As you know, Politifact announced their “Lie of the Year” yesterday, and emphasized that the lie was so outrageous that there was unanimity among their staff about its particular outrageousness.
“They are eating the dogs in Springfield.” The lie was so outrageous that you could practically feel the tears of rage and empathy for Haitian migrants dripping onto the keyboards of the fact-checkers.
In a way, you can sympathize. Trump was able to refocus the country on the migrant crisis rather than the phony JOY! that the Pravda Media and Kamala Harris were trying to sell us. If I were one of the partisans at Politifact, I would be outraged, too. Despite the media and many observers thinking that Trump lost ground during the debate, it turns out that the “eating the pets” meme was the only memorable part of it, and Trump clearly won that exchange.
Of course, the Springfield Haitian pet massacre wasn’t the lie of the year, except in the eyes of disappointed Democrats who thought they would be able to keep ruining our country. The biggest, most consequential lie is one that the Pravda Media invested a lot of time, energy, money, and sweat in propagating: that Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack.”
Hey, I found an actual lie for you https://t.co/umLl20BSBM
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 17, 2024
For years the media has been hiding the fact that the president is, for most purposes, a walking dead man. The man with his finger on the nuclear button and who is in charge of keeping our government functioning has been a vegetable, and the establishment liked it that way and wanted him to continue being in the Oval Office for another four years.
Of course, just as the “eating the pets” “lie” was so awful for them because it focused attention back where it belonged, the “sharp as a tack” line wasn’t a “lie” because it served their purpose, at least until it collapsed before our very eyes on June 27th.
A president with a “vacant, open to rent” sign on his forehead was an advantage for the transnational elite. Biden’s will, for the most part, was not an obstacle to their own, although every once in a while the old man went off script. But with the right amount of tapioca pudding and cash funneled to Hunter Joe was a useful prop for the technocrats who really ran things.
To manage Biden’s limitations, White House aides controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied the president has declined. https://t.co/g8gXnymImR
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 19, 2024
Here are a few handpicked snippets from the story, via Richard Hanania:
Some highlights:
“At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden’s team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president’s fading warble.”
“Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.”
“If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. ‘He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,’ the former aide recalled the official saying.”
“At some events, the Biden campaign printed the pre-approved questions on notecards and then gave donors the cards to read the questions. Even with all these steps, Biden made flubs, which confounded the donors who knew that Biden had the questions ahead of time.”
The day after Politifact’s ridiculous “Lie of the Year” piece, the Wall Street Journal has its own outlining how the insiders at the White House worked tirelessly to hide Joe Biden’s decline. It is story in the “now it can be told” style, which brings up the obvious: isn’t it the job of the media to tell us these things when they matter, and not just after it no longer does?
If you said this before June 2024 you’d get accused of peddling “misinformation.” Like there literally was an entirely new category of misinformation invented (“cheapfakes”) concerning videos of Biden’s decline. https://t.co/A1OW5YeOQr
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 19, 2024
Not anymore, at least as they see it. As part of the apparatus of governing, the media treats ordinary Americans as problems to be managed, not citizens who have the final say in how the country is run.
I suspect most of you remember the allegations from the White House that videos showing Biden behaving erratically were “cheap fakes.”
The media rushed to repeat this claim. Look at the extent @nytimes went to say you didn’t see anything and that Biden was fine. pic.twitter.com/DFiFC6w7ZG
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) July 10, 2024
Just look at this headline from @AP.
And it only gets worse from there.
Again, your lyin eyes are the problem. Not Biden. Allegedly. pic.twitter.com/9Hs5I0WKCt
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) July 10, 2024
So in their view, “sharp as a tack” wasn’t a lie, but a Narrative™, and the right narratives are good because they get people to believe what is necessary to make them swallow what the elite is feeding us: a s**t sandwich.
Read the full article here