The mean old liberal media is being unfair to poor Donald Trump -- by accurately quoting his responses to reporters' questions! That's what we learn from "How the Media Smeared Donald Trump as a Nazi," a piece by Breitbart's Joel Pollak.

Pollak sees the "smear" proceeding in steps -- undoubtedly, in his mind, dictated by a shadow liberal politburo:

Step 1: Seed.
Step 2: Amplify.
Step 3: Distort.
Step 4: Smear
Step 5: Nazi.

Pollak writes:

Note that none of these esteemed journalists bothers to question their own assumptions, or to ask Trump precisely whether he is talking about American citizens or about foreign nationals. They chase their own questions down a broken telephone line.

That's an interesting analogy, because the "broken telephone line" would seem to be the candidate himself, who can't seem to process the questions reporters are asking him, a skill you'd think you might have developed if you've been a globally famous public figure for decades.

But Pollak's rage is nothing compared to Rush Limbaugh's:

[Trump's] probably worn out and spent, and there's the usual crowd of autograph seekers and supporters and fans, and amongst them is a Drive-By Media reporter....

... they report that Trump "demands a database and registration for all Muslims," when he didn't say it! He never said it. It's a Journalism 101 trick. It's right out of the manual they teach you at the first year of journalism school in how to destroy political opponents or powerful people you don't like. It's that common a technique.

Pollak implies that there's an off-the-shelf technique that all liberal media apparatchiks learn in order to destroy enemies, but Limbaugh talks of an actual manual. Okay, maybe not a literal manual -- but he knows that character assassination techniques are taught in J-school ascoursework, dammit!

Ann Coulter is even angrier -- here's just a sample from her Twitter feed:

Trump was barely listening to MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard when he was asking about this. Trump was barely listening to Yahoo's Hunter Walker when he was asking about this. Clearly the common thread is ... evil liberal reporters! The fact that Trump thinks he's qualified for the presidency of the United States but can't grasp the import of these questions couldn't possibly be the real issue here, could it?

So, according to Coulter, Trump totally didn't agree to totalitarian treatment of Muslims, and it's libelous to say otherwise -- though, now that you mention it, that totalitarian treatment sounds kinda sensible to Coulter:

So, according to Coulter, it's absolutely awful to say that Trump is in favor of this perfectly appropriate proposal!

What Trump said might have been off-putting to a lot of people, even some Republicans -- but, on the other hand, he now gets to be the Whiner of the Week. Previous winners were the entire main-stage debate field (a group award after the CNBC debate) and Ben Carson (whose biography the media had the nerve to examine). Trump's victory could be good for a poll bump. We'll see.

(Crossposted at No More Mister Nice Blog)