Keeping Up With Unreality

Beyond mere bias, the media are now creating fictional 'news'

Chris Cillizza on X

Eleven days ago (see “The Paranoid Temptation,” July 16), I pondered what we were being told about the then-recent assassination attempt against Trump:

So the son of two mental health professionals gets his hands on an AR-15, climbs onto a roof 130 yards from the Republican presidential nominee, and comes within a fraction of an inch of splattering Trump’s brains all over the place. Nothing suspicious at all about that.

Have you considered the possibility that you’re not paranoid enough?

Many more strange events have since transpired. On July 17, President Joe Biden canceled his schedule in Las Vegas and flew back to Delaware, after it was reported he had tested positive for COVID-19, a virus most Americans have forgotten about. So, the Republican challenger survives an assassination attempt on Sunday (July 13), and four days later, the incumbent Democrat has a sudden health crisis. Nothing suspicious at all. Random coincidence — a flock of black swans, as it were. Flash back four years ago, when every network was running a daily total of COVID-19 deaths.

CNN on June 12, 2020 (via YouTube)

THOUSANDS! TENS OF THOUSANDS! HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS!

OK, that was then, this is now. How many new COVID-19 diagnoses are there on a weekly basis in the United States? Do you know? I sure don’t. Perhaps someone can contact the health department in Clark County, Nevada, and tell us how many patients in Las Vegas were being treated for COVID-19 last week, when the President of the United States —who has gotten the vaccine and multiple boosters — was diagnosed with the virus and whisked away to Air Force One for a flight to Delaware, leaving an audience of Latino activists without their promised keynote speaker.

Nothing at all odd about this, I suppose. So then, four days later — Sunday, July 21 — the president, now suffering from COVID-19 (despite his vaxxed-and-boosted status) decides to quit his reelection campaign and anoint Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party presidential candidate in his stead. Biden makes this decision despite having repeatedly vowed that he would stay the course, denouncing the party “elites” who had been urging him to withdraw his candidacy. On Wednesday, he was still campaigning, but by Sunday, everything had changed. For some reason.

Notice something missing there? Motive. No explanation of why he had made this decision. Of course, we all know why he quit — the June 27 debate exposed Biden’s diminished mental capacity for all the world to see, and the polls (which weren’t very good for Biden before the debate) began pointing toward a landslide Trump victory in November, a Republican victory so large that it might deprive Democrats of their Senate majority and rule out any chance of them retaking the House. With this kind of total wipeout facing Democrats, there was a steady drip, drip, drip of congress members joining the call for Biden to “step aside” as the nominee. Major Democratic Party donors began saying they wouldn’t give another dime so long as Biden was at the top of the ticket. This drumbeat of negativity began to crescendo in the two weeks following the debate and then — out of nowhere, a completely random fluke — a demented 20-year-old in Pennsylvania tries to assassinate Trump. And then, eight days later, the incumbent president decides not to seek reelection.

Nothing suspicious about this timing. What are you, some kind of conspiracy theorist?

The Media’s Weird Unanimity

Just as suddenly as Biden decided not to seek reelection, everybody in the media seemed to decide that there was exactly one word to describe this decision: “Biden’s selfless decision to drop out sets stage for an entirely different election” (Guardian UK); “Joe Biden’s Act of Selflessness” (New Yorker); “David Axelrod Praises Biden’s ‘Selfless Decision’” (Wall Street Journal); et cetera, et cetera. Reflecting on this rather suspicious repetition of the same term, Ann Althouse said:

Biden was only in a position to do this "selfless" thing because he'd gone so far down the road of selfishness. He should have declined to run for reelection, back when it would have given other Democrats a fair chance to fight for the nomination. They — whoever they are (Pelosi, Obama, etc.) — prevailed upon him to get out, at long last. And he finally did, perhaps because they said everyone would call him "selfless" if he did and — if he didn't — he'd go down in history as insanely, disastrously selfish.

Acting to avoid blame, and to protect one’s reputation, is hardly “selfless.” Once his fellow Democrats made it clear that he was certain to lose, and that this would lead to him being blamed for Trump’s election, then he decided to quit the race. And, as Professor Althouse says, the truly selfless thing to do (certainly the smart thing) would have been to announce last year that he wouldn’t seek reelection, thus enabling Democrats to hold an actual presidential primary. As it is, Kamala Harris has been anointed — Biden’s foot-dragging made it too late to do anything else — and it is far from certain that she’ll do better against Trump than Biden would have done.

