How Trump is trying to mislead the public about the election result

11/30/2020 Business, World



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Trump is Trump. There is nothing new to say about the outgoing president. But there is still a lot to learn about its facilitators. Many people, from Republican officials to Fox News anchors, are helping him undermine democracy by denying the election and attacking reality. Many people are complicit.

People like Maria Bartiromo. Formerly an acclaimed journalist, known around the world for making CEOs tell the truth, now asks Trump to recite lie after lie. His Sunday morning call with Trump on Fox News was his first “interview” since he lost the election, but it wasn’t an actual interview at all. He wasn’t ready to admit he’d lost, and neither was she. He showed delusional weakness. She was an accomplice. And she is far from the only one.

Here’s what Ron Brownstein on CNN Sunday night: As Trump’s conspiracy theory of the “rigged” election “gets more and more fantastic and far-reaching, implicating the Department of Justice, the FBI and Republican governors, the silence of Republicans in Congress – Mitch McConnell in particular, Kevin McCarthy in particular, who are allowing this poison to spread through the American political system – increasingly looks like a modern analog to the silence of Republican Congressional Leaders During the Joe McCarthy Attacks in the Early 1950s “.

Brownstein added: “I think history will have no trouble finding a parallel between Mitch McConnell’s efforts to look the other way and what so many Republican leaders did until Joseph Welch said, at last, sir, ‘Have you no decency?’ “

Trump is backing down

He lost the election almost four weeks ago, but refuses to admit it. Judging by his tweets, he is sinking even further into denial. Bartiromo’s interview was a sign that he is ready to fight in public, an alarming display of weakness that some people interpret as strength. His Thanksgiving question and answer session with reporters was another sign of the same. After placing a call with members of the military, he answered questions for the first time in three weeks, though for the most part he simply diverted and distorted the truth. When he came out, a journalist asked “Is this the language of a dictator?” and another said, “Mr. President, some people say you are denying reality.”

In Sunday’s “Trusted Sources,” author Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, placed Trump’s recent remarks in the context of the information war.
Trump is running a “classic Russian-style disinformation campaign,” known as the “fire hose of falsehood,” he said.

In this propaganda model, “as many stories, conspiracy theories, lies and half-truths as possible are spread, to flood the area with disinformation,” Rauch said. “The goal here is to confuse people, and he’s doing very well at that. This is a classic propaganda tactic. He’s very good at it.”

Rauch pointed out that falsehoods don’t have to be coherent or logical. “It’s about throwing spaghetti against the wall,” he said. “It’s anything and everything. It can be wild. It can be random. It’s to create epistemic confusion and chaos. And that’s what we’re seeing.”

“And that is very difficult for democracies to handle,” he added. “Traditionally, we fix it without doing it. It was unthinkable before Trump that someone would run this kind of disinformation campaign from the White House against the American public. Once it happens, I think the best defense to start with is for the people, at least. many people, to understand what is happening, to realize what is happening here. “

Craig Mazin, the creator of HBO’s “Chernobyl,” reacted to Rauch’s comments repeating one of the most memorable lines from his series: “The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.”

The Murdochs own this

Trumpism is a big part of Fox’s business model. The men who control Fox, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, were evidently pleased enough with Bartiromo’s propaganda, proud enough of his adulation with Trump, that they broadcast his 10 a.m. from the East at 3 pm on Sunday.

Right after, at 4 p.m., news anchor Eric Shawn naturally dismantled what Trump and Bartiromo had just built. (It’s no wonder why Trump keeps attacking Fox’s weekend news anchors.)

Shawn said Trump “doubled down on his claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election despite the fact that local and national election officials, as well as federal and state courts in various states, and in some cases Trump’s campaign attorneys themselves, have said there is no evidence to prove that. ” He added: “Experts say that such claims are simply unsubstantiated falsehoods that are not supported by any fact.”

That’s clear and compelling language from Shawn. So why did Fox broadcast all of Trump’s claims without any real-time tracking? A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to my questions.

Trump said Hannity ‘gets it’, but …

During the Sunday morning phone conversation with Bartiromo, Trump praised Mark Levin’s show “last night,” even though Saturday’s broadcast was just a rerun of a six-day episode of Levin’s show. He also said “Sean Hannity, he knows it, he gets it. He gets it.” What do you mean? That Hannity thinks Trump won the election?

On Sunday night, Hannity posted a tweet saying that the media helped “get Trump out of office,” which was highlighted primarily by his admission that Trump’s presidency is over. To understand some of the anger and electoral rejection of the extreme right, Take a look at the responses to Hannity’s tweet.
A few days ago I quoted a veteran Fox staff member as saying that “our audience has been absolutely radicalized,” and that’s what a lot of it is about: the audience. Bartiromo’s Sunday morning show has a much larger audience than Fox newscasts later in the day.

Irony is rich

CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy writes: “If you’ve watched Fox News in the past week, you’ve certainly seen a segment or two attacking reporters for throwing alleged ‘softball’ questions at Biden. These segments have dominated Fox talk shows lately. Bartiromo’s ‘interview’ a display of astonishing double standards and loads of hypocrisy. Think of Bartiromo’s ‘interview’ the next time Fox has the nerve to lash out at reporters for questions they ask Biden or members of his next administration. “



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