other98: trump’s latest whopper is that vandals took a knife to the new paint job at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and somehow the National Park Service, the cops, and half the press played along like that made sense. A deputy director swore in a court filing that the liner was “cut with a sharp knife or razor,” but anyone scrolling through the literally hundreds of photos out there can see that coating peeling and flaking off in chunks, with zero sign of a clean blade cut anywhere. Nobody grabs a knife when they want to strip paint off concrete, that is just not a thing that happens.
This is the gaslighting playbook we have watched for years now. trump says something insane, officials back him up, then the media repeats it like gospel, and the public is left wondering if they are the crazy one for noticing the obvious gap between the claim and the evidence. We saw it with the stolen 2020 election lie that still will not die, we saw it with the Haitians eating pets nonsense that got repeated on a debate stage, and we saw it after the rally shooting when his ear reportedly took a graze and somehow looked flawless days later with barely a mark, no real explanation given, and nobody in mainstream coverage pushed very hard on it. And on and on and on for ten damn years of this rambling maniac’s word being taken seriously.
Each time, the same pattern plays out. A claim with no real evidence gets stated, officials nod along, and the press treats repetition as confirmation instead of doing the basic work of checking it against what people can literally see with their own eyes. The whole scenario is right out of Orwell’s 1984 where he wrote, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
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“Fact Checking” was popular during the first T debates. They were doing it for all of the candidates, but the sheer magnitude of the check of what T said proved to be an issue. Of course, he claimed everybody was against him by them doing that. So it slowly faded away. BUT it was proven than 62% of the time he spoke, he was not speaking accurately or truthfully. Yet he claimed what he said was accurate. So that made the fact checkers “the bad guys” who were trying to take him down.
Gingrinch had been pushing an orientation that only Rs knew how to do anything “correctly”. Spend taxpayer money. Work for the betterment of all citizens. Etc., etc., etc. After hearing that for over 10 years, most people started to believe that Rs where the ones they wanted to vote for, even if Rs restricted things like Social Security and other safety-net programs. Or whatever!
When many T voters were asked about his overt fabrications and such, they brushed it off as they claimed to expect that all politicians were liers. Yet THEY kept voting for them, for whatever reason.
After 10+ years of “un-truths and mis-statements”, it seems we have all grown numb to his “comments”. EVEN WHEN the news media (some of them) openly indicate his comments are not realistic or factual . . . after the fact. But by that time, it’s too late as he has said something else that is equally incorrect.
OF COURSE, when Rs or T do something to cause a problem, they find somebody else to blame it on! They will never admit they made a poor decision. Rs demand credibility from others, but not themselves!