About Last Week...
Not Even Trying to Hide it Anymore
Donald Trump threatened to have Liz Cheney executed.
Media Matters is an objective observer of the news industry.
Cops across the country are terrified of what will happen on election night.
Kamala Harris is three points ahead in Iowa.
And Joe Biden didn’t really call Trump supporters “garbage.”
If you’ve been reading much of the big media over the past few days, these are just a few opposite world example of the lies that you have been told.
Just straight-up lies – not nuances, not “adding context,” not matters of opinion, etc. Just ‘2+2 = monarch butterfly” lies.
Let’s start with Liz.
Like her father, she is now and has always been a tool of/cog in the deep state, an overarching ally of the American Securitate her dad helped create.
Trump called her a “war hawk,” which she is, and wondered how she would feel about sending folks off to die if she had to leave DC and go, too, and face the guns of the enemy herself.
That’s it and not is that it, that sentiment has been a clear and politically acceptable, as it were, for literally decades, particularly on the left. It is not a weird outlier thought.
Trump, as every reporter has pointed out, did not himself go to Vietnam. But, unlike Liz’s dad Dick, he didn’t skip the war and then build a career out of demanding war over just about everything and targeted at just about everything. You don’t think the deep state doesn’t see its domestic activities RE: censorship, arresting political opponents, etc. as a war? It absolutely does and Dick Cheney helped make today’s current state of fear possible.
A note on Dick:
Cheney, of course, has been a cancer on American governance for 50 years but at the time he looked stolid and talked a bit gravelly and had a reputation for ruthlessness, qualities that made DC people take him seriously (actual true fact – Cheney dropped his graduate studies, got a job as a congressional intern in 1969 when he was 28, and within six years was Gerald Ford’s White House Chief of Staff – he was either a very very good intern/employee or he was the perfect kind of backstabbing toadying hatchetman that too many politicians like to have around – I’m guessing the latter.)
Point two – in the past, the New York Times – when quoting the ultra-progressive Media Matters “think PAC” has at least alluded to the fact of their overt political positions. Not this past week, when the Times quoted them about misinformation ( which does not exist) with literally no disclaimer that they may kinda sorta have a point of view they are pushing.
Media Metters is run by rather unhinged former Clinton operative named David Brock about who I have been told personal stories I really can’t repeat – suffice to say: eww.
Oh, and Media Matters tries to de-platform, de-fund, and demonize any news outlet to the right of MSNBC.
Point three – you will have no doubt noticed a plethora of pieces about police departments hoping “someone concedes” election night and that they are training election workers how to deal with intimidation and threats.
They may be doing so in small numbers, but not to any scale. The “stories” are just a way to use the trusted “law enforcement personnel angle” to scare people. Oh, and every piece is clearly aimed at Trump supporters as a seething evil that will explode if they don’t their way.
By the way, is asking a government official not to cheat an actual threat? Only if a Trumpy does it, it seems.
Point four – the Des Moines Register has, in the past, produced very on-target rigorous presidential polls. They are really good at it…or at least they were.
Last week, they released a poll that showed Harris beating Trump by three points in Iowa. No, wrong, and are you shittin’ me, Pyle?
In both of his elections, Trump won Iowa rather comfortably. The Register’s own poll from a few months ago showed Trump with an 18 point edge. Short of a massive new scandal – “Trump Declares Corn the Food of Satan!” or some such, polls don’t move 21 points like that – ever.
No other poll has shown anything even close to Trump doing anything except winning handily in Iowa. So, is it an “outlier” or is it something worse – a suppression poll, which are polls meant to push down voter turnout on one side by disheartening their supporters.
Sadly, it seems the latter, especially because of one thing: the Register has been reluctant to release the “cross tabs” of the poll itself. Cross-tabs are the meat and details of the poll – the questions, the demographic breakdowns, which party got asked more, the other questions asked (for example, if 75% of people say the border should be closed, that means that the topline showing a good number for the person who wants it open cannot be real) etc. If a poll will not release that backing information – basically the proof of what they claim to be the topline – then it cannot be trusted.
Oh, and they leaked to a Democrat operative before they ran it themselves – that is a very big major giant no-no.
The Register was known as a gold standard poll – now it’s fool’s gold and will be considered so forever from now on.
Hope it was worth it.
Point five – the White House altered the transcript of the video call during which Biden called Trump supporters “garbage.”
It is so obvious and so true that even Politico admits it happened.
As for not even trying to hide it anymore, this could be the ultimate example. There were literally dozens of people on the call and there is a recording of the video which is public.
Yet the media still tried to spin Joe out of it.
Which brings us to our closing epigram. I’ve used this before in other contexts, but I think it is terrifying apropos this week:
Thank you Homer and thanks for subscribing!!
Note - I posted this is a very slightly different form on my sister Substack site, Checkmate, earlier today. For those who get both, just know you are getting Homer this time!!