Rachel Maddow showed that Trump is intentionally scrubbing facts from the official White House record as part of a disinformation campaign against America.
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Rachel Maddow showed that Trump is intentionally scrubbing facts from the official White House record as part of a disinformation campaign against America. https://t.co/loo5Bdy2Vi pic.twitter.com/tgW5KA99Un
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Maddow said:
Like I said, I don’t usually report on stuff the president says on Twitter. Unlike other presidents, I feel like from a reporting perspective, from a news perspective it is sort of ok to you know mostly ignore things this president says, at least if you’re looking for any indication of factual things that really happen in the world. He says a lot of untrue things. I try not to invest in untrue things that he says. I treat this administration more like a show with the sound turned off. Watch what they do, not what they say. In this case, this statement from the president, it is obviously factually inaccurate but it is an important thing that we are back in this part of the movie again.
I imagine it will be like this for a while now. Maybe through the election. Maybe through the end of the Mueller investigation. But this is the kind of political challenge that we don’t really train for as the president disappearing evidence, telling you things you actually saw live when they happened, those things didn’t really happen. Things you heard, you didn’t really hear them. Going beyond that so that what you think you saw, you actually saw the opposite. Putin stood there and said, I wanted Trump. We’ll tell you he said I wanted the Democrats. I think in the specifics, the president disappearing, the real information that Putin said he preferred Trump, the president announcing the opposite, that Putin prefers Democrats.
In the specific that probably lays the groundwork for how president Trump intends to respond if the Democrats win the election in November, so stick a pin in that but in a more general sense, the president disappearing evidence that delays in plain sight pretending up is down and black is white, I think we should see this as Americans as a signal, broadly, that this is garbage time again. We are back into a politically potent era of deliberate nonsense. Disinformation, a form of information warfare. And it is being waged against us.
Rachel Maddow is saying what other mainstream outlets won’t. Trump isn’t just lying. He is waging a disinformation campaign again facts and truth. Maddow can afford to watch this administration with the sound off, but other outlets have to challenge Trump’s false statements, because false statements, disinformation, that is left unchallenged soon becomes accepted fact.
Donald Trump is hoping that if he lies, and lies, and lies every day that his lies overwhelm the facts and become the accepted truth.
This is why we have to fact check. This is why Trump can’t be allowed to get away with a single false statement.
This is why the free press is more vital and critical to saving our democracy than ever before.
We must always make sure that down is down, and up is up, and Donald Trump is not allowed to distort reality.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
