- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
- Messages
- 21,358
- Reaction score
- 25,097
- Location
- Pacific NW
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
Short version: Trump and Company lie a lot. COURTESY LINK HERE
Situation normal in the Trump White House. Oh, and this is important:
Right out of the authoritarian playbook. Here's what I mean:
He Plagiarized and Promoted Falsehoods. The White House Embraces Him.
The day after President Trump announced the federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, the White House invited the podcaster Benny Johnson to sit in what is called the new media seat at the administration’s press briefing. The privilege includes being called on first by the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.
Mr. Johnson took the opportunity at the briefing to recount what he claimed was his own experience with crime in the nation’s capital in recent years. He said that he had recorded murders on a camera outside his home, and that his “house was set ablaze in an arson.” Any claims that Washington wasn’t dangerous, he said, were “lies.”
In fact, police records show, nobody has been murdered since at least 2017 on the block where Mr. Johnson lived in Washington. And his home was not burned, though his next-door neighbor’s house was “intentionally set” on fire, according to the city’s fire department. Mr. Johnson left Washington permanently in 2021.
Situation normal in the Trump White House. Oh, and this is important:
Since taking office, Mr. Trump and his aides have routinely excoriated traditional news outlets for what they call misleading and dishonest reporting about the administration. But the White House has had no such reservations about right-leaning influencers, figures such as Mr. Johnson, who have a documented history of playing fast and loose with the facts.
Journalists get removed from the WH press room for reporting the truth, while others get special access for lying for them.
Right out of the authoritarian playbook. Here's what I mean:
Even among that group, Mr. Johnson, who has a large following on YouTube, a popular daily podcast and a large X account, stands out for his checkered journalistic record. Over the years, he has been fired from one job for plagiarism and suspended from another for publishing an article containing an unfounded conspiracy theory about Barack Obama that was later retracted. He has been accused of repeatedly propagating false election information and, like Mr. Pool, produced videos that had been secretly funded, via a seemingly legitimate media firm, by Kremlin operatives.
Nonetheless, Mr. Johnson has repeatedly been given access to high-level Trump administration officials and invited to take place in numerous events, including sitting on a Justice Department panel titled “Forum on Big Tech Censorship” a few months ago and occupying the coveted new media seat on an important day for the White House.
