Chip Roy Blasts ‘Dishonest’ Media Attacks on Mike Lee After out of Context Quote Circulates

Earlier today, RedState reported on how mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, Newsweek, and Business Outsider ran with an out of context quote from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and used it to claim he said and meant something he didn’t.

For those who missed it, on Tuesday Vox.com “journalist” Aaron Rupar boiled a five-minute interview Lee did with Fox News on the Senate’s impeachment trial down to a whopping 5 seconds. “Look, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is entitled to a mulligan once in a while,” Lee said in the clip, which Rupar shared just a few hours before the Senate’s impeachment trial started.

Rupar was trying to make it appear that Lee was commenting on Trump and urging people to give him a “mulligan.” Except that’s not what Lee was doing. Lee was actually commenting on clips that were played of Rep. Maxine Waters and Sen. Cory Booker among others urging people to confront Republican Congressmen and Trump officials and get in their faces.

Here was the full quote:

“Look, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is entitled to a mulligan once in a while. And I would hope, I would expect that each of those individuals would take a mulligan on each of those statements because in each instance they’re making it deeply personal. They’re ceasing to make it about policy, instead they’re talking about getting up in people’s faces, and making individuals feel perfectly uncomfortable and that’s not helpful. The best way to handle this is to talk about issues rather than individual personalities.”

The notorious chicanery of Rupar and the rest of the mainstream media reporters who ran with the deceptive quote incensed Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who in an exclusive statement to RedState defended Lee, saying the “brazen dishonesty about his remarks only prove how necessary they are”:

The attacks against my friend and colleague, Sen. Mike Lee, are as dishonest as they are absurd. It was clear that he tried to make the point that, despite the dangerously inflammatory comments by many of our leftist colleagues, we should take the high road and see each other as fallen human beings. America’s public square needs far more of that, not less. He said, as I have, that we should step back from the lunacy of government by soundbite and retweet and show some grace instead of nonstop ‘whataboutism’ and retaliation.

But the brazen dishonesty about his remarks only prove how necessary they are. If others wish to take the road of distortions and lies, as so many do, it is they who will force this republic to the divorce table when they should have been helping us unite for a prosperous America, properly defended from the aggression of China and our other global threats.

Lee made several good points in the interview, which you can watch below: