President Trump visited U.S. troops in Iraq yesterday and just like everything he does, controversy erupted and a full-blown Dem/mainstream media spin offensive launched.
By late yesterday a Trump spin counteroffensive was lighting up the Twitter night sky.
Predictably, the Dem/mainstream media major spin attacks usually begin with a NY Times or Washington Post breaking story of some alleged big Trump scandal. Most of these big Trump stories start unraveling quickly, where large chunks of the purported facts end up being uncorroborated, leading to corrections and/or major walk-backs.
The problem is the rest of the mainstream media has already run wild repeating that initial NY Times or Washington Post reporting, meaning that initial uncorroborated story has already sprouted wings and flown far beyond the reach of the truth. The spin (lies) has already worked its damage. It is believed, despite the corrections and walk-backs, largely because most of the news organizations and people who retweeted the original spin don’t bother to retract or correct the story.
The big NY Times blockbuster news story yesterday dealt with allegations about Trump’s bone spur diagnosis in 1968, to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War. I don’t subscribe to the NY Times, so here’s CNN reporting:
“Dr. Larry Braunstein, a podiatrist who died in 2007, often told the story of providing Donald Trump with the diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels so he could be exempt from military service, his two daughters — Dr. Elysa Braunstein and Sharon Kessel — told the New York Times.“It was family lore,” Elysa Braunstein told the Times, adding that the story was “something we would always discuss” among family and friends.”
The doctor reportedly rented his office space from Fred Trump. This doctor is dead, his two daughters are self-professed Democrats and they dislike Trump. The NY Times admitted that they had no corroborating evidence to back this story.
They ran it anyway.
President Trump and the First Lady’s trip led to numerous mainstream media spin attacks, some of which the President’s own words deserved criticism.
Timelines, in my mind, suggest that the Dems and #Resist faction within the mainstream media got wind of Trump’s trip, because there were pool reporters on the trip. Presidential trips are morale boosters for the troops and positive media message for any White House. Trump has been under attack in the media for not visiting the troops overseas during his almost two years in office. This trip was an opportunity for President Trump to dig out from under a mounting pile of negative news stories, from his handling of the Syria pull-out announcement by tweet and General Mattis’ resignation.
The Dems/mainstream media ran with this NY Times story based on hearsay about something a dead man supposedly said… The thin vapors of credibility used to bolster this story is “family lore” as told by two women, who despise Trump so much that they were willing to publicly accuse their father of medical malpractice and fraud.
Of course, Trump blathered on in Iraq making numerous flat-out untrue statements, like the 10% pay raise he told troops he got for them. These Trump exaggerations where he just makes up his own “facts” are par for the course in any Trump word salad ramble. For Trump facts are optional.
The more insidious and damaging things Trump said were comments like:
In Iraq, Trump digs in on Syria withdrawal, telling pool of “the generals”: “They said again, recently, can we have more time? I said, ‘Nope.’ You can’t have any more time. You’ve had enough time. We’ve knocked them out. We’ve knocked them silly.”
What
@realDonaldTrump, commander in chief, said visiting troops in Iraq. Military families will also hear his views. “We are spread out all over the world. We are in countries most people haven’t even heard about. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.”
“It is in fact a campaign slogan, that is a campaign item, and it is completely inappropriate for the troops to do this,” Kirby said.Kirby assigned some blame to Trump himself for political activity around the military: “Every time he’s around military audiences, he tends to politicize it, and he brings in complaints and grievances from outside the realm of military policy.”
“The Navy vehicle with a Trump flag disturbed me, by jarring me into thinking about how politicized even our national security services have become. Retired generals signing letters to support political candidates, rally at national party conventions, become vocal spokespeople on campaigns, all feeds to politicize the military. President Trump does have support from many service-members, he even has generals on board. He is the man who said he would order U.S troops to murder ISIS family members to scare ISIS terrorists into submission, yet he was not roundly condemned by Republicans and his big name mouthpieces did damage control glossing over his lawless and immoral strategy, plus constantly pointing out how Hillary was worse.
As with everything about President Trump, his closest supporters will say just about anything to deflect, so with the Left fueling more hysteria and street violence, I worry about Trump’s “strong-man” impulses and overreaction. I worry about people around him and their motivations to foment chaos. I worry about what happens when the military and intelligence agencies lose their moral compass as apolitical professionals dedicated to keeping all Americans safe and defending The Constitution.
Are we at the crisis point where we need to worry about 1984? I hope not. The past two weeks of constant drama, hysterics and extreme partisan fighting do worry me and the Trump flag on a U.S military vehicle was definitely on the wrong road. Let’s hope some principled leaders emerge to guide us back to safer middle ground, eschewing the partisan extremes.”
https://libertybellediaries.com/2017/02/05/definitely-on-the-wrong-road/
Here we are almost two years later and “constant drama, hysterics, and extreme partisan fighting” has become like a static trench war, where neither sides can see a way to make any real advances, so they hunker down in their spin trenches and just lob ineffective smear attacks, resorting frequently to fact-free noxious gas attacks now, in hopes of immobilizing the other’s sides spin attacks. There is no larger strategy to this endless scorched earth spin war.
The combatants, on both sides, are just grinding away their own credibility… and the credibility of America, writ large.
This vicious scorched earth SPIN war should not be what defines America.
libertybelle diaries 