There are many lies told about Donald Trump (the Russia hoax, drinking bleach, the “bloodbath,” etc.). Here are three big ones I’m sure readers have heard and will continue to hear from the Democrats and Joe Biden (depending on how long this propped-up husk of a crooked and compromised politician is allowed to stay atop the Democratic Party ticket).
Big Lie #1: Trump said that in his second term he will be dictator from day one.
In a December 2023 interview, in Iowa, Sean Hannity asked Trump if he “in any way” had “any plans whatsoever, if reelected president, to abuse power, to break the law to use the government to go after people.” Trump’s response was golden. “You mean like they’re using right now?” he replied. The fact of the matter is that it’s the Democrats who are behaving like authoritarians, using lawfare and extralegal means to eliminate Biden’s chief rival in the 2024 election.
Hannity pressed Trump: “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.” “Except for day one,” Trump responded. Not “On day one,” but “Except for day one.” What did the president mean by this? He told you: “I love this guy. He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”
In a joking manner, Trump told the audience about sweeping executive orders to reverse Biden’s disastrous energy and open borders policies to be handed down on his first day in office. Yet Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez issued a statement twisting Trump’s words: “Donald Trump has been telling us exactly what he will do if he’s reelected and tonight he said he will be a dictator on day one. Americans should believe him.” The media put Rodriguez’s words in the echo chamber as if Trump had said them.
Big Lie #2: Trump defends white nationalist protesters at Charlottesville, NC, referring to them as “very fine people.”
The “very fine people” quote was wrenched out of context from a press conference by Trump in August 2017 after the Unite the Right rally protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The protestors were met by Antifa who provoked a riot. “What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right?” Trump said. “Do they have any semblance of guilt?” He then said, “I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me.”
Both statements are true. Trump has condemned white supremacists more than any president in history—far more. Ever time he is asked to denounce white supremacy he has. Second, not everybody protesting the removal of the statue were neo-Nazis. I have a lot of friends and relatives who oppose removing those statutes. They aren’t neo-Nazis. The assumption that they are is a continuation of progressive contempt for working class people crystalized by Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment.
What did Trump actually say? “You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists,” Trump said. “The press has treated them absolutely unfairly.” He then added, “You also had some very fine people on both sides.”
Big Lie #3: Trump incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021.
At a permitted event on the Ellipse, Trump said in defense of democratic-republican principles of governance, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” It’s disingenuous to construe fighting like hell for one’s country as a call for insurrection. However, the media ignored these words by Trump, which were said at the same event: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Right before this he told the crowd the purpose of the assembly: “We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”
Remember the protections of the First Amendment, which include, “the freedom of speech [and] the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Trump and his supporters had every right to assemble and question how a presidential candidate, who won more than 74 million votes in 2020, nearly twelve million more than he won in 2016, could lose to an obviously feeble old man who hardly campaigned. Without going through all the evidence of rigging and fraud (although I have, for example in The Hustle and its Cover: Burgeoning Evidence of Massive Fraud in the 2020 Election), the mere “fact” that Biden won more than 81 million votes—fifteen million more than Hillary Clinton—brings the result into serious question.
To be sure, a small group of protestors broke off from the crowd and, provoked by the police, rioted at the Capitol. But even here the corporate state and its propaganda arm lied about Trump’s actions. Trump tweeted to protesters to respect law enforcement and to remain peaceful. “No violence,” he wrote. In any earlier video he told the protestors “to go home now.” “We have to have peace,” he said. “We have to have law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt.” He said a lot more. Check it out:
Twitter removed three of Trump’s tweets, including his call for peace and law and order. Pre-Musk Twitter said the tweets were “severe violations of our Civil Integrity policy.” Think about that. Trump’s calls to defuse the situation were removed but Twitter as if Twitter wanted the riot to continue. When Musk assumed ownership of Twitter, now X, he restored Trump’s account so users could see for themselves what Trump actually said. Facebook also removed the video and deplatformed the president. Trump remains banned on Facebook.
There was no insurrection. In fact, none of those imprisoned for January 6 was even charged with insurrection. It was a police riot. Moreover, as the Supreme Court determined this session that a former Pennsylvania police officer who participated in the riot cannot be charged with obstructing an official proceeding unless a lower court rules otherwise. At the core of the case was the misapplication of a subsection of an early 2000s obstruction law. “To prove a violation of Section 1512(c)(2), the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or as we earlier explained, other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so,” Justice John Roberts wrote. (He was joined by five other justices, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivering a concurring opinion.) The ruling casts doubt on the cases of potentially hundreds of January 6 defendants, as well as part of Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment alleging that former President Donald Trump schemed to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Far more significant than the January 6 riot was the months of violent riots through the summer and fall of 2020—riots encouraged by the Democratic Party. Antifa and BLM burned churches and other structures, overturned police cars, intimidate people in their houses and businesses, and killed more than two dozen people and injured scores more. They even attempted to invade the White House. (See Suppressing the Rabble: Portraying Conservatism and Republicanism as Fringe and Dangerous; Antifa, the Proud Boys, and the Relative Scale of Violent Extremism.)
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On a related note, it’s a wonderful thing to see the French working class rising against the transnational corporate destruction of Western civilization and the international liberal order. Le Pen’s support was in evidence in nearly every city, town, and village in France. People power is beautiful thing, especially coming with the showing of the populists in the European elections. The nationalists (Union de l’extrême droite, a descriptor the French Ministry of the Interior manufactured for the 2024 French legislative election to denote candidates from the Republicans party, or Les Républicains, endorsed by the National Rally, or Rassemblement National) won a plurality of both men and women and a majority (57 percent) of blue collar workers, as well as a plurality of white collar workers. The left wing (Nouveau Front populaire) won a plurality of those identified as belonging to the professional-managerial stratum. The French left today constitutes the functionaries of the corporate state. This is true of the left throughout the transatlantic space. The Western left no longer represents the working people. It represents the New Fascism.
Emmanuel Macron, the pawn of globalists, came in third. That was also a beautiful thing to behold. The so-called “left,” which has become the propaganda label of the credentialed class (not only in France, but throughout the corporatist West), the functionaries for the corporate state, i.e., the neoliberal/neoconservative consensus, came in second. Corporate forces are going to try very hard to prevent the populist ascension to power. The people will need to work even harder to counteract them. Populism hasn’t won yet, but the signs are hopeful. This is a transatlantic phenomenon that promises the restoration of democratic-republic principles of governance and the strengthening of the nation-state system. After Trump’s crushing victory in the debate the other night, and the overturning of the Chevron deference by the Supreme Court, which begins the end of the administrative state, the future of America looks promising, as well.
The technocratic apparatus is in full panic. Its subaltern and rank-and-file forces are out in force. X is inundated with the madness. It’s unfortunate to see the simple-minded reduction of working class populism to labels assigned by corporate state propaganda fear merchants. One always hopes the consumers of mass media will use their brains in critical and independent ways that analyze historical circumstances and social situations without partisan ideological tangling of meanings. But, as we know all too well, a great many people, including a great many who identify with the political left, think in limited categories that produce ignorant opinion. I think for some of them, the biggest impediment to clear thinking is an obnoxious, indeed even pathological sense of self-importance.
freedom and reason 