Saturday, February 4, 2017

In the Trump Era, truthful news is replaced by fashionable lies



The Washington Post (and lots of others) report that the entire senior staff at the State Department resigned rather than serve under Trump. The reality? Four political appointees whose resignations had been requested by President Obama, as is customary at a change of administration, had their resignations accepted.

One of them, Patrick Kennedy, was involved in the Clinton email scandal, but will be allowed to retire...

This fashionable lie was quickly debunked by practically everyone, including Vox. Here's more:
The Trump administration was muzzling the EPA and USDA. The reality? It was, again, a customary step at the change of administration.Science, among others, debunked this fashionable lie.

The famous Muslim ban. Reality? It was a (temporary) ban on entrance from seven countries that had been identified as being so chaotic as to make effective vetting difficult -- under a law passed in 2015, modified in 2016, and signed by Obama (remember him?). The law itself had been supported by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) -- who was in tears this weekend after it was implemented.Look folks: if the executive order blocks Christians from Iraq, but it doesn't block a Muslim cleric from Mecca, where only Muslims are permitted to enter by law, it just isn't a Muslim ban. "It's a Muslim ban" is just another fashionable lie.

Trump excluded countries from the "Muslim ban" (see above) that he has business dealings with. Reality? Let's look back at that same law: the list of countries comes from 2016. I think it's pretty clever of Trump to arrange for the Obama administration to craft that list to give Trump's businesses an advantage, don't you? But lying about Trump's executive orders has become fashionable....