NRA has a message for the New York Times: “We’re coming for you."

NRA Has a Message for the New York Times: “We’re Coming for You”

NRA Has a Message for the New York Times: “We’re Coming for You”

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Aug. 5 2017 5:05 PM

NRA Has a Message for the New York Times: “We’re Coming for You”

USNATIONAL-RIFLE-ASSOCIATION
The National Rifle Association (NRA) headquarters is seen March 14, 2013, in Fairfax, Virginia.

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The National Rifle Association issued a warning to the New York Times and its journalists in the group's latest provocative recruitment video. “We're going to laser-focus on your so-called 'honest pursuit of truth.' In short, we're coming for you,” spokeswoman Dana Loesch says in the video. “Consider this a shot across your proverbial bow.” In the video published by the NRA, conservative talk show host Loesch says the newspaper is an “untrustworthy, dishonest rag” that promotes “propaganda” and “fake news.”

“We've had it with your constant protection of your Democrat overlords, your refusal to acknowledge any truth that upsets the fragile construct that you believe is real life,” Loesch says in the video. “And we've had it with your pretentious, tone-deaf assertion that you are in any way truth or fact-based journalism.”

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One line in the video ended up sparking a bit of a kerfuffle on Twitter. “We're going to fisk the New York Times,” Loesch claims to say. But immediately after the video was published many on Twitter were convinced she said that the NRA was going to “fist the New York Times.” The NRA tweeted out the hashtag #ClenchedFistOfTruth with the video, which also helped contribute to the apparent confusion. Fisk quickly became one of the top searches on Dictionary.com.

Loesch also scoffed at the idea that the video should be interpreted as a threat against the Times and its journalists. In a tweet she said anyone who saw the video as a call to arms was projecting “their violent fantasies on to others” and said her message makes reference to “the battlefield of ideas.”

This is not the first video in which the NRA targeted a media outlet. Last month, the NRA attacked the Washington Post in a similar video that accused the newspaper of fighting against gun rights. “You people do more to damage our country with a keyboard than any NRA member combined has ever done with a firearm,” conservative talk show host Grant Stinchfield said in the video.

Daniel Politi has been contributing to Slate since 2004 and wrote the Today’s Papers column from 2006 to 2009. Follow him on Twitter.