The Habitual Lies on Which Trump Has Built His Attack on Rule of Law
Credit where it’s due: WaPo has already published two stories this week that attempt to cover Trump like the conman he is, rather than the good faith politician he is often treated as.
Yesterday, Ashley Parker wrote about how Trump spins ridiculous lies to gin up fear against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme caricatures also serve as another way for Trump to traffic in lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying — and, he seems to hope — politically devastating landscape for his political opponents.
Later yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey described what Trump was trying to do with a statement that — among other things — said Trump wanted Florida to take the lead in investigating the Ryan Routh suspected assassination attempt: He was trying to “foment distrust of federal law enforcement.”
His statement sought to implicate President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, picking up on other recent remarks blaming them for failing to protect him. There is no evidence that Biden or Harris were involved in any security decisions leading up to the apparent assassination attempts, and Biden has since ordered the administration to provide the Secret Service with every available resource and asked Congress for more funding.
These pieces treat Trump’s language as utilitarian means to accrue power, rather than transparent statements of truth, something that — in my opinion — is necessary to reclaim truth from him. It’s a rare moment of a news outlet applying savviness to the manipulation Trump is attempting rather than how it fits into a campaign strategy.
The means of manipulation are the news, not (primarily, anyway) the measure of their success.
That said, while the Arnsdorf/Dawsey story fact checks two of Trump’s claims,
There is no evidence that Biden or Harris were involved in any security decisions leading up to the apparent assassination attempts, and Biden has since ordered the administration to provide the Secret Service with every available resource and asked Congress for more funding.
[snip]
He also complained that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, who Trump appointed, testified to Congress in July that he was not certain what struck Trump’s ear at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pa. The FBI quickly clarified that Trump was injured by a bullet or a fragment.
They don’t fact check the lies on which Trump’s grievances are based. For example, they misstate what Trump claimed that Director Wray said:
[T]he FBI Director went before Congress and falsely said that it may not have been a bullet, “It was just glass or shrapnel — a lie condemned by even my worst enemies. What he said was disgraceful, especially since it was witnessed LIVE by millions of people, and he was forced to immediately retract.
This quotation, presented as such, completely misstates what Chris Wray said.
He said, “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.” As the FBI clarified immediately, what hit Trump was, “a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces.” Bullet fragments are shrapnel.
Wray never raised glass (from the teleprompter).
Similarly, WaPo never debunks Trump’s false claim that the “Biden/Harris DOJ/FBI [have] control over local D.A.s and A.G.s.”
Perhaps the most curious choice, however, is how WaPo defined half a paragraph of shorthand for readers…
In the statement, Trump proceeded to recite a long list of legal problems that he attributed to his political opponents, using shorthand familiar to his fans, including:
- “Russia, Russia, Russia,” meaning special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election
- “Impeachment Hoax Number One,” again meaning the 2019 impeachment, for which the Senate acquitted him; and “Impeachment Hoax Number Two,” meaning his 2021 impeachment for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, again resulting in acquittal
- “the Lawless Documents Hoax,” meaning the court-authorized search of his Mar-a-Lago estate as part of a federal prosecution for mishandling classified documents, which a Trump-appointed judge dismissed in July
- “the January 6th Hoax” and “the J6 Unselect Committee,” meaning the House investigation into the attack on the Capitol
- “the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case,” meaning his conviction in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a 2016 hush money scheme
- “the New York A.G. Scam,” meaning New York Attorney General Letitia James’s lawsuit accusing Trump’s businesses of fraud, resulting in a $450 million judgment in February
… without debunking the lies.
For example, DOJ has repeatedly debunked Trump’s claim that the January 6 Committee deleted documents and Republicans haven’t been able to prove it with their majority either.
Letitia James didn’t just accuse Trump and win a judgment, she proved that Trump and his sons are fraudsters.
And the balance of that paragraph includes a set of lies implicating Hunter Biden and his father. Trump invented the quote, “Russian interference and disinformation;” the false claim that the former spooks used the word “disinformation,” rather than “information operation,” has always been central to an orchestrated campaign claiming they lied. Moreover, the letter expressed a non-falsifiable opinion; to this day many of the former spooks who signed it stand by that opinion that the laptop “has the earmarks of a Russian influence operation.” (And contrary to some WaPo reports, FBI has never claimed to have done the things it would need to do to dispute it.)
