As Ruth Ben-Ghiat says, the wall-to-wall lying we're seeing Trump engage in right now as the election nears is par for the course for authoritarians, who have to control reality for their followers. She says that "Trump’s campaign … is better understoo...

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"The press still does not know how to handle the avalanche of lies that is MAGA’s chief contribution to our national life. ...

Not all lies are created equal. MAGA’s lies are designed to instill suspicion, to corrode tolerance, and to shred our unity as a nation."

~ Mona Charen

#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/4

Not All Lies Are Created Equal

Small lies and big lies shouldn’t be treated the same.

(www.thebulwark.com)

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"The job of the press is not to give the same treatment to both sides—it is to present the truth, or as close an approximation of it as can be ascertained. When one side stretches the truth and the other side seeks to obliterate it, they should not be treated equally."

#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/5

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"The media is applying a vicious double standard here — letting Trump get away scot-free with his salads of meaningless blather while holding Harris to an unrealistic standard of cogency and candor."

~ Robert Reich

#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/6

Double standard?

The media is demanding candid responses from Harris while letting Trump get away with no answers at all

(robertreich.substack.com)

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"The media centering itself as the main story in a presidential campaign where the fate of democracy is in the balance is self-parodic, and self-indicting. It illustrates, and sums up, all the ways in which the press has failed in the Trump era."

~ Noah Berlatsky

#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/7

Kamala Harris doesn’t owe the mainstream press anything

They've failed over and over in the age of Trump.

(www.publicnotice.co)

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"They are cranky because 'their relevance relies on being the sole arbiters of asking the questions.' But in the current media ecosystem, people have lots of options that are not the NYT and Politico. And that makes the NYT and Politico sad. ...

Harris doesn’t have any obligation to help the mainstream media hand the election to Trump again.

#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation #media
/8

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

And as Trump's niece Mary Trump reminds us, his lies are lethal, including for his followers:

"In my first book, Too Much and Never Enough, I wrote:

'If [Donald] can in anyway profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.'

That’s really all we need to know."

#Trump #JDVance #authoritarianism #lies #disinformation
/9

The Bringer of Death

Disinformation and the danger we face

(www.marytrump.org)

[kathylk@universeodon.com]

@wdlindsy

Maybe Mary Trump should be holding her own rallies.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@KathyLK She may be doing that in her own way by blogging, I think.

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@wdlindsy

Somehow interviews with the NYT and other corporate media evolved into gotcha sessions focusing on insipid nonsense, and now they are super cranky because no one wants to sit down with them to be screwed over. They did it to themselves.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@mastodonmigration They did it to themselves seems so right to me. So much of their failure is rooted in colossal arrogance, which is always blinding.

[dave_goldsmith@mastodon.scot]

@wdlindsy

And Trump has been doing this his entire life, even before he entered politics.

Trump's motto, taught to him by Roy Cohn, is: "The whole world is a con, and only suckers play by the rules."

[martinvermeer@fediscience.org]

@wdlindsy So very perceptive.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

Evan Hurst writes,

"Josh Marshall tweeted a screengrab last night from the New York Times, saying, 'This arrangement and editorial gloss may stand for, capture the journalism about the entire campaign.'”

The screengrab is below.

#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #NewYorkTimes #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/10

New York Times Pretty Sure Trump Just Loves Science! Something Real Shifty About Kamala, Though.

This is getting worse, not better.

(www.wonkette.com)

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"We don’t know what kind of malignant sickness is metastasizing throughout the political newsroom at the Times. And we don’t know what’s going to happen on November 5.

But if Kamala Harris loses, the New York Times’s absolute failure to meet the historical moment — not just this year, but ever since 2015 — will be a big part of the story of how the United States of America ended up where it ended up."

#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #NewYorkTimes #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/11

[eberhofer@defcon.social]

@wdlindsy wow - utter dereliction of journalistic duty was my phrase so far.

This is worse - it's, like, prime spreader of propaganda? Or co-conspiracy?

#MoronikaForMorons

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

Mary Trump notes that Washington Post has jumped on Kamala Harris for saying she would like to see Medicare expanded to cover long-term at-home care. WaPo asks where the money will come from.

Mary Trump responds:

"Here’s a question I never hear the corporate media ask: What is the cost of not addressing an issue that affects millions of Americans?"

#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #WashingtonPost #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/12

https://www.marytrump.org/p/what-it-costs-us?

[djhdjh@mastodon.social]

@wdlindsy

maybe they are just too intellectual

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"In the wake of two devastating hurricanes, Helene and Milton, that’s a question we should be asking in context of climate change: What is the cost of failing to address the increasingly dangerous combination of increasing air temperatures, warming waters, and rising sea levels in terms of loss of human life, destruction of property, and the quality of our existence?"

#Trump #KamalaHarris #media #WashingtonPost #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence #Helene #Milton #hurricanes #ClimateChange
/13

[phoenixgee@soc.k512.studio]

@wdlindsy This is like looking at the Pravda pre-1989...

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@PhoenixGee Indeed, it is.