Fake News
September 10, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, Steve discussed Bob Woodward’s bit about President Trump allegedly downplaying the Wuhan coronavirus. Calling for a shutdown of the U.S. economy seems like an odd way to downplay something, but I suppose Trump could have highlighted the threat by hiding in a bunker. Woodward wants us to believe that Trump intentionally deceived the American people. He knew how serious the virus was, but hid its seriousness from the public
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September 9, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Have you heard? Bob Woodward—pause for reverential ooohs and aaahs here—has a new book out, with the claim that Trump lied about COVID-19 when it first erupted way back in early February. “Trump admits he lied about COVID-19 threat in new Woodward book,” says the Puffington Host headline. But what did he actually say according to the story? “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in
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September 8, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Jeffrey Goldberg’s claim that President Trump disparaged American soldiers who died in Normandy is collapsing. As we have noted, John Bolton, no friend of Trump, was present when the president allegedly made the comment. Bolton says it didn’t happen. Similarly, former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Zach Fuentes, who was also in the room, denies that Trump made the remarks attributed to him. He says: I did not hear
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September 7, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The lead story in today’s Washington Post is called (in the paper edition) “Trump has history of disparaging military.” If you read the story — and I’m not recommending that you do — you won’t find much alleged disparagement. For example, Trump didn’t disparage the military when he said he was lucky to get a high number in the lottery that determined who would be drafted during the Vietnam War
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September 6, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Should we believe the story, reported by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, that President Trump made disparaging comments about American soldiers who died in Normandy? I don’t. Trump has a very nasty side, but I doubt he made the nasty comments Goldberg’s attributes to him. For one thing, it’s not Trump’s practice to disparage people who haven’t disparaged him. Sure, he expressed a lack of respect for John McCain’s war
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August 27, 2020 — Steven Hayward
CNN makes itself easy to dunk on much of the time, but this week CNN has gone beyond the call of duty. This is a real screen grab from this week—and it’s so awesomely absurd that it can’t wait for Saturday morning’s regular picture gallery: The Babylon Bee writers can phone it in today. Let the mockery begin: Scott adds: The Star Tribune got the memo. In its lead editorial
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August 17, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Glancing casually at the Washington Post these days one gets the impression that it is America’s post offices, not police stations in cities like Portland and Minneapolis, that are being attacked and burned down, and that it is President Trump’s team, not BLM and Antifa gangs, that is doing the attacking and burning. “Trump’s assault on the U.S. Postal Service gives Democrats a new campaign message,” blared a Washington Post
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August 15, 2020 — Steven Hayward
We’ve commented before on disgusting “news” reporting and headlines by the supposedly “mainstream” media, and these two contrasting Post headlines put media malice on full display: And yet the “mainstream” media wonder why public esteem for and trust in them is at an all-time low—when people don’t actively hate them. UPDATE: Good grief, the New York Times played it straight:
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August 6, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, the Washington Post ran an article with this headline: “Trump ordered federal forces to quell Portland protests. But the chaos ended as soon as they left.” This was a dishonest attempt to blame the rioting in Portland, including attacks aimed at federal buildings, on President Trump, rather than the Antifa/BLM rioters. The Post’s Adam Taylor surely knew that the presence of federal forces was a response to, not
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August 3, 2020 — Steven Hayward
I know there are thousands of crazy Tweets available every minute of the day, but this thread, from a certified blue check marker (a “national correspondent” for The Week), is certifiably demented: Here’s the news story behind it. By the way, only “hundreds” of conservatives buying pickups? Um, I have some news for Mr. Cooper (or is it Ms. Cooper?). Meanwhile, just to brighten your day, watch carefully at about
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July 26, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The malpractice of the mainstream media is difficult to overstate, with its insistence on distorting or ignoring the truth of what is happening in so many American cities right now. They make Baghdad Bob look like the paragon of veracity by comparison. “Mostly peaceful protests” had a solid lead to be the most grotesque media neologism of the moment, but then ABC News stepped up with this howler: After a
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July 17, 2020 — Steven Hayward
We interrupt our coverage of mainstream media mendacity to pass along some good news about the media for a change: Furloughs turn into job losses as Vox Media lays off 72 staffers Vox Media laid off about 6% of its staff on Thursday, citing the pandemic’s impact on revenue across the media industry. The digital media company, which owns a namesake news site as well as The Verge, Eater and
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July 10, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Alright, let’s take in two news stories out over the last 48 hours, one from the well-regarded Nature magazine, and another reported this morning by NPR on the same World Health Organization (WHO?) study: Mounting evidence suggests coronavirus is airborne — but health advice has not caught up Converging lines of evidence indicate that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, can pass from person to person in tiny
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June 7, 2020 — Steven Hayward
A while back New York magazine columnist Andrew Sullivan wrote “We All Live on Campus Now,” noting that progressive campus craziness has burst out and now heavily infects big business and the media: When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy
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May 28, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post complains that the Trump administration has decided not to release updated economic projections this summer. The administration says it won’t release projections because of the “unprecedented state of play in the economy at the moment.” In other words, although the economy clearly will be in bad shape for a while, and everyone knows it, no one has a clear idea of what the numbers will look like.
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May 13, 2020 — Steven Hayward
So when I added this meme to the photo gallery this morning, I though it was purely a joke: But then not a few hours later CNN comes along with this: Well, okay, since it is CNN it still qualifies as a joke, but really, do they have to make it so easy for Trump to call them “fake news”? As usual, the Babylon Bee has the right summation of
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May 11, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The Sunday morning gabfests have become a complete waste of time and brain cells except insofar as one seeks to understand the line the media are enforcing. I am glad to have missed the story Andrea Widburg relates in the American Thinker column “Chuck Todd grievously misquoted Bill Barr on Meet the Press.” Picking up the story via Twitter (below) helped me to minimize the pain and the neurological injury.
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