“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”-George Orwell.
For previous entries, click here.
I don’t have time for long posts, so I’m hitting a quick hit or two. On the one hand, I fully recognize that “Trump Lies” is a “Dog Bites Man Story.” On the other hand, it is worth chronicling the occasional blatant example.
Via WWL: Trump touts $10,000 checks for Louisiana data center neighbors. Residents say they got none.
“So, we had a community in Louisiana and they were really, you know, opposed (to the data center) and everything else,” Trump said. “All of a sudden, they got paid $10,000. Everybody living in the community got a check for $10,000, and everybody loved it. They said, ‘Where do we do our next data center?’”
Trump made the comment to former New Orleans journalist Roop Raj during a live interview on Fox2 Detroit.
Emma Wagner, spokesperson for Louisiana Economic Development, the agency that has brokered large data center projects in the state, said she isn’t aware of any direct payments to residents living near those projects.
“If there were $10,000 payments, I’d be shouting it from the rooftops,” she said.
The frustrating thing about this is that since the press takes the “view from nowhere” approach, they treat the claim as valid to some degree. Sure, the story is more or less debunked, but the words like “true,” “truth,” and “lie” are nowhere to be found.
Trump is just making stuff up, and in a way that sounds like a material benefit to ordinary citizens for supporting his policies, and not in some indirect way (e.g., positive economic growth) but rather an Oprah-style: “You get a check, and you get a check!”
It is gross and unhealthy for our democracy, and it is frustrating that, a decade into Trump’s nonsense, the press does not know how to deal with him.
It is amazing how much nonsense is accepted simply because the President said it.
