Originally Posted by
Frank Apisa
It involves an accusation (LIE) (and the subject of this thread) from Jim Risch, from Idaho, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee…during his opening question to Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Here is an excerpt. I am told I should not post the entire article due to forum copyright rules.
After yet another back-and-forth on the matter, Blinken finally told the senator: “I really don’t know what you are referring to.”
There’s good reason for that: It didn’t happen.
The episode is worth unpacking because it shows, in miniature, how misinformation infects the Republican Party, rapidly spreads through partisan media and contaminates elected GOP leaders — who amplify and defend the falsehood, even when it’s shown to be wrong. This is how lies are born.
(In this case, it wasn’t even a useful lie. By making it his lead-off attack, Risch distracted attention from the Biden administration’s botched pullout from Afghanistan, a serious matter. Instead, Risch used the forum to portray Biden as senile, based on rubbish.)
The story begins with the White House’s Monday press schedule, which announced that Biden would receive a wildfire briefing in Boise. The press coverage was listed as “out-of-town pool spray at the top.” In English, this means that a group of the traveling White House press corps is admitted to the event at the beginning and then brought out after journalists get some video and audio. It’s a routine practice presidents have used for decades. And that’s exactly what happened Monday. According to the pool report, the group was escorted in at 12:08 p.m. for the start of the briefing and “escorted out at roughly 12:35” — a relatively long spray.
That would have been the end of the matter, except that somebody in the research department at the RNC, watching the White House’s livestream, decided that something nefarious had happened. “White House feed cuts out as Biden starts to ask a question,” the RNC tweeted.
Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, crediting the RNC for the scoop, published an article under the headline, “White House livestream cuts Biden mid-sentence as he goes off script.”
“An official White House livestream of President Biden’s remarks was abruptly cut off mid-sentence on Monday,” it began, linking Monday’s “incident” to White House officials’ “fear he’ll veer wildly off-message.”
All that was left was for Risch to trumpet the fabrication — and then to demand to know why Blinken was “unaware this is actually happening.”
Had Risch been duped, or was he deliberately parroting disinformation? I explained to Risch’s aides what had actually happened and asked whether there would be a clarification. There would not be. “Who cut off the president? Please advise,” repeated Risch spokeswoman Suzanne Wrasse.
So Risch knows the facts but perpetuates the fiction. If only somebody could “press the button” and cut off the GOP lie machine before it destroys us all.
Bookmarks