It was incredible to watch how the media handled the vehicle explosion on Wednesday at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing between the U.S. and Canada. Most of us would have been thinking, "We've been attacked. It's another American holiday attack." It was all very clickbaity unless you feel used to this reaction from various predictable media sources.
The reality:
Kurt P. Villani and his wife, Monica Villani, both 53, had planned to attend a KISS concert, but when it was canceled, the couple started to go to a casino in the U.S. instead in their $300,000 Bentley. It was sometime after the Villanis left the casino that they died in the car crash on the U.S. side of the Rainbow Bridge crossing.
The explosion, which was captured on video, prompted a temporary shutdown of all four bridges between Canada and the U.S. near Niagara Falls on one of the busiest travel days of the year, with right-wing figures rushing in to propagate the lie that an attack targeted us.
Fox News still has a headline under a video up, reading, 'Rainbow Bridge explosion comes on heels of FBI terror warning.' It's still there.
'Articles' and tweets weren't removed with an explainer in their places. The lies just sat there in the most embarrassing fashion. Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, and Kari Lake were part of the crew that was frothing at the mouth, hoping for a terrorist attack.
That's because they wanted it to be a deadly attack on U.S. soil.
Via HuffPost:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said outright that "the explosion at Rainbow Bridge was a terrorist attack." He never issued a correction after the FBI shared its conclusion, and the tweet still remained on his X (formerly Twitter) page on Friday morning.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) wrote: "We need to lock down the borders immediately. Full deportation efforts need to begin. The U.S. does not need to be the world's hospitality suite any longer."
And Kari Lake, the Arizona MAGA star running for the U.S. Senate, said there might have been an attempted terror attack, and "if so, our worst fears are being realized," accusing President Joe Biden of "inviting this kind of chaos into our country."
"It was only a matter of time before bad people took him up on his offer," Lake tweeted.
All three tweets had community notes added to them explaining that they were incorrect. Swalwell also shared all three with the simple addition of the FBI's statement.
Swalwell dropped a statement from the FBI in Buffalo, concluding that the Rainbow Bride explosion was not a terror attack. Behind each of the 3 Republicans tweets, and yet it's ignored by the Death Brigade.
Sigh:
#SHOCKER
Skari Fake is wrong again https://t.co/Pc3EmfmgtW— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) November 23, 2023
For days, Fox News ran with the story without correction since they're just an extension of MAGA Republicans. Everyone was cool with propagating this terrible lie. And now we'll wait for Cruz to apologize to Eric Swalwell. He can add his apology to the United States in with that. Any minute now, right? I'm sure it's coming.
