David Duke Trump Endorsement Gets More Coverage Than Seddique Mateen Showing Up At Hillary Clinton Rally [Report]

David Duke’s quasi endorsement of Donald Trump back in February reportedly received six times more coverage than Seddique Mateen’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

That was the conclusion of NewsBusters, the website operated by the conservative watchdog Media Research Center.

Former Klansman Duke, who has been both a Democrat and Republican, unsuccessfully ran for statewide office in Louisiana several times, and has now filed papers for the U.S. Senate primary to replace incumbent Republican David Vitter who is not seeking reelection.

According to NewsBusters, the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening shows (which are rapidly declining in viewership) devoted about 12 minutes to the Duke-Trump controversy, but less than two minutes to the Seddique Matteen appearance on stage at the Hillary Florida Clinton rally. Although not part of this particular compilation, presumably the more expansive coverage on the cable news networks followed a similar ratio. CNN in particular has been highly critical of any Trump campaign miscue or perceived miscue and has allocated a lot of airtime to the controversy du jour.

Although Trump’s often over-the-top rhetoric has generated much negative coverage in the mainstream media, as well as among the social justice cohort on Twitter, many would argue that the press traditionally seems to put the Republican candidate under more of a fact-checking microscope than the Democrat counterpart in presidential cycles past and present.

“When a white supremacist endorsed Trump, the broadcast networks blamed Trump for it. But when the radical father of a terrorist endorsed Hillary and showed up in the front row of one of her rallies, these same networks quickly dismissed it as nothing worth worrying about,” NewsBusters declared. “When Duke endorsed Trump, the outcry from the media was immediate. In stark contrast, when Mateen showed up at Hillary’s rally, the networks immediately dismissed it as coincidence.”

Evidently the media has not asked Hillary Clinton to disavow Seddique Mateen in contrast to the multiple demands for Donald Trump to disavow David Duke.

As originally reported by Florida TV station WPTV, Seddique Mateen, the father of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, had a prime seat at a Hillary Clinton rally on August 8 in Kissimmee, Florida, not far from Orlando, where he cheered on the Democratic presidential nominee.

Great work by @WPTV on Seddique Mateen's show of support for Hillary Clinton: https://t.co/38dsBWn9f6

— Byron York (@ByronYork) August 9, 2016

“Not only was Mateen at the event, he found himself positioned on stage behind Clinton, so he was visible in photos and video of candidate’s speech. Mateen is recognizable, in part, because he did so many interviews after the nightclub attack,” NPR explained.

Several media outlets subsequently tried to draw an equivalency between Mateen at the Clinton rally and disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley sitting behind Donald Trump at a separate Florida rally.

Trump hitting at Clinton for allowing Seddique Mateen into her rally while Mark Foley sits behind him. pic.twitter.com/tSgJaZ8A6v

— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) August 11, 2016

On June 12, a gunman identified by law enforcement authorities as Omar Mateen entered the Pulse nightclub, which has primarily a gay clientele, and killed 49 patrons and wounded about 53 others in the deadliest mass shooting incident in U.S. history and the deadliest terrorist attack here since 9/11. Killed in a gunfight with cops after a three-hour standoff, Mateen was an American citizen of Afghan heritage. Omar Mateen reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS prior to the nightclub attack.

The elder Matteen is apparently a Democrat who supports Hillary Clinton for president. In an encounter with the same WPTV reporter later that same evening, Seddique Mateen claimed that “Hillary Clinton is good for United States versus Donald Trump, who has no solutions.” Based on a homemade sign he brought to the rally, Seddique Mateen apparently is a fan of Hillary Clinton’s gun control agenda, among other things.

Seddique Matteen told WPTV that he was invited, but the Clinton campaign subsequently announced that Mateen was not an invited guest despite the VIP seating arrangement and that the rally was open to the public. Team Clinton added that it was unaware that Seddique Mateen was in the audience until after the event wrapped up.

As the Inquisitr previously reported, Seddique Mateen is allegedly a supporter of the Taliban and made a series of videos praising the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a country from which he immigrated. He has also insisted that the attack perpetrated by his son had nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with homophobia.

Writing in The American Spectator, former White House staffer and pro-Trump CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord explained that he was vetted by the Secret Service when he was allocated a seat behind Trump at the GOP presidential nominee’s recent rally in Pennsylvania. “There is no way on God’s green earth that Seddique Mateen could have gotten within a country mile of candidate Clinton without a sign-off by the Clinton campaign,” he insisted.

For what it’s worth, the chairman of the Communist Party USA reportedly backs Hillary Clinton for president, US News reported.

Assuming endorsements exert any influence in contemporary America, do you think that there is a double standard in play among media outlets when it comes to how they cover those candidate endorsements?

[Photo by Max Becherer/AP Images]