Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   12/31/2019

      The “fake news” parade won’t stop

Looking back a year multiplies the difficulty of the task; rather than last week’s news, things stand out from 2, 5 or 10 months ago. My January 1, 2018 column found a government “shutdown” (involving “nonessential” workers unnoticed by 99 percent of Americans, now remembered by zero percent) screaming in headlines. President Trump determined that the shutdown would have a light burden on we, the people.

Barack Obama had “weaponized” his shutdown for maximum inconvenience of veterans who had planned on visiting the WWII memorial, or weddings depending on access to public lands. Dems may have found the tactic unhelpful to besting Trump in public opinion.

Illegal immigration—with its criminal violence and the inherent anti-American, anti-rule-of-law of so-called “sanctuary” policies—earned some space last January, as I recounted the lessons in “Death by Sanctuary State.” To wit, the death of 1) legal residents at the hands, guns or cars of illegals, and 2) those enticed to try to slip across a river, around a fence or overstay a visa to lawlessly use our resources, or take American jobs. Recent deportations of illegals created job openings for African-Americans, 20% of whom will vote for Trump. Trump has cut illegal immigration; he’s saved lives.

The responsible truthfulness of local news reporting was compared to the agenda-driven, fact-checking-be-damned, Democrats-with-bylines’ puerile bilge from the networks, the AP, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC. We’ve had a year since then to compile a record of news misreporting, political skullduggery, anonymous hearsay, baseless conjecture and projection by media.

Someone suggested that the “fake news” label could be avoided for any news outlet that devotes the same time or space correcting the record as they did promoting erroneous, inaccurate news. In October, the New York Times provided an anecdote to drive a phony narrative: A 69-year-old Pennsylvania Trump voter that regrets his 2016 choice. It sent itself throughout the land without the benefit of fact-checking by the anti-Trump media.

It took an independent right-of-center skeptic to ask the local registrar a simple question, the answer to which was “No, the man had not actually voted in the presidential election, let alone vote for Trump.” Look up “Desperately seeking regretful Trump voters,” by John Hinderaker, for more on the story.

You can easily see how the process would inconvenience the media’s Democrats, cutting into their breathless reporting on the next made-up scandal or dastardly deed by President Trump. They would have to spend 3 years correcting the mistaken, made-up hoax of Trump/Russian collusion. Rachel Maddow’s head would explode to have to undo every minute of furrowed-brow, emotionally overwrought, unverified Trumpian abominations that never happened.

In “Fakiest News of 2018,” Powerlineblog.com’s Scott Johnson noted “fake news” from McClatchy News (or substitute another news source); they reported that one-time Trump attorney (and proven fabulist) Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague “to work out the details of Trump’s collusion with Putin.” It never happened; did the correction get the same prominence as the original story?

If you come across any of these books, they are worth your time and money and, for Trump opponents, may help to dispel misplaced anger and accusations of constitutional perfidy by our president: “Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency,” by Andrew McCarthy; “The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History,” by Lee Smith; “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History,” by Gregg Jarrett; and, not least, “Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America” by Kimberly Strassel. Also, “Intel Community Blog Founder Admits Nunes Was Right About Spygate From the Beginning,” by Tristan Justice.

Taking just the titles, consider the harm done to America’s collective respect for the political, intelligence, law enforcement and media institutions that pretty much held hands to implement (or looked away from) the ultimately failed attempt to prevent Donald Trump’s election. They’ve now done all they could to effect Trump’s removal before voters can reelect him. Make no mistake, it’s a war in all but the organization and leadership of military violence. A truce starts with the left simply accepting elections.

How can any member of the national media not hang their heads in shame over, if nothing else, the character assassination and disgrace heaped on the Covington Catholic School kids who had a Native American drummer get in their faces? They were shown to have done nothing wrong but were unjustifiably pilloried, mocked, condemned and threatened. Shame on all who fabricated the narrative of smirking MAGA-hat wearing, aggressive racists (look up “The Media’s Worst Moments of 2019,” Powerlineblog.com).

How about the outrage against “racist” Trump supporters that supposedly attacked Jussie Smollett in Chicago? It turned out to be, like most hate crimes, a hoax. They still haven’t accepted the Mueller Report’s exoneration of President Trump; they refuse to accept the potentially criminal misuse of FISA warrants to “spy on” and “wiretap” the Trump campaign through lies about Carter Page. We now, or will soon, know—when Prosecutor Durham rolls out his indictments—who are the perps and their accomplices.

I’m really not picking on the ignorant young climate crusader, Greta Thunberg, who said: “Even at 1 degree of warming we are seeing an unacceptable loss of life and livelihoods.” A chart, “Deaths from Climate and non-Climate Catastrophes, 1920-2017,” (British disaster database) shows “climate deaths” declining from almost a half a million a year to about 25,000; that’s fewer than non-climate-related deaths.

Finally, I must correct writing back a while that President G. W. Bush was “impeached.” Also, a DN obituary writer listed the birth year for someone as “1642.” Folks probably excused both mistakes.