Nothing in the laptop shows evidence of Joe Biden’s grift (indeed, after six years of investigation, DOJ didn’t substantiate any unlawful grift on the part of Hunter).
In other words, it’s not just the general insinuation that the Deep State can’t be trusted. WaPo is right that Trump uses a lot of shorthand when he attacks the Deep State.
But even that shorthand is riddled with deliberate false claims. In each instance, Trump transforms something that has a perfectly understandable explanation — Chris Wray was trying hard to avoid overstating what the FBI had concluded, the spooks expressed an opinion — and by misrepresenting it, makes it appear far worse, Wray dismissing the seriousness of Trump being hit, former spooks trying to cover for the Biden family.
I don’t mean to be greedy. I’m grateful that WaPo has, at long last, started explaining how Trump exerts his power, rather than treating his false claims as if they were delivered in good faith.
But if we’re going to unpack the very cynical way Trump has deployed lie after lie to get his supporters and the Republican Party generally to hate rule of law, this cumulative process needs to be unpacked. The press has, for years, simply let Trump repeat those underlying claims without contest, as WaPo again does here. None of them are true, but his followers believe them, not least because the press disseminates them in various ways without contest.
There is no underlying basis for Trump’s grievances about the Deep State. None.
To invent that grievance, Trump has created lie after lie, and built them together into a caricature of the Deep State that his loyal followers have been trained to attack.
and they must keep underlining these lies
Catherine Rampell and Jennifer Rubin need some back up
but do moderates read Wapo?
Fox news is the low hanging problem, even some leftie old timers i know wander over there, quote it, only to be ‘corrected’ by me the annoying one
and of course social media is a fantasy land if you let it
Fox news really set the stage for Trumps lies to work. Last weekend, I watched the local sporting event with my ma, a kind hearted, churchgoing, mid 80 year old lady who I’ve never heard disparage anyone. Then in the fourth quarter, a Harris for Pres commercial came on and she started telling “idiot”, “she’s an idiot” at the tv. Rupert Murdoch is Pavlov reincarnated. Just the sight of Harris set off an instant emotional outburst. Like the dogs and the bells. It was very bizarre.
https://www.thebrainwashingofmydad.com
Please watch this, it explains a lot!
Thanks. It is right on the money.
It’s a beautiful two-prong strategy: all investigations of me are fraudulent and instigated by Hilary moles with TDS, and all investigations of my opponents are legitimate and conducted to the highest of standards by the people that I hire who are bestest in the world at what they do.
Keep holding the media’s feet to the fire. It’s the only way to get these democracy damaging strategies into the sunlight.
You can see him, in real-time, trying to preempt whatever outcome may come from the ongoing Iran hacking by incorporating/adding it to his “victim-of-the-deep-state” monomyth. “Russia, Russia, Russia. Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. Iran, Iran, Iran.”
He’s already adding it/Iran to his “hoax” mantra, though he now knows Iran is more up-to-speed with his campaign than he is, is reading his lawyers work in real-time, and heavens knows what else. Susie Wiles still has no clue, but would rather “trust the software team” before asking the FBI for assistance. In his rally speeches, he openly tells Iran he “hopes” to be BFFs, and plans to end sanctions against them. “Damn the realities, full hoax ahead.”
In his latest filing to Chutkan, TRUMP uses the mistrust of the “deep state” he created,
to LIE about what SC Smith has proposed to do.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.242.0.pdf
The Conclusion [LIE]:
New post on this from Marcy:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/09/24/the-trained-unseal-that-performed-for-trumps-lawyers/
For the laptop, Lev Parnas gave an interview with the Daily Beans airing this morning, that has a lot of narrative about the laptop.
The way he worded the narrative, I get the sense that the hard drive first mentioned by Lutsenko in March 2019 is the same one that he says Firtash was supposed to provide via Burisma CFO Gorbachenko in October 2019, which was supposed to be handed off to Rudy. Which sounds like the same laptop which would have been stolen by Russia in 2014 in Kazakhstan, [Today, Lev says it was GRU, previously he said FSB], and also Burisma folks got a copy to hold onto.
I’m not sure if this plays into the other chain of events like Derkach tapes and Smirnov claims of bribes, which start to fall into place soon after October 2019.
