Tuesday, December 01, 2020

Trump Lies, Trump Grift

National Review, a conservative magazine, has a good example of one of Trump's ridiculous, erroneous, unresearched lies he sent out to his 89 million Twitter followers over the past weekend:

Almost nothing that the Trump team has alleged has withstood the slightest scrutiny. In particular, it’s hard to find much that is remotely true in the president’s Twitter feed these days. It is full of already-debunked claims and crackpot conspiracy theories about Dominion voting systems. Over the weekend, he repeated the charge that 1.8 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were mailed out, yet 2.6 million were ultimately tallied. In a rather elementary error, this compares the number of mail-ballots requested in the primary to the number of ballots counted in the general. A straight apples-to-apples comparison finds that 1.8 million mail-in ballots were requested in the primary and 1.5 million returned, while 3.1 million ballots were requested in the general and 2.6 million returned.

Flawed and dishonest assertions like this pollute the public discourse and mislead good people who make the mistake of believing things said by the president of the United States.
We have well learned by now that Trump is an inveterate liar who isn't the slightest bit embarrassed by being one, like any normal human would, and clearly his supporters don't care if they're lied to either. In fact, they don't seem a whit interested in the truth about much of anything and seem happy to be lied to. Like others, it makes me wonder if they aren't each suffering from some form of mental illness similar to what cult members exhibit. Surely there are some Republicans who are excluded from this pattern and it's the crazies who are getting amplified, but 70 M did vote for Trump, and he sure knows how to take advantage of them with lies like the above, riling them up, with the grift now up to $170 M. None of which going to an "Election Defense Fund," as was advertised. Another lie. 

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