I’m addicted to caffeine and if I don’t get some Joe in me within minutes of waking in the morning, I get mighty cranky. Typically, it takes the “top off” the baristas at my local Peet’s graciously give me to fire up my cylinders, but yesterday morning I got a powerful jolt after coming across the legacy media’s equivalent of when pigs fly. It was this CNN story by Daniel Dale calling out the lies and deceptions of Kamala Harris’ social media account.
Dale is an intrepid reporter who dared to walk off the legacy media’s reservation and examine some of the claims the Harris campaign has been peddling on social media. I never heard of Dale prior to reading his article, so imagine the joy I experienced discovering he is a former reporter with the Toronto Star, where I previously worked. During his 10-year stint as the Star’s Washington bureau chief, Dale’s bio says he was the first journalist “to fact-check every false statement from President Donald Trump.”’
It’s a safe bet that Dale isn’t one to shy away from daunting tasks.
Fact checking Kamala Harris for what Dale euphemistically calls “deceptions” — I prefer to call them lies – no doubt kept Dale busy for a spell. He confirmed eight instances of false or misleading video posts from Kamala Harris’ social media account since mid-August, including three just from the latter part of last week. I say confirmed because I sense what Dale set out to do was fact check an anonymous rebuttal account called @KamalaHQLies, which first called out the dishonesty Dale cited.
Imagine Dale’s surprise when he discovered the rebuttal account’s claims were correct. Harris’ social media account has 1.3 million followers, while @KamalaHQLies has a mere 268,000 followers.
Here’s a taste of some of the dishonesty Dale confirmed:
An August 17 post from @KamalaHQ strongly suggested Trump had gotten confused about what state he was in during an event in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The post said, “Trump: Would that be okay, North Carolina? (He is in Pennsylvania).” It included a six-second video clip in which Trump said, while pointing to his left, “Would that be okay, North Carolina? I don’t think so, right.”
The Harris campaign was explicit about its intentions in the version of the post it made on the Instagram @KamalaHQ account, saying, “Donald Trump is lost and confused.”
But Trump was not lost or confused.
The full video of the rally shows that earlier in the speech, Trump had pointed to the same spot on his left to acknowledge and then speak to a group of ardent supporters from North Carolina, eventually saying, “Thank you very much. North Carolina!” Later, in the moment shown by @KamalaHQ, he pointed to these supporters again and referred to them as “North Carolina.” He had not forgotten he was speaking in Pennsylvania.
My liberal Democratic friend who despises Trump cautions that while all politicians lie, Trump’s dishonesty is more egregious and therefore the media has a greater responsibility to call out his whoppers. My problem with that argument is I’m not in agreement about what the media considers an egregious lie.
I consider Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s bald faced lie that she never violated her draconian pandemic lockdowns when she in fact traveled to Florida to visit her father on an improperly secured corporate jet worthy of a career ending deception, but the dishonesty is never mentioned in all the gushing legacy media profiles suggesting that Whitmer is a worthy presidential candidate. In fact, the undeniable harm Whitmer’s leadership has caused Michigan is never mentioned by the legacy media.
Whenever I see Whitmer’s image or view her on television, a voice in my head immediately screams, “Liar Liar, Pants on Fire!”
Harris provides further validation of the Starkman Approved Theory, which holds there is an inverse relationship between companies and individuals who claim the loftiest morals and ideals and their actual behaviors. Even before the presidential debate, Harris was sounding the alarm about Trump’s tenuous relationship with truth, hoping to dismiss the attacks she knew would be forthcoming.
“There’s no floor for (Trump) in terms of how low he will go,” the vice president said on “The Rickey Smiley Morning Show. “And we should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth.”
Harris began the presidential debate warning that viewers would be hearing lots of lies and false claims from Trump. Yet Harris’ campaign isn’t burdened by her implied claim of uncompromising truthfulness. So much for Michelle Obama’s claim, “When they go low, we go high.”
Trump’s too often reckless claims work to Harris’ advantage. There appears to be no credible confirmation that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of Springfield, Ohio, residents, as Trump claimed during the debate. Trump’s supposedly false claim was the focus of a recent contentious interview Dana Bash had with his running mate J.D. Vance, with Bash arguing that Trump and Vance were inciting violence in the blue-collar city peddling allegations that local Haitians were eating the pets of longtime residents.
During the heated exchange, Bash conceded that her reporting confirmed that Springfield, an impoverished city of 60,000, doesn’t have the social services to absorb the 20,000 Haitian immigrants the Biden administration has resettled in the community, leaving hospitals and other critical providers unable to cope. This article by Tristan Justice of The Federalist provides some insight about what’s going on in Springfield.
Trump’s false claim allowed Bash to distract from the Biden administration’s colossal planning failure to resettle 20,000 immigrants. As an aside, I saw a story quoting Bash saying that it was racist to suggest Haitians eat cats. Bash’s supposed extensive reporting apparently didn’t include reviewing the Haitian Report website, which posted this column five years ago saying Haitians do eat cats, although mostly on December 24th while celebrating a national festivity called “Reveyon.”
