politics

Steve Neavling is the author of the original article in the Detroit Metro Times which included Tlaib's quote. He wrote

“We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest,” Tlaib says. “We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”

Nessel is the first Jewish person to be elected Attorney General of Michigan.

There's a clear implication (by Neavling) that Tlaib's statement about bias refers to Nessel's Jewish identity. Ten days later, Neavling wrote a follow-up article titled "Fact-check: Tlaib did not say Nessel charged pro-Palestinian protesters because she’s Jewish" which says

Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel’s religion or Judaism. But Metro Times pointed out in the story that Nessel is Jewish, and that appears to be the spark that led to the false claims.

The funny thing is that there's no mention in the follow-up article that he's the same guy who wrote the original article. Neavling doesn't come out of this looking like a good journalist.

Edit: Here's what Tapper actually said. I'm transcribing the video available here.

First he correctly quotes Tlaib's accusation of bias. The he correctly quotes Nessel's claim that what Taib said is antisemitic. Then he asks the governor

Do you think Tlaib's suggestion that Nessel's office is biased was anti-semetic?

This is a valid question to ask the governor, but after she refuses to answer it Tapper says

Do you think attorney general Nessel is not doing her job because congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn't be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law and that she's only doing it because she's Jewish and protesters are not. That's quite- quite an accusation. Do you think it's true?

Note that he said "Tlaib is suggesting..." He didn't say that Tlaib explicitly said this (and he presented the correct quote from Tlaib seconds earlier) so he didn't technically lie but he should have known better than to mix together facts and his own (or Nessel's) subjective interpretation of those facts. What he ended up saying is quite misleading.

The governor's response was

Like I said, Jake, I'm not going to get in the middle of- of this argument that they're having.

Then she changed the topic. I get why she didn't want to get involved but I'm still not very impressed by her (lack of) leadership.