My Michigan friend Allan is a true mensch and a genuine liberal. By that I mean he doesn’t blow with the political winds and feign concern for the political cause du jour, but compassion and caring for the downtrodden and disadvantaged is part of his DNA. Southeastern Michigan is chock full of people claiming to be progressives, but Allan is among the few white people who choose to live in Detroit.
I’m doubtful there is anyone on the planet who despises Donald Trump as much as Allan. The mere mention of Trump’s name will provoke him into a tirade, and if I dare share an article with him that’s critical of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, he will promptly fire back with three damning articles about Trump and J.D. Vance. I understand and respect Allan’s unmitigated disdain for the men.
Allan, of course, is a die-hard Democrat but notably he doesn’t hold his party’s leaders to the same ethical standards he lives by. When I shared that I was outraged that Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told a bald-faced lie and falsely claimed that she never violated her draconian lockdowns and traveled to Florida at the height of the pandemic, Allan was nonplussed.
“All politicians lie,” he said.
The expectation and tolerance that all politicians lie are why politicians continue to be chronic fibbers. If Suzanne Lucas, a human resources consultant also known as the Evil HR Lady, is indicative of the values of America’s chief people officers, lying is no longer a black mark or a warning sign about a potential employee’s character.
Questions have arisen about whether Kamala Harris worked at a Bay area McDonald’s during a summer break from Washington’s Howard University. Admittedly, the doubts have appeared in “conservative” publications the corporate media insists have no credibility, but even the beltway bible Politico reported that a narration of a Harris ad promoting her “short stint” working at McDonald’s was changed to say she took the job “to earn a bit more spending money” from the original claim that she toiled under the Golden Arches to “pay her way” through college.
In a commentary published by Inc., Lucas says she isn’t the least bit troubled about the veracity of Harris’s claim about working at McDonald’s.
“I don’t care whether Harris worked there or not, says the Evil HR Lady, who shares she once worked at a Burger King and Hardee’s. “I hope she did, though. Everyone should work in either a retail or restaurant environment, because it teaches you that the customer is not always right. This is a valuable life skill.”
Lucas maintains that Harris’s claimed McDonald’s employment is hardly relevant experience for serving as president of the United States. Harris, and the consultants overseeing her dramatic makeover, see it differently. It’s become a critical part of Harris’s biography, and the possible lie is mentioned in her campaign ad.
The corporate media is eating up the McDonald’s claim with the zeal of a two-fisted Big Mac eater. From an August 15, Washington Post article.
Harris also mentioned the job at Saturday’s rally in Las Vegas, where she told an enthusiastic crowd that “only in America” could two middle-class kids — referring to herself and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — grow up to be on a ballot for the nation’s highest offices. “I had a summer job at McDonald’s,” she said, by way of underscoring her humble background.
Harris grew up in Berkeley and spent much of her teenage years in the Montreal area of Westmount, which was Canada’s most affluent zip code when she lived there. Harris’s father was a respected professor at Stanford and her mother a biomedical scientist. Underscoring how the corporate media gets its message points from the Democratic National Committee, here’s a list of other publications that have played up Harris’s supposed McDonald’s employment, as compiled by Breitbart’s John Nolte.
- ABC News: “Harris’ ‘working-class’ McDonald’s experience highlighted at DNC, on campaign trail”
- The Independent: “Kamala Harris could make history as the first president to work at McDonald’s”
- Washington Post: “Kamala Harris is among many Americans who have worked at McDonald’s”
- Business Insider: “10 successful CEOs, politicians, and more who worked at McDonald’s, from Kamala Harris to Jeff Bezos”
- CNNLOL: “McDonald’s has become a powerful symbol for Democrats”
Harris undeniably is comfortable telling bald-faced lies, as the video embedded in the tweet below makes clear. Harris repeatedly insisted that Joe Biden still had all his marbles, a position she maintained almost to the moment the president was forced to step aside, reportedly after he was threatened with the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president and the president’s cabinet to oust the commander in chief if they deem him unfit to perform his duties.
