On 31 Aug 2023, Michael A Terrell <mike.am.surreal@earthlink.nut> posted
some news:1J1IM.690204$SuUf.256013@fx14.iad:

> Biden is the biggest liar in POTUS history.

If The Media Insisted On Calling Trump A Liar, That Standard Must Be
Applied To Biden�s Corruption Lies

One of the distinguishing features of Trump�s presidency was an aggressive
press corps that felt obligated to call out Trump�s �lies� � so why won�t
they apply this same standard to Biden who is inarguably a world-class
liar?

In August of 2016, The New York Times did something rather unprecedented �
the paper ran a front-page editorial by columnist Jim Rutenberg that
stopped just short of openly saying the media should openly oppose Donald
Trump, regardless of journalistic ethics.

According to Rutenberg, journalists who believed Trump was �racist and
nationalist� would have to �throw out the textbook American journalism has
been using for the better part of the past half-century. � You would move
closer than you�ve ever been to being oppositional.�

Now, Rutenberg was greatly flattering himself and his journalistic peers
by pretending that any vestigial attempts at objectivity in the American
media were anything more than farce, and all but the most blinkered
Americans knew it. Still, the shift in tone during the Trump years was
palpable. Perhaps the most visible sign was the media�s eagerness to call
Trump a liar and to specifically call out his supposed �lies,� even to his
face in real-time if necessary. The resulting coverage was something to
behold. A Washington Post media column from 2019 took a rhetorical victory
lap and rounded up just a few of the then-recent headlines about Trump�s
presidency:

? CNN: �The Mueller report: A catalog of 77 Trump team lies and
falsehoods.�

? Minneapolis Star Tribune: �President Trump lies to troops about pay
raise.�

? Financial Times: �The real reason Donald Trump lies.�

? Los Angeles Times: �Mueller report exposes all the president�s liars.�

? Chicago Tribune: �Why are Trump�s lies not ruinous to him? Because truth
can be in the eye of the beholder.�

? The New Yorker: �It�s True: Trump Is Lying More, and He�s Doing It on
Purpose.�

? Foreign Policy: �Does It Matter That Trump Is a Liar?�

Now, I don�t want to even go down the road of relitigating the veracity of
various Trump statements. This has been debated and cataloged endlessly;
Trump has lied. But I will say that there�s good reason why you don�t
throw around the word liar with such abandon. That�s because ascertaining
what constitutes a �lie� often depends on determining motive or
circumstantial assessments that often reveal as much or more about the
biases of the person making the accusation.

And the media was often so hysterical they didn�t just throw out the
journalism rulebook when it came to fairly evaluating Trump � Pulitzer
Prizes for completely discredited Russia collusion accusations are pretty
solid evidence of their inability to do that � they threw out the logical
one as well. The Washington Post would eventually claim that Trump had
uttered 20,000 �false or misleading statements,� or nearly 14 a day for
his entire presidency, an absurd claim that, whatever number of lies Trump
did tell, was discrediting to the Post when subjected to the slightest
scrutiny. There�s a strong case to be made that this approach to Trump
ended up helping him. When everything�s a lie, nothing is.

Which brings us to Joe Biden. It�s hard to think of a more categorical
denial than the one Biden issued in August 2019 about his role in his
son�s business dealings. �First of all, I have never discussed with my
son, or my brother, or anyone else, anything having to do with their
businesses, period. What I will do is the same thing we did in our
administration. There will be an absolute wall between the personal and
private, and the government,� said Biden. �There wasn�t any hint of
scandal at all when we were there. And I will impose the same kind of
strict, strict rules. That is why I have never talked with my son or my
brother, or anyone else in the distant family about their business
interests, period.� The House Oversight Committee has compiled another 15
more explicit denials from Biden during his campaign, and as recently as
last year, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was issuing more blanket
denials on his behalf.

This was never remotely believable, but now the evidence is overwhelming.
The National Archives recently released 5,400 emails from his time as vice
president, where he was using pseudonyms to, among other things,
communicate with his son, Hunter Biden, about his questionable foreign
business dealings. Devon Archer, Hunter�s business partner, has talked
extensively and publicly about Joe Biden being involved in his son�s
lucrative dealings with corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs and business deals
tied to China�s repressive communist government. (He�s the second business
partner to go public and say this after Tony Bobulinski was largely
ignored in the run-up to the 2020 election.) Victor Shokin, the Ukrainian
prosecutor Joe Biden got fired while Shokin was investigating the
Ukrainian gas company that was paying Biden�s son a million dollars a
year, has recently come forward with more damning details about what was
going on.

Even the Democrat hacks in Congress, such as Dan Goldman whom corporate
media called out for misrepresenting what Archer said about Biden, now
concede that Joe was playing along with his son to only sell the �illusion
of access� rather than a blatant quid pro quo. Which even if that self-
serving justification were true, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act clearly
singles out payments to an official�s family members as the basis for
corruption, and lots of other bribery statutes on the books would cover
this arrangement. Which, again, everyone now admits Joe Biden had full
knowledge of and participated in to a large degree.

