After President Trump took heat for claiming the media was intentionally under reporting Islamic terrorist attacks, the White House released a list of 78 attacks from September 2014 to July 2016 which they claim the media glossed over.
To be sure, there are some attacks that certainly warranted more attention than they received such as the attack at the bakery in Dhaka, Bangladesh last July which claimed 24 lives, mostly non-Muslim tourists from Italy and Japan although six Bangladeshi Muslims were also killed in the attack. Although an American was killed in the attack, our media generally doesn't devote the same space to terrorist attacks which occur in non-Western countries. There's a legitimate criticism to be made, but I don't think that's the criticism Trump is trying to make here.
After all, White House also included the attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando in the under reported category as well as the October 2014 Ottawa attack, the November 2015 Paris attacks and last year's attack in both Belgium and Nice, France on Bastille Day.
Given that the San Bernardino attack precipitated Trump's Muslim policy its inclusion just doesn't make sense. The same can be said for Orlando which he made a point of saying he was right about Muslim terrorism. Given that a majority of the victims were from the LGBT community, the suggestion the attack wasn't adequately covered is downright bizarre.
Curiously, Trump's list mentions neither the beheading attack at Vaughan Foods in Moore, Oklahoma in September 2014 nor the attack on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee which claimed the lives of four Marines and a Navy sailor. Both of those attacks received far less coverage than either San Bernardino or Orlando.
The list, however, does mention the May 2015 attack at the Muhammad cartoon event in Garland, Texas. The attack occurred a month before Trump launched his presidential campaign. Its inclusion is curious given how Trump criticized conference organizer Pamela Geller for organizing the conference and "taunting people."
The long and the short of it is that Trump got called out for saying something stupid and the White House had to cobble together an impressive looking list. While there may be some kernel of truths in some of the Islamic terrorist attacks listed, the inclusion of San Bernardino and Orlando while excluding Vaughan Foods and Chattanooga completely undermines an already weak argument.
If President Trump truly wants to stop Islamic terrorism, he would be better served in coming up with a viable counter terrorism strategy rather than to impose arbitrary immigration and travel bans and making accusations against the media which he cannot back up.
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