Haitian Report emphasized that “most Haitians are law-abiding people” and it’s unlikely they would “steal, kill and cook a cat outside of Haiti.” The publication also noted Haitians don’t have the same relationship with pets as do many Americans.
“All that kissy-feely stuff you see people do with their pets in those North American and European countries is mostly unacceptable in Haiti,” the publication reported.
Before Bash lobs more accusations of racism about things she knows nothing about, here’s a link to a 2017 BBC story about countries where eating dogs and cats is common and acceptable.
I’m still troubled by allegations that ABC News rigged the presidential debate, a controversy that I perceive is very real and worthy of further examination.
There is a story making the internet rounds in conservative circles about a supposed ABC News whistleblower who signed and mailed a notarized affidavit in advance of the debate alleging the network was biased against Trump and made concessions to Harris’ campaign intended to give her an edge. The reasons the story strikes me as plausible are the allegations aren’t outlandish and some of them are already known to be true.
For example, the supposed whistleblower claimed in the affidavit that ABC News allowed “the influence of commercial interests and substantial donors to affect news presentation, resulting in selective reporting and biased narratives.” That allegation was made by award-winning former ABC News correspondent David Wright when he was secretly recorded discussing his frustrations working at the network.
“It’s like there’s no upside in — or our bosses don’t see an upside — in doing the job we’re supposed to do, which is to speak truth to power and hold people to account,” Wright said, confessing he felt badly because “the truth suffers” and “voters are poorly informed.”
Wright also lamented Disney injected the company’s commercial interests into the network’s news and entertainment programming. “Now you can’t watch Good Morning America without there being a Disney princess or a Marvel Avenger appearing,” Wright said. “It’s all self-promotional.”
The whistleblower also alleged that ABC agreed to split-screen television views that would favorably impact Harris’ appearance relative to Donald Trump’s. It was previously reported that ABC agreed to the split-screen views, a concession I didn’t initially understand. I’m confident speculating that Harris received considerable coaching how to appear nonplussed by Trump’s attacks. Harris’ performance chops are undeniable, underscored by the accompanying video of her 2019 appearance on The Tonight Show when she was running for president and vowed to ban fracking if elected.
The whistleblower alleged that ABC agreed to only fact check Trump, not Harris. In a remarkable display of cluelessness, Linsey Davis, one of the debate moderators, confirmed this detail in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Wise journalists never discuss the inner workings of their organizations, particularly regarding contentious issues. The Los Angeles Times, a deservedly failing publication, crowed that Davis was a “rising star” who “held Trump’s feet to the fire.”
Another damning whistleblower allegation was that ABC agreed not to ask Harris certain questions, including the health of President Biden, her controversial tenure as California’s attorney general, and her brother-in-law Tony West, whose background I’ve only just learned.
The New York Times reported last month that West is a “close adviser” to the Harris campaign, and he spoke at the recent Democratic convention. Except for West’s controversial representation of Uber in the company’s successful legal victory that allows the rideshare service to save tens of millions of dollars treating its drivers as independent contractors, the Times portrayed West as a swell guy with a distinguished career.
Knowing better than to trust the reporting of the New York Times, I dug a little deeper and found this story by David Dayen, executive editor of the Prospect, a liberally progressive publication, revealing an unflattering detail that explains why Harris would want to avoid questions about her brother-in-law.
West was the number three official at the Justice Department during the Obama administration. And one of his major projects in that time was dealing with the fallout from the epidemic of banking and mortgage fraud that led to the global financial crisis. West was a lead negotiator on several financial settlements over foreclosure, mortgage servicing, and securitization fraud, and he was a co-chair of the so-called RMBS Working Group, a task force that was supposed to follow those settlements with actual investigations of financial industry misconduct, and bring cases against the perpetrators.
In fact, none of that investigation ever happened. The task force, months after its establishment, had “no office, no phones, no staff and no executive director.” In a congressional hearing, one of the other co-chairs admitted that the working group was mainly a repository for existing cases, and a vehicle for issuing press releases. No subpoenas were ever issued, and leading figures at the banks, like then-Citigroup chair Robert Rubin, were never brought in for an interview.
And needless to say, nobody went to jail.
Finally, the whistleblower alleged that while ABC didn’t provide Harris’ campaign officials the actual questions the debate moderators would pose, they were briefed on the topics that would be covered. That would explain Harris’ carefully scripted and rehearsed answers, and her rare ability to avoid spewing word salad gibberish.
The myriad criticisms I receive when I write about politics are that I’m a Trump supporter. I am not. I view him as a very flawed and potentially dangerous candidate, as I do Kamala Harris for different reasons. The media’s role is to expose the flaws of both candidates and let the public decide who they believe will cause the least harm to America.
Daniel Dale’s report sampling just a sliver of the Harris’ campaign pervasive lying was perhaps news to CNN’s audience, but it’s well known to readers of conservative publications. I blame the legacy media for the poor choices Americans face in November and hold it responsible for the anger pandemic that’s plaguing the country.
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