Fake news?
Maybe, but it isn’t as one-sided as folks on the right would like to think, and there seems to be a lot more than just the news that’s phony. Nobody seems to use it for more advantage than the man who made the term famous.
Donald Trump started it all in 2016 with the reactions to his infamous “grab ’em by the pussy” comment. Initially, Trump admitted making the comment and said it was just “locker room talk.” A few months later, one of the fringe outlets said it wasn’t Trump, and that his opponents had used computer equipment to turn a relatively innocuous comment into something that would hurt Trump.
So of course Trump said yeah, it was probably fake.
So of course now Trump claims every picture, audiotape or videotape that makes him look bad are faked. News photos from the 1990s showing a younger Trump partying with Jeffrey Epstein and underage girls are of course … wait for it … fake news.
Trump has taken tremendous advantage of the legal difference between innocent and not guilty. When the original case about Russian interference in the 2016 election ended with the special prosecutor saying it could not be proved, the prosecutor said this should not be read as exonerating Donald Trump.
So of course Trump said he had been totally exonerated, and he’s been doing his best Jan Brady impression ever since with “Russia, Russia, Russia.”
Obviously the Epstein scandal had the potential to be a huge problem for Trump, and the president caught a huge break when Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in 2019.
I believe the saying is from an old pirate movie — Dead men tell no tales.
But the most outrageous fake of all has happened since Trump’s rhetoric started mirroring has historical hero in his speeches about illegal immigration..
When Trump said immigrants were poisoning our blood, Adolf must have been smiling in his grave. But the other day, Trump said in several speeches that the illegal immigrants coming into the United States weren’t human beings, they were animals. This might be the most racist thing said by a major party candidate in the last 50 years in this country.
Trump actually said it several times in different speeches, but when the backlash came, his fake news allies on Fox News started saying he never really said it and the Democrats had used AI to make him sound like a racist.
Fake?
You bet.
Nobody does it better.