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LIES AND THE LYING LIARS THAT TELL THEM

Right Wing’s ‘Smear Machine’ That Attacked Parkland School Shooting Victims Wins ‘Lie of the Year’ Award

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They called Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas student David Hogg a “crisis actor.”

They said MSD student Emma González was a communist who has ties to Cuba.

They accused her of ripping up the U.S. Constitution.

They claimed Hogg was actually brought in from California and wasn’t even at the school that day.

These were all lies.

They lied. Repeatedly. About children who had just suffered a horrific act of violence.

Donald Trump Jr. liked a tweet by a conservative TV show host Graham Ledger that linked to a story by the Gateway Pundit website stating that David Hogg was ‘coached on anti-Trump lines.'”

So says PolitiFact, the Pulitzer prize winning fact-checking group created by the Tampa Bay Times (it’s now owned by the Poynter Institute). PolitiFact has just named the “smear machine” that attacked the Parkland Students its “Lie of the Year.”

They write: “the lies against the Parkland students in the wake of unspeakable tragedy were the most significant falsehoods of 2018. We name them PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year.”

PolitiFact attempts to claim the push back to these lies was “bipartisan,” offering up remarks from Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio was proof, but that’s at best a stretch.

The lies, the attacks, the smears all came from the right and the far right.

In the month after the Valentine’s Day massacre at Parkland that stole 17 lives and forever changed those who survived, The Guardian published a report: “How rightwingers have attacked Parkland students with lies, hoaxes and smears.”

A sampling:

Alt-right social media company Gab was one of many that disseminated a doctored animation of Gonzalez in which she falsely appeared to be tearing up the US constitution. Cartoonist and Trump sycophant Ben Garrison depicted Hogg as an assault rifle, wielded by CNN, and loaded with Marxism. Breitbart re-published a round of tweets accusing Hogg of throwing a Nazi salute.

On Front Page – an outlet led by David Horowitz, whose main stock in trade is virulent Islamophobia – Bruce Thornton decried Hogg’s “profanity laced tantrums” and reduced him and his fellow students to political “shock troops” being manipulated by a progressive “ideology of melodrama and moral exhibitionism”.

Alex Jones thought it wise to continue his dispute with Hogg over whether chemical additives in water really turn frogs gay. The website WND simply called him “Vile Hogg”.

Image by Phil Roeder via Flickr and a CC license

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LIES AND THE LYING LIARS THAT TELL THEM

Marco Rubio: ‘Not a Crime’ to Break Federal Law by Taking Top Secret National Security Documents From the White House

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In a rare Fox News moment, host Bret Baier reported that many are concerned about the lack of Republican “alarm” over Donald Trump absconding with at least 15 cartons of documents and other items, some of which were classified, or even “top secret” classified, and storing them in his suite at Mar-a-Lago, compared to the massive coverage the media gave the Hillary Clinton email story.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is the Ranking Member on the Intelligence Committee, and also serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, responded by saying “it’s not a crime” to break federal law – the Presidential Records Act of 1978, in this case, by removing the documents or flushing them down the toilet.

It seems odd that the Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee would be unaware of federal laws about retention of presidential documents, especially handling of classified and top-secret national security documents.

The Florida Republican also suggested Trump had turned over all the missing documents, which is false.

Rubio began by claiming he doesn’t know what’s true because “they” have made up so many stories about Trump “over the years.”

He goes on to suggest, apparently erroneously, that Hillary Clinton’s treatment of classified documents was pleaded in a federal court case.

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LIES AND THE LYING LIARS THAT TELL THEM

‘That’s a Lie!’ MSNBC’s Hayes Destroys Kayleigh McEnany for Blatantly False Claim About Trump’s COVID Tests

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MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Thursday night played a clip of then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany discussing former President Donald Trump’s timeline of COVID-19 test results after he was diagnosed with the virus last year.

Hayes played the clip during a report on former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s claim that Trump tested positive for COVID-19 on Sept. 26, prior to his first debate with President Joe Biden.

“All of the evidence points to Trump having COVID, knowing he had COVID, and spending a week spreading it around while covering it up and refusing to admit he’s sick,” Hayes concluded.

READ MORE: Trump is ‘furious’ at Mark Meadows for spilling the beans about his illness last year

He went on to recall that after Trump finally announced he had COVID on Oct. 2, White House officials were “so sketchy” about when he had last tested negative — and then he played the clip of McEnany “trying to evade this simple question” on Oct. 4.

McEnany was responding to a reporter’s question about whether Trump had been tested prior to the debate on Sept. 29, or before a fundraiser in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Oct. 1.

“I’m not going to give you a detailed readout with timestamps of every time the president is tested,” McEnany said. “He’s tested regularly, and the first positive test he received was after his return from Bedminster.”

“Again, I’m not giving a detailed readout of his testing, but it’s safe to say his first positive test was upon return, or at least after, Bedminster, that trip,” McEnany added.

“That’s a lie. We now know, that’s a lie. That clip there is a lie,” Hayes said, recalling that at the time, “the squirrelliness around this was hard to ignore.”

PBS News White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor agreed, saying, “When I watched Kayleigh lie there, it just reminded me of all the different times she lied, so many times, from the podium, from the White House lawn, from the stakeout location where she is in that clip.”

“It really just underscores that this was an administration that was never really playing it straight with the American people,” Alcindor said.

Watch below.

 

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LIES AND THE LYING LIARS THAT TELL THEM

Trump Issues Stunningly False Statement Criticizing Biden for ‘Attack’ on US Oil Reserves

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Donald Trump, the disgraced, former president who is reportedly planning a third campaign, on Tuesday released an exceptionally false statement criticizing President Joe Biden for taking action to combat increasing gas and home heating oil prices.

President Biden Tuesday morning announced he has authorized 50 million barrels of oil to be sold from the U.S. Strategic Oil Reserves, a move that should help lower oil and gas prices that have risen because of OPEC+ policies. Biden is making the move in conjunction with similar moves by five other countries: China, India, Japan, South Korea and the U.K.

“We expect the industry to be passing through these savings to consumers as quickly as possible,” a White House official said, as The Wall Street Journal reports.

“The president stands ready to take additional action, if needed, and is prepared to use his full authorities working in coordination with the rest of the world to maintain adequate supply as we exit the pandemic,” the White House added.

Trump, in a statement released to the press, outright lied about Biden’s move, and about his own performance and that of other U.S. Presidents.

“For decades our Country’s very important Strategic Oil Reserves were low or virtually empty in that no President wanted to pay the price of filling them up. I filled them up three years ago, right to the top, when oil prices were very low. Those reserves are meant to be used for serious emergencies, like war, and nothing else,” Trump falsely claimed.

As The New York Times’ Peter Baker notes, the Strategic Oil Reserves (technically the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,) were far from empty when Trump took office, but they were far less full when he left:

That’s not the only lie Trump told.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is authorized to hold up to 714 million barrels (in 2009 it was 727 million barrels), so they were nearly full when Trump took office. He also exposed his ignorance about how the federal government “buys” the oil. The oil is effectively traded to the government as payment (royalties) for drilling leases so presidents not wanting to “pay the price of filling them up” is false as well.

Here’s a graph from the U.S. government showing how many barrels of oil are in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves, starting in 1980. At no time were they “low or virtually empty,” not ever. The chart is highlighted to indicate the day Trump was sworn in to office:

The Reserves have been tapped about 20 times since they were first created in 1975, including to reduce the deficit in 1996 and 1997, in 2011 during the Arab Spring, and as loans to oil companies.

 

 

 

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