A Trump Surrogate Drops the Mic: 'There's No Such Thing as Facts'

[n2doc]

BY JACK HOLMES
DEC 1, 2016
287
Is there such a thing as truth? The past 18 months posed this seemingly absurd question. It's not whether something Donald Trump says is true, but about whether anyone even cares. Trump's campaign made a bet that enough voters didn't (or couldn't) tell the difference in a deluge of information, and that bet paid off. Trump won the most important election in decades. His surrogate Scott Nell Hughes explicitly confirmed that whole strategy yesterday.

Hughes joined The Diane Rehm Show to discuss the media's role in covering the Trump administration. If the campaign and transition are anything to go on, Trump's White House will not overly concern itself with reality. The whole segment is here, but another member of the panel, The Atlantic's James Fallows, flagged one particular moment of the conversation. Around the 14-minute mark, Hughes illustrated a defining principle of Trumpism: There's no longer such thing as fact, because anything is true if enough people believe it.

"Well, I think it's also an idea of an opinion. And that's—on one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other half, there are many people that go, 'No, it's true.' And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts—they're not really facts. Everybody has a way—it's kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth, or not truth. There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.

"And so Mr. Trump's tweet, amongst a certain crowd—a large part of the population—are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some—amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies and that there are no facts to back it up."

This is an astounding claim.

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http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/videos/a51152/trump-surrogate-no-such-thing-as-facts/

[spanone]

1. K&R...

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Thanks for the info.

My thoughts from the get go. Propaganda works,and when the Fourth Estate fails we all fail.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

3. K&R

[yellowcanine]

4. And Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia so stop saying it wasn't!

You really cannot make up this crap.

[hedda_foil]

5. Consider how Secretary Amway's determination to get rid of Public Education meshes with unfactness

The history of voucher schools (her favorites), is uniformly dreadful, particularly when private schools are not held accountable for students' achievement (as she achieved in Michigan, iirc).

The effect would be dumbing down the school age population on steroids ... through lack of school accountability n a propaganda and fundamentalist Christian driven factless culture. Of course the children of the top .01% would attend their own private schools to prepare them for their glorious tomorrow.

[0rganism]

6. and that's the closest thing i've seen to "truth" all day

everyone is sequestered in their own media bubble, where "facts" and "truth" are measured not by independent confirmation or expert review, but rather by how closely they conform to one's own world view and how much one stands to gain from them.

in other words, we've become a nation of suckers.

[NRaleighLiberal]

7. I listened to that show - tried to call in for 30 min. I wanted to crawl through the radio

and cut off the mic of that awful Scottie person. The panel to me was utterly clueless - they gave her a gaslight fest - an endless spew time. Diane Rehm at one point had to remind the listening audience that it was her show.

There are two worlds - left and right wing - and the approach is so different - one side assuming reason, logic, truth, decency and civility will work. The other side has learned to keep talking, keep tossing bullshit - and the media has NO IDEA how to control it or deal with it.

I tried to call in and remind them that the country is so utterly divided right now that the old model of the media - using facts - simply won't work - half of the country is now driven by their belief system - and I am sure fueled by fundamental religion - if what they hear doesn't fit with what they are told, or their own world view, it simply is dismissable as not true.

We are in a frightening time - there is simply no way to bridge this gap. And we have no clue as to how to play in it.

[Maru Kitteh]

8. Get used to this. Once again, congrats to the scum of JPR and like-minded RWNJ's

who supported this regime through word or deed, action or inaction. Nice job, assholes.

[tclambert]

9. It's like Sheldon's Mom explained in Season 3 episode 1:

Leonard: We came to apologize again and bring you home. So why don't you pack up your stuff, and we'll head back?
Sheldon: No, this is my home now. Thanks to you, my career is over, and I will spend the rest of my life here in Texas trying to teach evolution to creationists.
Mrs. Cooper: You watch your mouth, Shelly. Everyone's entitled to their opinion.
Sheldon: Evolution isn't an opinion, it's fact.
Mrs. Cooper: And that is your opinion.
Sheldon (to the guys): I forgive you, let's go home.
(Sheldon leaves to pack])
Mrs. Cooper: [smiling] Don't tell me prayer doesn't work.

[Hekate]

22. I love Sheldon's mom. She's really got his number. PS: in case it wasn't obvious...

....she was praying for him to go away. I saw that episode.

[lark]

10. Over, Under, Sideways, Down.

We are fucked every which way there possibly is and I worry we can't recover. there is no reality with this regime, and that is all they are. They have lied, conned, threatened and stolen their way to power and are not going to give it up. By the time their true aims have been realized, we will be done as a country.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

11. The only surprising thing here is that they're admitting it.

It's been clear for years that this was their goal. Because actual facts area almost always against the RW. So, their only recourse was to invalidate the idea of independent, objective facts.

Remember, "not intended to be a factual statement"? Remember Newt Gingrich's "feelings are more important than facts"? This has quite obviously been their strategy. And they've pulled it off.

[colsohlibgal]

12. Sad But True

This post fact era has led to an abomination as president. It is like having a delinquent teenager running the USA.

The hard alt right I get, but the others on his side will regret it sooner rather than later.

[DallasNE]

13. Just What You Would Expect From A Science Denier

There are no facts, only opinions. I guess that means that it is only an opinion that Trump won an electoral victory on November 8th.

[robbob]

14. The amount of water in the glass is a measurable FACT

Whether the glass is half full or half empty is called an OPINION.