Chris Cillizza is certainly not a right-wing Trump supporter, so his complaints about the “re-writing of history” — not ancient history, but events of the past week — ought to carry more weight than anything I have to say on the subject. Cillizza is mystified why so many Democrats and their media allies are misrepresenting the facts: “Like, we were all there. We saw what happened.” What is puzzling about this narrative is not just the blatant falsehood of it. The question is, what is gained by this brazen lie? Why must Biden be praised as “selfless,” and portrayed as acting voluntarily when, in fact, he was forced to quit the race, after weeks of resisting this demand?

The lame duck speaks (Image via YouTube)

Americans confused by this didn’t get any help Wednesday night, when Biden delivered a primetime speech from the Oval Office that lasted 11 minutes without ever once offering an explanation of his motive in quitting the race. He started with a lot of patriotic argle-bargle, name-checking Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln and FDR, “freedom, justice, and democracy,” blah blah blah, and then this:

When you elected me to this office, I promised to always level with you, to tell you the truth.  And the truth, the sacred cause of this country is larger than any one of us.

And those of us who [cherish] that cause — cherish it so much — the cause of American democracy itself — must unite to protect it.

You know, in recent weeks, it’s become clear to me that I needed to unite my party in this critical endeavor.  I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future all merited a second term, but nothing — nothing — can come in the way of saving our democracy.  That includes personal ambition.

So, I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.  That’s the best way to unite our nation.

Mary Chastain at Legal Insurrection was among those baffled by this:

So, Biden has to drop out because his record is so good? His record is so good that the only way to unite everyone is for him to drop out.
The most popular, noble, and spectacular president ever just has to pass the torch to a new generation.
Um, what? That makes no sense. That does not explain why he had to drop out.

The biggest lie in that speech was Biden’s claim that he “decided … to pass the torch.” No, hell, he didn’t. He was waylaid by Democratic big-money boys who forcibly took the torch away from him, If you’re walking down the street and a thug puts a gun in your face demanding money, do you decide to give him your wallet? Biden’s talk about needing “to unite my party in this critical endeavor” and finding “the best way forward” is just clumsy euphemism, a way of avoiding the reality he doesn’t want to admit. “I promised to always level with you, to tell you the truth,” he says, before telling another gigantic whopper that couldn’t deceive a fifth-grader.

The reality is, he’s so far gone in senile dementia that his condition can no longer be concealed, and once the attempt to conceal it finally failed — in the June 27 debate — his fellow Democrats forced him to “pass the torch,” in a desperate bid to prevent the party’s complete electoral anihilation on November 5. It has nothing to do with any “sacred cause” except trying to win an election for Chuck Schumer & Co.

Do the Media Even Believe What They’re Saying?

(Image via YouTube)

Is Kamala Harris’s campaign truly “surging”? If you’re an MSNBC viewer, you may believe that, and when James Carville dared to be “the skunk at the garden party,” as he phrased it, by warning against “giddy elation” among Democrats, the crew on the next day’s “Morning Joe” broadcast spent 15 minutes pushing back. They brought on Hillary Clinton’s former campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri:

"I don't understand why James has to be a Debbie Downer," the exasperated Palmieri complained. "I don't know why we need to step on our enthusiasm, seriously. Democrats are enthusiastic, they're excited to have an answer to the question about who is the best person to take on Donald Trump."

"I don't think anybody is unaware of how nasty the Republicans can get and that it is a difficult race," she continued while speaking to host Jonathan Lemire. "You know, the vice president has seen a big jump in polling, right? That's sort of what is hard, is the last two, three percentage points, right? That's what the whole game is about. "

"We've had really great week, her numbers are improving and I think it's true that the Republicans are caught off guard," she added. "They don't quite know how to attack her or, you know, what her ticket is going to end up being."

Translation: “This Kool-Aid is delicious!”

