The Hoax Hoax

It’s 2020. By now you should recognize the characteristics of media fraud. There are various incarnations, endlessly redeployed:

  • There’s the “sources say” fraud, AKA “Just trust me, bro.”
  • There’s the “Even Republican X says,” where “Republican X” is some #NeverTrump fossil that’s been openly calling for the destruction of the Republican Party for years for daring to ignore their vast inside-the-beltway wisdom.
  • There’s the “ignore the forest to focus on one tiny tree” play, like ignore record job numbers to spend endless hours talking about a porn star lawsuit.
  • Etc. This is far from an exhaustive list.
  • Then there’s the classic “out of context quote” that Democrats and media operatives (but I repeat myself) use to say “Look, Trump just said something stupid!” The difficulty here is that sometimes Trump does sometimes say something stupid, a side-effect of his shit-talking/persuasion bracketing style of speech. (Once again, see Scott Adams’ extensive discussion of Trumps’ persuasive techniques, as well as “seriously not literally.”) But nine times out of ten, it’s because the Democratic Media Complex has twisted something he said or omitted something from the quote. (Remember the whole “Trump called all illegal aliens rapists” controversy when it was clear that he was talking about MS-13?)

    The example de jure from the most recent media spin cycle is the “calling coronavirus a hoax” hoax:

    We’ll use Dana Milbank as the example here, just because he’s the first one I saw using it this morning.

    Today Ann Althouse has a nice dissection of the deception:

    Trump is clearly not calling the virus a hoax. What he’s calling a hoax is the political talking point that Trump has been failing to protect the country from the virus!

    Now, Politico is pushing a hoax hoax — it’s putting out a false story about what Trump called a hoax.

    Trump is certainly not “rall[ying] his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax.'” Trump is rallying his base to believe that he’s doing an excellent job of handling the problem and to see the criticism of his work as a hoax. He’s not saying they should “treat” the virus as a hoax!

    AND: Here’s my transcription, with boldface for what Politico left out:

    Now, the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say: ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They’re going: ‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. The can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. There’s 15 people in this massive country, and because of the fact that we went early. We went early. We could’ve had a lot more than that. We’re doing great. Our country is doing so great. We are so unified. We are so unified. The Republican Party has never been more unified than it is now.

    So once again, we have a “bombshell” manufactured to hurt President Trump that turns out to be a giant dud. You would think they would get tired of repeatedly punching themselves in the dick, but they never seem to…

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