, and it will endure long after he leaves. It’s incumbent on each of America’s great political movements to do their best to police their own, and the Left has failed, utterly, to address the hatred in its midst. Instead its great institutions celebrate it, embrace it, and grant platforms for cruelty and malice. Otto Warmbier is but one victim. There are — and will be — many more to come.

A teen publication called Affinity Magazine came under fire for tweeting that Warmbier should have respected North Korea’s laws in response to the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin tweeting that Warmbier was “an innocent kid tortured by an evil regime.” “Watch whiteness work,” Affinity’s now deleted tweet read. “He wasn’t a ‘kid’ or ‘innocent’ you can’t go to another country and try to steal from them.” “Apparently devoid of any sympathy, Affinity Magazine is blaming the U.S. teen for his own death on Twitter,” the Daily Caller’s Amber Athey wrote.

In other news

Trump’s tweet: A number of conservative writers responded warily to President Trump’s tweet thanking China for its efforts to “help with North Korea,” which Trump opaquely said have “not worked out”.

Eric Holder: Multiple outlets ran posts on news that former Attorney General Eric Holder is reportedly considering a run for president in 2020. Townhall’s Matt Vespa called Holder a candidate who could get both pro and anti-Trump conservatives to unite:

Holder was put in the hot seat over the Fast and Furious scandal that embroiled the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives for a botched gunwalking operation against Mexican drug cartels. The ATF allowed over 2,500 AK-47s and other weapons to be purchased by the cartels, which were then used in crimes. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed by one of the guns, which weren’t tracked. The Mexican government was also kept in the dark about the operation by the Obama administration.

Congress and the Obama White House ended up in a tug of war over documents relating to the operation, resulting in the administration invoking executive privilege and Holder being held in contempt. So, there’s political baggage, with the addition that Mr. Holder has never held public office.

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro had this to say:

Chelsea Clinton’s tweet: Finally, multiple outlets ran posts on Chelsea Clinton’s tweet calling Steve Bannon’s quip about White House briefings being curbed due to Sean Spicer’s weight “fat shaming.” In a post whose homepage headline called Clinton “Hill-spawn,” Breitbart’s Adam Shaw reposted an exchange between her and Breitbart White House correspondent Charlie Spiering over the remark: