Below is my column in The Hill on the false “bait boy” story that went viral last week, the latest concoction of the left and an enabling media. It was an all-too-familiar pattern. Even after it was debunked, Gov. Tim Walz was still raising it late last week to paint ICE as soulless, depraved thugs. It simply does not matter that it is untrue in our post-truth political environment.
Here is the opinion:
“I am outraged, and you should be too.” That message from former Vice President Kamala Harris has been a virtual mantra of the Democratic Party for years. For several months, this has meant decrying the imminent death of democracy and our descent into authoritarianism. Now, it means falsely claiming that ICE “kidnapped” or “arrested” a five-year-old boy and used him as “bait” to catch someone.
The “bait boy” story is actually the latest clickbait hoax in our “Age of Rage.”
Five years ago, Harris was expressing the same call for outrage over the false story of Border agents whipping migrants in Texas. She expressed disgust over the “horrible and deeply troubling” scenes reminiscent of the slave period.
It quickly became a pile-on, with the media spreading the false account. Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) described the incident as “worse than what we witnessed in slavery” and “white supremacist behavior.”
President Biden threw the agents under the bus, publicly expressing disgust over their conduct and promising punishment before any investigation had occurred: “It was horrible what to see, as you saw — to see people treated like they did: horses nearly running them over and people being strapped. It’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay.”
The media continued to repeat the false account, even as many of us pointed out that the publicly available video showed the story was demonstrably untrue. It did not matter. It fit the narrative on the left, and the agents were left under investigation for more than a year before being cleared of the “whipping” charges.
After the false story was exposed, the media just shrugged and went on to the next gotcha story.
As for this new hoax, Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) declared the incident to be “the worst of the damn worst” in a video on X. Craig, a candidate for Senate, accused federal officers of taking the boy to “use him to lure his father out.”
That is false. According to reports, the father was spotted in public and fled, abandoning the boy. Like Harris, Craig reminded citizens that “this is a time where we should all be outraged. If this doesn’t pierce through your humanity, as a Republican member of Congress, if you can’t speak out about this, then you’ve got no humanity left.”
The key, again, is the requisite outrage. If you are not outraged, you are not human.
It is often said that we are living in a “post-truth” political environment. The term rose to favor due to the 2016 election of President Trump. Oxford Dictionaries specifically cited Trump when it selected the term as word of the year. The irony is that the proof of post-truth politics is often found among those who use it the most on the left, in the media and academia.
The bait boy hoax is particularly disgraceful. It is common to have minor children present during arrests of all kinds. Officers will often try to get family members to take a child rather than put him into child services.
In this case, ICE officers were trying to detain Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an undocumented Ecuadorian national, when he bolted and left behind his five-year-old child, Liam Conejo Ramos.
Rather than leave the child in the freezing cold on the street, the officers took the child to his home to get his mother to take him in. She refused to open the door despite agents reportedly saying that she would not be detained. They proceeded to take the boy to McDonald’s, play his favorite music, and take care of him. He was never arrested. They also did not send him into detention. According to ICE, his father asked for the boy to be allowed to stay with him at a detention facility, and ICE agreed.
One can have good-faith objections to immigration enforcement policies. The Trump administration has made it a priority to deport the millions of undocumented migrants allowed into the country under the Biden administration. That is what Trump pledged to do in his campaign.
Post-truth politics and post-truth journalism are designed to fuel rage — to give people license to say and do things that they would not ordinarily say or do.
Even nurses this week have joined in the hate-fest against ICE and the administration. In New York, an injured NYPD officer and his colleagues were treated rudely by nurses when they were mistaken for ICE officers.
In Florida, a nurse named Lexie Lawler at the Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital directed her rage at White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who is expecting her second child. Lawler posted that “As a labor and delivery nurse, it gives me great joy to wish Karoline Leavitt a fourth-degree tear. I hope you f——- rip from bow to stern and never s— normally again, you c—.” Like the ICE agents, Leavitt is not treated as a person but some Golem who can be joyfully and righteously harmed.
There is a strange aspect to rage addictions. Many on the left will use false stories to virtue signal, then unleash the most unvirtuous attacks. The greatest irony is that these individuals are doing precisely what they accuse ICE of doing. They are using this five-year-old as bait — clickbait — to fuel protests and outrage.
The call for outrage is meant to strip away the humanity of ICE agents, who are portrayed as having no sympathy or concern for a child. Indeed, the use of this child by protesters strips him of his humanity. He was as much of a prop as the ICE agents were.
The bait boy hoax does show that Harris and Craig may be right about one thing: “This is a time where we should all be outraged.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the author of the forthcoming “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” which will be released on Feb. 3 as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Perhaps post-truth rage is as odious as it is, because it moves the needle on the wrongness gauge the same way as Hamas hiding behind women and children.
@Mike
I think that’s a great point. These people are cowards that can’t coexist with others because their ideas or values do not stand up to the light. It is self-will gone horribly, horribly wrong. ‘Collectivism’ is the most hilarious misnomer of all time, and history has proven it, over and over again.
Clickbait rage today is a clear example of using fear, hatred, bigotry and rage — and may be very effective.
A minority can remove power from all but those indoctrinated and approved as that minority with this coordinated tactic.
Saddam Hussein formally took power of Iraq in 1979. During his presidency, positions of power in the country were mostly filled with Sunni Arabs, a minority that made up only about a fifth of the Iraqi population. He purged himself into dictatorship and and used biological weapons and mass murder against sectors and villages to sustain his tyranny – which he attempted to expand as an empire.
In 1932, the NDSAP party gained 37% of the seats in the German Parliament with 32% of the popular vote. They used this and an stunningly successful propaganda process to gain the Chancellorship and then attacked (physically) any perceived or designated “dissenters”, arresting and removing all opposition parties (imprisoning) them and their seats from Parliament and thereby obtained a full majority. Subsequent to the propagation of fear through Krystallnacht and many other “summer of , they then eliminated Parliament entirely using the Burning of the Reichstag (we call it Jan 6) as a justification for a coup of militarization and elimination of “insurrectionists” as recommended by General Mark Alexander Milley and grant of total and incontestable emergency Executive Power with the use systemic racism and violence again those they categorized as “systemic racists” (aka MAGAs and “Trump Supporters”).
Dozens more cases available.
Conclusion: The use of this form of rhetoric and actions empowers violence, hatred and tyranny – successfully.
. Ms Lawler license revoked?
Media has constructed the protagonist/antagonist narrative to fill air time 24/7/365 and the people followed like sheep. Life imitating media.
Carpe diem
When history.is written, historians will have to come up with a word or words to somehow perfectly encapsulate this willful blindness to truthful facts
When it comes to lying, lying of an order beyond political spin, Trump will be spoken of in the same sentence as Stalin and Mao.
Darwin awards handed out…
Dems are stealing gold bars and by the time they’re done they’ll remove the asphalt from the roads and sell it on eBay.
The Alberta independence referendum is gathering steam. Perhaps we can trade Minnesota for the province.
Can we just give these “states” away? I am sick of my tax dollars going to the people who elected these idiots. Let someone else take the leaches and have fun with them in their pants.
“Can we just give these “states” away? ”
Unfortunately, Lincoln, and the Civil War, permanently settled the question of whether admission of a State to the Union is a reversible condition. The question was settled wrongly, imo, but recognition of that at this point won’t change reality.
Democrats GET NOTHING
TAKE Away their money…and they will fail
Secession in Canada is unconstitutional, just as in the USA. The Alberta referendum is merely a straw poll to see whether the people of Alberta even want to secede. If they don’t, that’s the end of it. If they do, that doesn’t mean they get what they want, it merely means the provincial government will start negotiating with the rest of Canada to try to persuade them to amend the constitution to allow it.
A similar process could easily happen in the USA too. A state could hold a referendum on whether the state’s voters want it to try to negotiate a constitutional amendment allowing it to secede.
In both cases, there would be no guarantee that the negotiations would go anywhere.
If it were not such a human tragedy it would be funny as the Democrats pile of hypocrisy dung grows in exponential proportions.
How many migrant children have they lost now? How many children have they abandoned to invite predatory sex traffickers to abuse with their stupid immigration policies? How many American children have they destroyed with their WOKE transsexual agenda of removing genitalia and medical castration?
These people are evil, they are the hand of Satan on this earth. Even if you have no religious beliefs, they are sick disgusting predatory vermin, it’s past time to end this madness.
Turley, like the awful person he has shown himself to be, is doing everything he can to try to pull attention away from the elephant in the room the murder of Alex Pretti.
Poor little guy. He brought a gun to his own violent illegal activity. Resisting arrest and impeding ICE operations, while illegally carrying a concealed weapon WITHOUT having the required identification on his person. Crime after crime after crime. FAFO. People should learn the difference between violence and peaceful protest. Pretti sure didn’t.
Suddenly MAGAtards are for gun control.
It is not gun control. It is using common sense and not taking a firearm to a protest with the protesters having a history of violence. It is using common sense not to obstruct LEOs when they are conducting their duties of immigration law. It is using common sense not to fight with LEOs.
But common sense is not something leftists are known for.
LOL Nope, but nice try. The gun is not the problem, it’s the dummy who picked a fight with an officer.
No, more like Libtard control. Sort of like fumigating for roaches.
That’s Turley’s super-power. He claims to be an expert and proponent of 1A rights, then avoids every single thing the Trump goons are doing to trample on 1A rights. He claims to be fair and unbiased and then avoids every single act of fascism on the part of the Trump White House. He claims to decry the ‘Age of Rage’ and then fuels the fire of rage by throwing half-truths to his loyal following. He’s a joke.
Fascism, smashism. Leftists love to accuse others of that of which they are most guilty.
Nope. He (Alex) put himself in area he did not belong. Fighting with a police officer when doing their job is against the law!
He paid the price for being stupid.
This is Joseph Goebbels-level propaganda by the left. Fascists always must stir up illogical, unreasonable fear and hatred for their enemies. The new Brownshirts are marching nightly in Minneapolis. Deal with it.
Yup, their goal is to “burn it all down” so they can rebuild a communist utopia. The “it” here is the US. The “utopia” here is really a dystopia.
They will not succeed. The population of the US is not starving but well fed. Well-fed people would rather live in peace and plenty than have a communist revolution. The fringe lunatics who have no idea what real suffering is, are driven solely by hatred, mainly irrational hatred, and mainly irrational hatred of one man (Trump).
OMFK
It’s laughable, burn it all down to build a shack made out of cow dung and straw. For those awake the signs have been everywhere. Property taxation to the point that people can’t afford to own property. Tenament apartment buildings being built on every infill corner. Medical care devolved into something of a third world Red Cross station. It’s the globalist one world order oligarchs trying to steer America and the world into perpetual serfdom. It is ours, only if we can keep it, delivered by free men for a free people to maintain.
@oldman
I’ll be blunt and possibly rude: most of these ‘protestors’, and the likes of Antifa, are spoiled, useful idiot, retard*d children cosplaying revolutionary against figments of their imaginations. Yes, indoctrination is a thing, too, but it takes either a very low IQ or a complete lack of self-awareness and then awareness of others, or both, to believe and behave they way they do; it’s record setting stupidity and ignorance. It is accurate that this is likely the first time in many of their lives anyone has said, ‘No.’, to them, and if they grew up during or post Obama, it is likely they have seldom if ever seen our laws, particularly our immigration laws, actually being enforced. My wife, who teaches middle school, has a great many students that have no idea what happened on 9/11 (good job, parents, as well).
The older folks are crusty hippies that still think they are protesting Vietnam or Richard Nixon. The irony of their identical, paid for protest signs is lost on their addled brains.
The universities are a separate conversation, but equally repugnant and puerile.
James,
Yep. They are true believers. It is amazing how they have twisted enforcing immigration laws into . . . something.
James & USF
Throw in the meth and you’re right on target…
I would rather be hungry and free than to be put into a survival sex situation by an evil capitalist.
Laken Riley was put into a survival sex situation by one of Biden’s illegals. Biden’s illegal killed her for it.
I’ve seen some really dumb comments from Ano, but fool. You just won today prize.
You dummy! a capitalist would sell you a hamburger, a Socialist would ask you to share it and pay for it too. I am positive sex would be the last thing you would ever have to offer up for barter.
Speaking of fascists, DJT’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has the misfortune to resemble a petulant, sullen Nazi straight out of central casting, even without a brownshirt. Perhaps ICE Barbie could give him the name of a cosmetic surgeon…
You do know Stephen Miller is a Jew right? Resembling a Nazi and being a Nazi is something you could enlighten us all on I’m quite sure. Catch you later Herr Goebelles, 88!
Maroon Anon: I wasn’t aware of Mr. Miller’s religion. It is not relevant to my point.
BTW, You can’t even spell correctly the last name of Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich.
Of course it is relevant to your idiotic point. You have to look things up to spell them correctly.
Ano
Maroon Anon: I wasn’t aware of Mr. Miller’s religion.
____________________
Not very smart now are you.
Furthermore, maroon anon, I am not a Nazi, but it seems like DJT’s White House and people like you who defend them may have leanings in that direction.
Simple as this Poindexter (did I spell that right), If you have a beautiful garden and an exceptionally good fishing hole, you don’t allow trespassers to jump your fence, over run your garden, eat all your cabbage and catch all your fish while taking a crap in your front yard.
Memba that “farmer” whom ICE “abducted”? Our entire agriculture was about to collapse as a result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwqB6LLxIrc
How about that seizure of “undocumented” person? Turned out, was fake.
https://www.facebook.com/trtworld/videos/a-mother-was-separated-from-her-infant-and-husband-when-arrested-by-masked-feder/1372302737785124/
Don’t forget that Bangladeshi born Muslim Lesbian who admits to have brain damage:
Dem priorities: disrupting peaceful worship services; helping child rapists, violent gang members, and murderers evade arrest; ensuring biological men invade women’s and girls’ competitive sports, showers, and locker rooms; promoting that fantasy that men can give birth, while renaming women “menstruating person” (gross); packing Scotus to install a majority of radical left-wing judges; opening the borders to criminals and contagious diseases; suppressing domestic energy production; defunding the police; suppressing free speech through the Ministry of Truth and the rest of the government-social-media censorship complex; forcing people to inject an experimental mix of chemicals into their bodies against their will; committing crimes against humanity by masking children which has no health benefit at all and leads to anxiety and mental health issues; killing partially born babies and fully-born babies; supporting middle-east terrorist organizations while assaulting Jews trying to get to class; enabling and supporting child sexual mutilation under the guise of “gender affirming care”; promoting cultural Marxism and dividing everyone on the basis of skin color into oppressors and oppressed; promoting assassination chic culture; actually assassinating the people they disagree with; politicizing everything including sports, entertainment, and comedy so it becomes unwatchable by half of the public. I may add to the list tomorrow.
@oldmanfromkansas
I have started keeping, and adding to, a list, too. Largely because when someone very left-leaning asks me to name one thing the dems have done wrong (usually my brother), and after I give them at least twenty, easily verifiable examples from just the past six or so years, they scoff, often followed by the requisite, ‘But, Trump.’. It would require a master class requiring years to catch some people up to all they have not paid attention to for so long; much easier to just hand them something, even electronically.
The bubble some live in and their ability to gaslight themselves is a phenomena that should be studied someday when they too, lived through just the recent past. I personally think it’s important to document all of this as the responsible parties try to scrub, again, very recent history (the latest: the WHO is trying to claim they never advocated for lock downs during covid – the insult to our intelligence is perhaps the worst expression of the hubris). We have not – and will not – forget.
James – I also have a brother with stage-4 TDS. It’s not pleasant. He is slightly older than me and was always a bully to me growing up. Then he crashed with drug and alcohol addiction, and seemed to come out of it a better person. We were on a years-long course of mending our relationship, and then when he found out I liked Trump he blew a gasket and reverted to his old, bully ways. He is still suffering from TDS and cannot help but inject his hatred of Trump into a conversation about ornithology, plate tectonics, astronomy, 18-century British literature, classical music, or anything else (those aren’t real examples but they illustrate the point). We’re now back to where we were before he crashed.
OMFK
Buy him a gallon of grain alcohol and an 🎱. He can self medicate. I know it helps deal with liberal Marxists. /s
Yes, the leftist media are fabricating about the latest Minnesota shooting. It’s repugnant.
Why are you silent about the DHS voices immediately branding Alex Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” , and claiming through some clairvoyance that his motive on Saturday was to “assassinate federal officers”?
You don’t see the symmetry in these outrageous false narratives? Is this the “free speech” you are passionate about defending? Is duping the public for political advantage a pillar of a free society? You seem a bit conflicted at this juncture.
Furthermore, my guess is your decision to backhand a five year old in a bunny hat was born at a cocktail party. Care to share exactly what you were drinking and at what point in your conversation with other Star Wars bar characters you came up with your genius idea???
Read for comprehension, please. He did not criticize the little boy, he criticized the adults maliciously using that little boy for a false narrative to incite further violence against LEOs.
Your response is hilarious and entertains me.
Anonaholic
Perhaps a point, but Turley attending a cocktail party remains far better than the cock tasting party you and the Lemon were at while deriving your talking points.
Sorry folks, someone has to do it….
You sound well versed in cock tasting parties. Please share your knowledge.
Wouldn’t know, never tried one myself but the Lemon might be able to help you. A blow by blow so to speak…
BTW Turls…, do we have any proof Leavit has normal bowel movements now??? She looks to be enraged at being constipated with her press conference delivery every time out. My friends and I are running a betting pool over the exact moment she’s going to spontaneously combust at the mic.
THE TRAMA NETWORKS (CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and CBS, etc.) WORK UPON
(It’s not NEWS, It’s Dramatic Trauma)
The tendency to feel like a perpetual victim is strongly tied to vulnerable narcissism
A new study published in Personality and Individual Differences has found that a persistent “victim mentality” is strongly linked to narcissistic personality traits. The findings suggest that individuals who frequently perceive themselves as victims and signal this status to others often possess high levels of vulnerable narcissism and emotional instability. This research indicates that for some people, the tendency to see oneself as a victim is less about actual trauma and more about a specific personality structure that seeks recognition and validation.
Eric W. Dolan ~ January 26, 2026
psypost.org/the-tendency-to-feel-like-a-perpetual-victim-is-strongly-tied-to-vulnerable-narcissism
[You poor thing ~ are you feeling impotent? Don’t worry Doctor Wolf Blitzer and Nurse Rachel Maddow will be here for your next shot, just after this Commercial break brought to you from Pfizer. No Doc! I just need a dose of NEWS]
“The greatest irony is that these individuals are doing precisely what they accuse ICE of doing.” Not irony, Professer. It’s Hypocrisy times infinity.
If the protesters genuinely cared about any illegal’s well being, they (the protesters) would be sponsoring the illegals with their own money, feeding them from their own pantries and letting them live with them in their own houses. Yet, they don’t. They won’t. Hence the hypocrisy to the nth degree. Would be very helpful if you would write about that, in addition to the virtual-signalling Leftists living in their gated and armed-guarded communities from time to time, professor.
Actually Kamala was just really bad at the “outrage” delivery and that’s the main reason she lost the election. Bad acting.
The lie must be at least somewhat believable to people with more than half a brain.
We half-plus brained people could see through her and once you see a faker you are convinced.
This is a skill that evolved in humans early on, all primates use their judgement to single out the untrustworthy.
There is nothing good about this story. Turley is effectively backhanding the kid in the bunny hat and telling him to suck it up and deal while enjoying being placed in jail in Texas. Just Turley harrumphing it up as he spikes the football over going viral with his role on the red team of trump administration policy disaster clean up.
Parents: please don’t let your kids grow up to be fascist mouthpieces like Turley.
The good professor did no such thing. He pointed out the facts of the matter, pointed out the lies, leaps to conclusions, disregard of factual evidence by politicians and MSM.
The child is with his criminal father, because that’s the choice the father made. Generally when criminals are arrested they don’t even get that choice. They go to jail, and their children are placed with others or put in care. So in this case they are being treated more leniently. What else would you like to happen?! Would you like the kid put in care?! Or do you imagine that anyone arrested should be let out just because they have a child? We could empty our prisons that way.
Professor Turley, may I say you have pinned the tail on the Donkey with this post. Not only is it true in the national media, it carries through to normal people. Why is it that some have no interest or desire to read multiple sources, think and evaluate, prior to spouting off at the mouth or keyboard. It is a shame that this approach has infected society. Is this part of the normal education system of today? Is it that the internet and cell phones have created people with such short attention spans that they can only follow? That being asked, it is also a shame that it has spread to such a wonderful site as this, where thinking and use of words to express yourself on a wide variety of topics is encouraged. Perhaps some awakening will inspire those here and in the media to change from their rage, antagonistic comments and just plain BS to voice (or type) their thoughts and opinions, instead of what the herd demands.
If you think it’s bad now, how about the fact that only 20% of 4th graders can read at level? 60% cannot read at 1st grade level. Our nation was founded by highly educated readers and thinkers. We were a leading nation in literacy after public education became universal.
The opportunity for mind-control by an elite clique of media-savvy operatives (infowarriors) grows year by year.
The fragmentation of news media along political factions spells near dysfunction for wise public decision-making.
The path back will require ousting progressive activists from public education, and disempowering teachers unions.
Also, insulating children from unsupervised media interaction, binge TV watching, and video gaming, thus forcing them to read for entertainment as did their great-grandparents generation.
You are right about the present situation of education. I am hoping that the awakening is the parents getting fed up with the current methods and change to homeschool, homeschool groups (we did this) to charter schools. If we also stop feeding the beast, watching, responding, supporting and electing the current elite, then again another chance to change back to basic morals. I know it will be hard but it all starts with one person talking to another person with differing views in a way that truly makes them think. I try it with my daughter and friends, they do not like it but I am persistent at the right time with the right approach, not to convert but to think that there are always 2 sides.
I wonder if any of that fraudulently obtained money in Minnesota, and possibly elsewhere, was funneled into, and part of, the $1.5 billion spent by Harris and Walz during their failed 2024 campaign. Could Walz’ ability to access these “donations” been the reason she chose him as a running mate? Could fear of what will eventually be uncovered be the reason behind Democrat opposition to the federal operation in Minnesota, and elsewhere?
I think you may be right! The current troubles in Minneapolis are more than likely directly related to all the fraud being uncovered in MN. All of it was committed by democrats or those connected with that party.
How Rep. Ilhan Omar and hubby became $30 millionaires is under House investigation. I believe this is the tip of the iceberg, but will be unravelled by auditors.
Do some internet sleuthing and get back to us on that.
Dr. Turley, another awesome article! Thanking God for your clear, strong statement of truth. We need voices like yours “for such a time as this.” Bless you!
Morning! Its not an article, as in reporting something, its an opinion piece. His interpretation of others’ reporting.
In case anyone needs this, the Dem statement “No human is illegal” is a play on words designed to deceive the weak-minded.
No one is saying illegals are not human. It’s a ‘who’ vs. ‘do’ distinction. It’s not the who that is illegal, it’s the do: entering illegally.
This is a standard commie trick to use shame but it only works on those that cannot separate people from their actions. (i.e. “idiots”)
This is one of the reasons we don’t shoot border crossers; they’re humans. Communist countries will shoot you.
A doctor DOES doctor stuff. We call them a Doctor because it’s useful for identification purposes only.
An illegal alien is just a foreign human that did an illegal thing.
The idea is your ‘who’ has the rights but your ‘do’ has to comply with the rights of others.
If it’s YOU that cannot separate people from their actions then you just might be useful to the commies.
I like that who-do that you do.