For most honest Americans, truth and lie are fairly easy to differentiate. But to our nation’s propaganda media, the terms are completely subjective.
Case in point: the media’s unhinged response to Donald Trump’s Thursday critique of Liz Cheney’s obsession with military adventurism. While speaking with Tucker Carlson in Arizona, the former president rebuked Cheney for her foreign policy and the threat it poses to the U.S. and its service members.
“[Liz Cheney] always wanted to go to war with people. I didn’t want to go to war. She wanted to stay in Syria; I took them out. She wanted to stay in Iraq; I took them out. I mean, if it were up to her, we’d be in 50 different countries,” Trump said. “[N]umber one, it’s really dangerous; number two, a lot of people get killed; and number three …, it’s very, very expensive. That’s why we owe $36 trillion.”
Later in the conversation, Trump followed up with comments that have since been hijacked by corporate media: “[Cheney is] a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle, standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it … when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy,’” he said.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand Trump’s commentary. He was clearly saying that neocons like Cheney are all for risking the lives of U.S. service members when they themselves are not the ones taking fire on the front lines.
But as is often the case with our ethically bankrupt media, anything Trump says is automatically open for interpretation and outright distortion. In this case, the propaganda press has taken Trump’s analysis and manipulated it into something far removed from its true meaning.
Within a matter of hours, a media-wide pseudo-scandal was completely fabricated out of thin air.
Countless hack-tastic headlines and lie-filled hot takes deployed by our so-called defenders of “democracy” accused Trump of calling for violence against Cheney.
While the intention of damaging Trump’s electoral prospects heading into Election Day is fairly obvious, the incident presents a perfect case study on how the media acts as a public relations firm operating on behalf of the Democrat Party, and by default, our leftist-run federal government.
Whenever an episode like this arises, in which Trump or another Republican provides analysis or facts the left finds unfavorable, the corporate press immediately twists and takes it out of context to make what was actually said appear “controversial.”
In the case of Trump’s Cheney critique, the media are — on the surface — distracting Americans from the former congresswoman’s destructive foreign policy agenda by deceiving them into believing Trump wants her harmed. But manipulating the public is only the first step in this propaganda scheme. By generating a nonexistent controversy, the press provides fodder for so-called “journalists” and political allies to further the lie.
Kamala Harris played her role in this game while speaking to the press on Friday. The current Vice President and Democrat presidential nominee regurgitated the media’s false narrative about Trump’s remarks and accused the former president of using “violent rhetoric.”
In their most sinister form, however, the media’s pseudo-events are weaponized to destroy not only non-leftist’s reputations but also their livelihoods. Not even 24 hours after Trump issued his remarks, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, announced in a statement that she asked her “criminal division chief to start looking at” and “analyzing” the Republican presidential nominee’s commentary to determine “whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws.”
Does this strategy sound familiar? It should. It’s the same playbook that deployed the fabricated Russia collusion hoax to justify the FBI spying on Trump’s 2016 campaign; it’s the same ploy used by Democrats to launch invasive inquiries into every aspect of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s life. In both matters, the government-led probes were based entirely on hoaxes that have since been debunked — but the lies were nonetheless perpetuated and peddled by the press to the benefit of the Democrat Party.
A society whose press operates in such an authoritarian fashion cannot endure. Civil society requires an honest media to report information about its government truthfully and fairly to the people.
Unfortunately, that is not the main concern of America’s corporate press. Our modern media is much more interested in furthering the Democrat agenda. Their subservience to the Marxist cause is as dangerous to our nation as the politicized lawfare they promote.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
