In a column for Canada's National Post, former Bush speechwriter David Frum whitewashed the blatantly discriminatory comments of a radical Islamaphobe and didn't mention his institutional ties to a fund raising event for the controversial figure.
Last week, Dutch politician Geert Wilders went on a whirlwind East Coast tour promoting his controversial film, 'Fitna', and raising money for his legal defense in two cases abroad - his appeal against his ban from the U.K., and his prosecution for incitement to hate in his native Netherlands.
On his junket, Wilders stopped by the National Press Club in D.C. to screen the "extreme anti-Muslim hate" film and deliver some remarks. Frum, an American Enterprise Institute fellow, covered the event for the website of the National Post.
At the conference, which I attended, Frum raised his hand and asked Wilders a question. But in his National Post column, he wildly mischaracterized the response:
At the press conference I asked Wilders: "The polls show your party might finish second if an election were held today. You might someday be prime minister of the Netherlands. If elected--what would you actually do about the extremism problem?"He didn't offer much of an answer. He pledged to stand up for traditional Dutch values of liberty and tolerance and to toughen punishment of lawbreakers.
What Frum criticizes as not "much of an answer" was really quite a response: Wilders actually said that his first order of business would be to officially institute religious discrimination by putting "a full stop on immigration from Muslim countries."
There were other things Frum left out of his story, too.
Earlier in the week, Wilders had been the featured guest at an event hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), where Frum is on the board of directors. The group was co-sponsoring the event with Daniel Pipes and his Middle East Forum's Legal Project, which is raising money for Wilders. The event was not billed as a fund raiser, but, according to a release, donations were "welcome." Frum makes no mention whatsoever of the RJC connection or the fund raising in his column.
Frum does, however, claim that he "happened" to be booked on the same "almost empty" flight as Wilders from New England back to Washington. In his National Post article, Frum recalls getting eyed by security only to have someone in Wilders's entourage say, "He's with us."