Media reports say former House speaker Nancy Pelosi was responsible for pushing Biden out, which suggests that Harris was derelict in her duties.
Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, has also been caught exaggerating his military credentials and experience, a practice he repeatedly engaged in even before Harris selected him as her running mate. At the DNC convention, Walz was also comfortable being portrayed as a high school football coach who supposedly turned the Mankato West High School football team from a losing franchise with a 0-27 record into state champions. In fact, Walz was the team’s assistant coach.
Media pundits say Walz’s military exaggerations are no big deal, but that’s not how some veterans who fought in wars seem them. I was moved by the accompanying remarks by Pat Harrigan, a former Green Beret who fought in combat, explaining why false claims about serving in combat are a very big deal to those who did. Of course, Harrigan is running for Congress in North Carolina on the Republican ticket, so the media doesn’t place much credence in his comments.
Crediting an assistant football coach with turning around a football team would be like crediting assistant coaches Jim Schwartz and Matt Patricia for the success of the New England Patriots during the team’s legendary Super Bowl winning years. Most would credit coach Bill Belichik for the team’s turnaround, particularly since Schwartz and Patricia didn’t fare too well when they served as head coaches of the Detroit Lions.
Dishonesty and false claims were once disqualifying sins in presidential elections. In 1987, a presidential candidate named Joe Biden was forced to end his campaign after it was revealed that he had lifted phrases and mannerisms from a British Labour Party politician while making closing remarks at a debate. Biden used material from other politicians without attribution, and he acknowledged he had been accused of plagiarism in law school.
What ultimately ended Biden’s presidential bid was a video of him exaggerating his academic record while speaking angrily to a voter in New Hampshire.
Of course, my friend Allan and legions of Trump haters will argue that Trump’s lies far exceed those of Harris’s and Walz’s, an argument I wouldn’t dare debate. But Trump has also been victim of a myriad falsehoods spread by his rivals and the corporate media. There are legions of Americans who still believe that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, despite the conspiracy theory being debunked.
Trump’s visit last week to Arlington National Cemetery to pay his respects to the 13 fallen American soldiers on the third anniversary of the terror attack on Abbey Gate at the international airport in Kabul wasn’t a political stunt, as the Harris/Walz campaign alleged. In fact, the families of the fallen soldiers invited Trump to join them and Harris was trying to distract from biting criticisms the families have made against her.
In various videos, the families praised Trump as having treated them with “the utmost respect, compassion, and understanding,” and as someone who has “taken the time” to listen to the families’ “stories” and help the families “get some accountability” from the Biden administration. The families criticized Harris for “playing politics” and issuing a “heinous, vile and disgusting” statement that was “political spin” to help her look better.
Harris also has repeated the claim that Trump once referred to the men and women who died in war as “suckers” and “losers.” The claim is from this September 2020 story in The Atlantic based on an anonymously sourced allegation that no other reporter was able to substantiate.
This is the same Atlantic whose writer asked for “pandemic amnesty” because she argued that the magazine’s myriad false claims during the pandemic were made in good faith and motivated by “deep uncertainty.” The same Atlantic that in March criticized prosecutor Robert Hur for misleading the country on Biden’s memory, that last November published an article by Elaina Plott Calabro reporting that few people considered Harris ready to be president, and now suggests that those who dismiss Harris as unqualified are sexist.
When it comes to serving up narratives, Atlantic writers offer more flavors than Baskin-Robbins.
In the latest example of the media’s reliance on DNC’s message points, NBC News was forced to issue a correction saying that Harris didn’t attend the dignified transfer of 13 American service members killed during the Afghanistan withdrawal. Many people have a vivid memory of that transfer because they remember Biden glancing at his watch multiple times.
Despite having lost its credibility with the public, the corporate media still has too much influence over presidential politics. It’s the media’s dishonesty that’s fueling much of the anger in America, particularly among conservatives. If the media covered the election honestly, I’m doubtful most Americans would deem Trump nor Harris credible candidates and come November they would have more worthy candidates to choose from.