Which all does come off as a Russian op. So, maybe this 2014 hard drive is a Russian ol, but I believe is different from the Mac Isaac laptop, which I don’t see evidence of being a Russian op. I’m curious what other people believe who have been following the laptop closely.
Overall, I think that Lev blurred a lot of the details and mostly will leave listeners confused. He blends the 2014 Kazakhstan trip with details in 2019 and 2020. Even mentioning in a single sentence his arrest and Mac Isaac reaching out to Rudy who reaches out to NY Post. He doesn’t mention the year 2014 at all, just lets it blend together.
Lev also adds a twist today, that the Mac Isaac laptop actually came from Ablow. Like, how would he know? He wasn’t part of that nexus. There was no pushback from the podcast interviewer asking for proof and evidence.
Yeah, on top of the other cautions I have about Lev, he doesn’t separate stuff he has learned from stuff he knows personally. He knows a lot personally, but not all that much.
I think his claim that a laptop was offered is somewhat reliable. But even if they gave it a cover story akin to the Kazakh hack, that doesn’t mean that any laptop that was going to be dealth would actually be that laptop.
Also, to the narrative, he’s been adding that Devon Archer, for Devon’s birthday got Hunter inebriated in Paris, then brought him to Kazakhstan in a constant state of inebriation and partying. Where the laptop was compromised by Russians and Burisma.
He says he knows 4 people who were there, including Pruss, his main source. One of the 4 is possibly Hunter himself, and it may be worth noting that Lev didn’t start going hard at Archer until a few days ago.
Amen. Reporters and editors are too damn sensitive to complaints.
I had an editor who got a letter from a man in his 90s who objected to the paper’s labeling someone elderly. He said he didn’t feel elderly yet.
So after that, we never labeled anyone elderly.
If reporters and editors would just note every time they roll their eyes and label that one ‘nonsense,’ stories would be greatly improved.
Harry: Great post. Important wisdom you have displayed here.
Reminds me of the recent (and superlative) piece (Slate?) about book banning–the gist of which is that schools/school administrators are doing much of the book banning themselves (pre-emptively), in an effort (in the words of one school administrator) to ‘take the bullets away’ from groups like Moms for Liberty.
I am a lapsed Catholic. But I think I pray every night (or something analogous to praying) for the future of my country, the United States of America, the country my daughters will inherit.
When I get particularly blue, it is because I realize that about half the voters, in my mind, are literally bat-s*** crazy.
And in my area of the midwest, three-quarters of my neighbors are bat-s*** crazy.
My oh my.
Great post. I wonder if penultimate word in headline should be “of”:
The Habitual Lies on Which Trump Has Built His Attack on Rule on Law
Thank you.
I appreciate EW’s attention on Trump’s crimes.
And I am outraged at the scant media attention on the avoidable covid deaths caused by Trump’s antivax attitude. He is still bragging about the vax being a lifesaver while blaming Biden for more covid deaths. Trump encouraged the antivaxers’ “personal choice” vs. Biden practically bagged us all to get vaccinated. Yet somehow this MAGAasshole blames Biden.
Not to mention so many other quiet tragedies that would have been unimaginable before the years we had a President and cable “news” networks encouraging insanity. The following is but one.
From first paragraph of Walter Shaub’s piece, “The Corruption Playbook” in April 18, 2024 New York Review of Books:
“To invent that grievance, Trump has created lie after lie, and built them together into a caricature of the Deep State that his loyal followers have been trained to attack.”
None of this would have been possible without the complete support, collusion and amplification by the 4th state and its cousin, unregulated social media. The disservice and outright collusion by the media since the golden escalator ride cannot be overstated. Their collusion has brought American to peak ignorance along social media allowing folks to do there on research. The continued sane washing of trump is the continued collusion by the media to assist in his reelection. His mental state is worse than Biden’s by 10 fold but only the crickets sing.
Most may disagree but the opportunity was lost when the powers to be decided not to regulate the internet as a utility.
The saga of the one man crime wave and sexual predator continues. Only a complete blow win by Harris in this election will drive the wooden stake into the heart of the darkness that is trump and the GOP.
Timothy Snyder has a post on why eating cats and dogs ought not to serve as mere meme inspiration. It ties into the coverage of Trump as entertainment, not as an endangerment of our democratic society.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/fantasy-impotence-fascism
The threats and harm to Springfield’s Haitian community, and by implication, to immigrants and people of color nationwide, are not entertaining.