Let’s begin by stipulating that anything can happen. Fifteen weeks is a long time in modern election politics, and the nation is closely divided between the two parties. The election will probably be decided by a half-dozen “battleground” states, where neither candidate is likely to win by more than three or four points. It’s entirely possible that events between now and November may favor the Democrats, and therefore we can’t rule out the possibility that Kamala Harris wins. However …

In terms of probability? What is most likely to happen? That’s easy:

History shows that Kamala’s popularity tends to wane as her exposure increases. The more attention people pay to her, the less they like her. After the first Democratic primary debate in 2019, Kamala was the New “It” Girl, surging to second place (at 17%) in the CNN poll, behind Biden (at 22%), and ahead of Elizabeth Warren (15%) and Bernie Sanders (14%). But then came the second debate, where Harris got carved up by Tulsi Gabbard, and the bottom fell out. The next CNN poll had her at just 5%, in a tie for fourth place with Pete Buttigieg. She quit the race barely three months later, before a single primary vote was cast. To know her is to hate her: “Kamala Harris’ office has had a staggering 91.5 percent turnover rate since she became vice president.”

Nobody on MSNBC is going to be that blunt about it, but Kamala’s history is sufficiently well-known that one reason many Democrats wanted Biden to hang on is because they knew she was a somewhat dubious prospect as a candidate. It’s the job of a party hack like Jennifer Palmieri to say Democrats are “enthusiastic” and “excited” about having Kamala as their candidate, but do the actual journalists at MSNBC believe this? Have they drunk the partisan Kool-Aid, too?

Speaking of Kool-Aid, how much of it do you have to drink before you buy the claim by the media that Kamala Harris was never Biden’s “border czar”? Drew Holden has the receipts — all the headlines from the same media outlets referencing Harris’s assignment from Biden to deal with the “root causes” of immigration, including Axios actually using the phrase “border czar” for Harris, despite the same organization now claiming this is a deceptive “Republican attack.” The media’s manufacture of unreality goes beyond the airbrushing of history and the erasure of past events, however. They also produce non-existent threats to haunt the present and future.

Notice the phrase from Harris’s speech — “We want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books” — to the teachers union that the New York Times chose to highlight, as if this is a brilliant “gotcha” line. Is it true that “we” (Democrats) want to “ban assault weapons”? By this phrase, of course, Harris refers to the most commonly sold type of semiautomatic rifle, the AR-15 style; more than 20 million Americans own an AR-15-style rifle. Would the “ban” that Haris says “we want” involve confiscating these millions of rifles from their owners? If not, it’s not much of a “ban,” is it? But what about her claim that “they” (Republicans) “want to ban books”? Addressing his comment to American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, the eminent conservative blogger Ace of Spades demolished that deceptive rhetoric:

Which books are you opposed to "banning," Randi?

You never want to say. Why is that?

Is it because the only books being banned are gay pornography?

And they're not banned. You can still buy them. Parents, if they hate their children, could buy them for their children to groom them.

All that's happening is that people are saying that gay porno blowjob books are not appropriate for a elementary or middle school library, and this nation's degenerate pervert librarians need to stop buying these books with taxpayer dollars.

Rough language, but true: A book is not “banned” merely because it isn’t in the public school library. Jack Posobiec’s new book Unhumans (Amazon Affiliate Link) probably isn’t going to be stocked in your child’s school library, but it’s not “banned.” And all the “gay porno blowjob books,” as Ace calls them, are not banned, either. You can go on Amazon and buy all those books right now. What you can’t do (because you’d almost certainly be arrested if you did) is go around handing out books like that to other people’s children. That’s what Randi Weingarten wants to do, at taxpayer expense, in the name of “education,” and if that’s what you want to do — distribute pornography to children — then you should vote for Kamala Harris.

Probably you’re against the Weingarten/Harris porno-for-children agenda, which means that you are an “extremist” who wants “to return America to a dark past,” as Kamala told the AFT audience. This is what they’re talking about when they claim that “the cause of American democracy itself” is threatened if Trump gets elected in November. The media eagerly repeat and amplify these claims:

We are supposed to just smile and nod amiably, to accept without question whatever we are told by Approved Media Outlets, and never even wonder if maybe there are some things they’re not telling us. That’s why they have “fact-checkers” constantly monitoring the Internet to make sure that nobody posts an “unfounded rumor” which might undermine or contradict the (apparently fragile) version of reality promoted by Approved Media Outlets, as if the world might collapse into confusion were any doubt permitted to go un-fact-checked.

Just try to stay sane, my friends.