Sheesh, idiots....

[Solly Mack]

15. Remember what Rove said?

At the time, journalist Ron Suskind had a meeting with "a senior advisor" to President George W. Bush (later identified as Karl Rove). Here's how he described part of their conversation:

"The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality— judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.

Is the linear progression of that.

[FigTree]

27. Exactly.

And the like. Fuckyouyama and the end of history and so forth.

[LiberalLovinLug]

30. I remember

How this reveals that they begin to throw out more bullshit while the judicious gatekeepers are sifting through the last bullshit statement. They hit you hard and often. So fast that the MSM just can't handle it, the flurry of lies, at least not in the traditional way, of starting by not insulting the politician or spokesperson that said the seemingly outrageous statement by giving them all the benifet of the doubt and not confront them on-air. The next time they have on this 'guest' they may confront him/her about this statement from their last interview, but meanwhile, on this new show, the 'guest' spouts off 2 or 3 new factless accusations, which steels the limelight from that past faux pas. A dizzying leapfrogging from one lie to another with the hapless defanged news hosts one or two lily-pads behind.

Trump's team got a lot of mileage from this strategy that the MSM is ill equipped to handle. They have neglected for years, decades, the art of journalism and shifted to the art of balancing the two parties as some kind of yin and yang of the country. That we NEED both somehow, and they compliment each other, and so must always be handled as equally legitimate. No matter how crazy, factless, loud, rude abusive one side are as 'guests'.

[Solly Mack]

32. Yep. Profit means more to them and that is reflected in the caliber of people who now call

themselves journalists. More hype and TV movie special than anything.

[Rex]

16. Garbage in, garbage out.

The M$M cares about profit, news is secondary.

[malthaussen]

17. Is that a fact? n/t

[TheFrenchRazor]

18. hey, we create our own reality! they live in a world where a lie repeated 3 times becomes truth. nt

[crosinski]

19. "I think the conservative media is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Republican Party ..

"I think the conservative media is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Republican Party on the national level,"

This is from a relevant article that Workingclasszero posted back in August, when everyone thought Dumpass was going to lose.

Here's one of the quotes from the article s/he included in that post"

"One of the chief problems, Sykes said, was that it had become impossible to prove to listeners that Trump was telling falsehoods because over the past several decades, the conservative news media had "basically eliminated any of the referees, the gatekeepers."

I've heard them for the last twenty five years, and instead of everyone wising up as always happened in the past, this time more people than ever have climbed onboard the crazy train. I'm in my sixties, and I gotta say that this is a whole new new kinda skunk we got here. We know it, and conservatives know it too.

There is a way to beat them, though. And we will find it, and we will beat them. It's inevitable, however it might require more than 'dialoging' and 'outreach' and even 'understanding' and 'compassion' at first, if you know what I mean.

Now I'm going to go have a drink or two too many.

[NastyRiffraff]

20. So here we are, 32 years later

in 1984. Where whatever Trump or his surrogates say is "truth." There are no facts, there is no truth, so we might as well just go with Trump.

How the HELL did we get here?

[crosinski]

25. ... and by the way, where are our examples?

There seem to be so many examples in literature and history of how to subvert, but not so many on how to undo the subversion. Why is that so? Or, maybe I'm just wrong. I'd like to hear of some examples of how people have steered a society away from hate and back toward tolerant democracy ... besides WWII I mean.

[Xipe Totec]

21. Reminds me of what the fundamentalist said when he got to the great beyond:

This is not hell.

And it isn't hot.

[crosinski]

24. HA!

Took me about 10 minutes to get that one.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

23. It's not just that so many people watch Fox News.

It's that they get so very much of their "information" from the internet. Worse yet, they were never taught anything that resembles critical thinking in school. Or if they were, their church tells them over and over not to question, just to believe. And so people do.

It doesn't help at all that Hollywood, in both movies and TV, often plays fast and loose with the truth. If, for instance, you've never worked with real crime scene investigators, you'll probably assume that it goes down exactly as you see on the crime and cop shows, and that DNA evidence comes back within 48, maybe 24 hours. Or you'll assume that using those paddles on a patient in cardiac arrest usually revives them.

There are endless examples, and for the various areas I know something about, I'm frequently frustrated to what extent they get it wrong. Something as simple as having a character go out to National Airport in Washington DC to fly somewhere, then show a DC-8 lifting off. It would take no additional effort to instead show one of the kinds of airplanes that really does use DCA.

Okay, so maybe it doesn't matter that much if you aren't fully cognizant of the kind of aircraft that fly in and out of DCA, but if you're ever on a jury it really does matter that you realize crime investigation isn't the easy and straightforward thing shown on TV. I've heard attorneys complain quite bitterly about this.

And most of the time you can't begin to know what they've played fast and loose with, what they've gotten entirely wrong, or what they actually got right. So if you never read a book (especially non fiction) or read a newspaper or a magazine, you haven't a clue how little you actually know. And that means you're far more willing to think there's really no such thing as facts, only opinions.

It's truly frightening.

[underpants]

26. George ?

[barbtries]

28. that's really not new though.

karl rove, enough said

[bucolic_frolic]

29. Billionaire Faux Populist for Tea Party Millionaires

with 75 populist votes in Congress will make no headway against
the corporate lobbyists and free traders.

Trump will accomplish little.

[Kablooie]

31. They just have a quantum mechanical concept of the world.

Facts exist in multiple states until you look at them.
If you choose not to look at them they remain undefined.