The media seemed eager to move on from another hiccup for the Hillary Clinton campaign this week, dutifully repeating her line that she "disavows" the support of Seddique Mateen, the father of an Islamic terrorist.
Mateen’s son Omar was the perpetrator of the worst mass shooting in American history on June 12 in Orlando. Seddique Mateen was spotted at Clinton’s rally in Florida on Monday, and afterwards he showed a sign he had made in support of Clinton. He is a Taliban sympathizer with strongly anti-homosexual views, yet he was invited as a Democrat to Clinton’s event.
ABC host George Stephanopoulos hastily changed the subject when New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani brought up Mateen’s attendance at Clinton’s rally during their interview Wednesday, pushing back that Clinton disavowed him and pivoting the conversation to Republican criticism of Donald Trump.
Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin declared the Mateen issue a non-story Wednesday night, saying Clinton had disavowed his support and that should be the end of it.
"I just don’t see what the story is," Halperin said.
In a similar manner, coverage of the story on ABC, CBS, and NBC repeated that Clinton disavowed Mateen’s support, with little follow-up as to why someone as extreme as him would support Clinton’s candidacy.
Network coverage of Donald Trump’s "Second Amendment" comments regarding Clinton was five times that of Mateen’s support for Clinton, according to the Media Research Center.