Brunswick Beacon, 09.22.22
The Washington Post says Trump told 30,573 lies while president: “The tsunami of untruths kept rising the longer he served as president and became increasingly unmoored from the truth.” You can’t drink from a firehose, or find the drop of truth in a flood of lies.
The Soviets developed this “firehose of falsehoods” propaganda technique. Putin used it before invading Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine. Trump’s Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, recently indicted for fraud, explained Trump’s approach: “Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” Bannon added: “Trump would say anything, he would lie about anything…to win whatever exchange he [is] having at that moment.”
Try googling this recent example: “Dr. Oz 9/4/2022 Pennsylvania rally transcript.” Trump attacks the FBI for searching Mar-a-Lago. At the 14-minute mark, he says “they go in and take documents, dump them on the floor, stage a photo shoot, and pretend that I had done it, like I had put them all over the floor…These are very dishonest, sick people.”
But the government never said Trump put documents on the floor. You can read what it said by googling “DOJ's response to Trump's special master request.” Page 13 clearly says it’s a “redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the ‘45 office.’” Trump lied and demonized law enforcement, calling them “vicious monsters,” to “win the moment.”
After Trump targeted the FBI, a gunman assaulted its Cincinnati office, fired on police, and was killed. Threats were made to assassinate Attorney General Garland, “kill all feds”, wage “civil war” and “armed rebellion.” MAGA-Republican congress members threatened to “defund” and “destroy” the FBI!
Trump selfishly lied without regard for law enforcement officers simply doing their jobs. He and his MAGA-Republican enablers are a clear and present danger to democracy.
Laura McGann
Leland