Trump revels in fake news and phony claims - By Jennifer Rubin

[DonViejo]

President-elect Donald Trump’s apologists, sensitive to the charge that their candidate wallows in conspiracy theories, misinformation and out-and-out lies, like to play the moral equivalency game. (Yes, conservatives used to abhor moral equivalence games, but too many prefer Trump’s postmodernist perspective.) Other presidents lie. The mainstream media says things that are not true. Hillary Clinton lied.

It would be hard to find a politician who didn’t lie, but presidents, governors and members of Congress generally try to stay in the ballpark of the truth. They will parse and distract, but they feel queasy about a direct lie. Sometimes they engage in wishful thinking or false choices. But here is what is different about Trump: He doesn’t try to get it right. He doesn’t assume that people care about the truth or that the truth is important. He will repeat blatant untruths (e.g. Arab Americans celebrated after 9/11, President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, he won by a landslide, we don’t know whether Russia hacked us), and then try to bully those who dispute him. Rather than engage on the facts, Trump insults, demeans and bullies the messenger. Critical voices — even “Saturday Night Live” — are, in his view, “losing” business (even when they are not), because for Trump, financial success makes one good and truthful while financial distress means one is bad and a liar.

We are not merely talking about the obvious lies — Sen. Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the JFK conspiracy — but entire issues that are based on fundamental untruths. “No one knows whether climate change is happening.” No, we do. “Immigrants are stealing our jobs.” No, they aren’t. (For the umpteenth time, a report — this one from the St. Louis Federal Reserve — provides factual confirmation that the correlation between unemployment and percentage of foreign-born workers “is weak to nonexistent. For instance, many states experienced declines in their rates of unemployment of nearly 4 percentage points during this period. This coincided with a reduction in the proportion of foreign-born individuals for some states. For others, this coincided with an increase in the proportion of foreign born.”)

A good deal of the right-wing media and virtually all of the Fox Non-News and right-wing talk radio hosts specialize in such phony positions and make-believe concerns, to the point where even “informed” conservatives think trade costs us millions of jobs, climate change is a hoax and immigration is bad for the economy. Trump has now taken the made-up issues, the fake facts and the grand conspiracies all the way to the White House. No president has ever come close to doing this.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/12/12/trump-revels-in-fake-news-and-phony-claims/?utm_term=.9c02be505400&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

[spanone]

1. these are scary times.

[malaise]

2. Off to the greatest page

Perfect

[mcar]

3. I never thought I'd appreciate Rubin

But she's been good this whole cycle.

[Wellstone ruled]

4. We all lose when our Leadership fails to learn from History.

Con Job could care less about History. For that part,doubt if he even cracked a History Book.

[Girard442]

5. Creationists have been making up their own facts for decades.

Looks like the cancer has metastasized into the general culture.

[Initech]

6. The Trump Presidency: Where logic takes a holiday and all facts are meaningless!

[Snarkoleptic]

7. Here's a good read that shows, based on his tweets, where his bizarre worldview is updated-

Guess what...wait for it....Breitbart is at the top of the list.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/trumps-information-universe?utm_term=.vew9LZB5L5#.cwE2byd8b8
?resize=990:660

[Snarkoleptic]

8. Breitbart, which Bannon has called "THE platform for the Alt-Right" a/k/a white nationalists.

Making this video rather chilling...