On the question of motives and �quid pro quo,� the media hypocrisy is
absolutely astounding. In his recent interview with Fox News, Shokin asked
a pretty salient question: �The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion
in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing, isn�t that alone a
case of corruption?�

�No, it�s not. U.S. foreign aid is often conditioned on countries taking
official actions that the U.S. government regards as important. That�s
especially the case, as it was in Ukraine, with rooting out corruption,�
the Washington Post�s Aaron Blake retorted in a column earlier this week.
�Indeed, this was precisely the defense that then-acting Trump White House
Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney offered back in 2019 regarding Trump�s having
sought to use foreign aid for leverage with Ukraine.�

How�d that defense work out for the Trump White House? I seem to recall
that the Democrats didn�t buy that claim, proceeded to allege quid pro quo
was occurring, and impeached Trump over it. All while much of the media
establishment was cheerleading.

But consider for a moment the irony that, whether or not the issue of
foreign aid to Ukraine was being used as leverage, Trump was asking about
an investigation into Biden family corruption in Ukraine that now appears
wholly merited. How do we reconcile that? It�s all a matter of
disingenuous relativism.

�Mulvaney was right,� says Blake. �But the issue with Trump was whether he
was leveraging Ukraine for personal gain � and there was more evidence
that this was true of him than of Biden. Trump wanted Ukraine to announce
it was investigating Hunter Biden at a time when Joe Biden was Trump�s
likeliest 2020 election opponent.�

First off, this isn�t a contest here � if Trump was seeking to exploit a
corruption investigation to help him politically, that was enabled by the
fact that Joe Biden and his son were indeed corrupt. They were able to
paint Trump�s suggestive words on the call as outrageous in large part
because everyone was still committed to this notion that Biden was kept
apart from his son�s shady business dealings. While that was always
dubious, the charade is quite definitively over.

Regardless, what on earth does Blake mean when he says there was �more
evidence that this was true of him than of Biden�? Since nothing ever came
to fruition, whatever nefarious things it is assumed Trump was trying to
put in motion on that phone call are premised on a heavy amount of
assumption and interpretation. With Biden, we now have emails, bank
transfers, photos of the vice president apparently dining with Hunter�s
foreign partners, and credible testimony from those in the know, all
pointing to the fact he was enabling and an active participant in his
son�s corrupt deals.

Time and again, the default assumption for Trump is corrupt motives, where
Biden gets the benefit of the doubt to an absurd degree. The idea that it
was necessary to call Trump a liar in no way precludes doing the same to
Biden who is a world-class liar in his own right. However, if the press
were to take the most obvious reading of Biden�s motives, they would have
to conclude that the man is a corrupt and brazen liar. They would have to,
according to the new rulebook, �move closer to being oppositional.� But
that�s not going to happen because political reporters are not a
particularly consistent or principled bunch.

On Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:00:45 -0000 (UTC), Biden bust <biden-lies@likearug.com> wrote:

>On 31 Aug 2023, Michael A Terrell <mike.am.surreal@earthlink.nut> posted
>some news:1J1IM.690204$SuUf.256013@fx14.iad:
>
>> Biden is the biggest liar in POTUS history.

Not even close. Hell, Reagan lied more! So did Clinton, Kennedy and certainly Bush the
younger!

>If The Media Insisted On Calling Trump A Liar, That Standard Must Be
>Applied To Biden’s Corruption Lies

Trump is in a class by himself. Most pols lie for votes, Trump lies because he enjoys it.
He'll lie when the truth would have worked better.

Swill
--
MAGA: My Ass Got Arrested

GO TRUMP! Go farther! Farther! I CAN STILL HEAR YOU!

Heroyam slava! Glory to the Heroes!

Sláva Ukrajíni! Glory to Ukraine!

Putin tse prezervatyv! Putin is a condom!

Go here to donate to Ukrainian relief.
<https://www2.deloitte.com/ua/uk/pages/registration-forms/help-cities.html>

On 8/31/2023 12:28 PM, Governor Swill wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:00:45 -0000 (UTC), Biden bust <biden-lies@likearug.com> wrote:
>
>> On 31 Aug 2023, Michael A Terrell <mike.am.surreal@earthlink.nut> posted
>> some news:1J1IM.690204$SuUf.256013@fx14.iad:
>>
>>> Biden is the biggest liar in POTUS history.
>
> Not even close. Hell, Reagan lied more! So did Clinton, Kennedy and certainly Bush the
> younger!
>
>> If The Media Insisted On Calling Trump A Liar, That Standard Must Be
>> Applied To Biden’s Corruption Lies
>
> Trump is in a class by himself. Most pols lie for votes, Trump lies because he enjoys it.
> He'll lie when the truth would have worked better.

Trump lies easier than he breathes.

On Thu, 31 Aug 2023 12:32:03 -0700, Max Boot <max.boot@lathymes.com> wrote:

>On 8/31/2023 12:28 PM, Governor Swill wrote:
>> On Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:00:45 -0000 (UTC), Biden bust <biden-lies@likearug.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 31 Aug 2023, Michael A Terrell <mike.am.surreal@earthlink.nut> posted
>>> some news:1J1IM.690204$SuUf.256013@fx14.iad:
>>>
>>>> Biden is the biggest liar in POTUS history.
>>
>> Not even close. Hell, Reagan lied more! So did Clinton, Kennedy and certainly Bush the
>> younger!
>>
>>> If The Media Insisted On Calling Trump A Liar, That Standard Must Be
>>> Applied To Biden’s Corruption Lies
>>
>> Trump is in a class by himself. Most pols lie for votes, Trump lies because he enjoys it.
>> He'll lie when the truth would have worked better.
>
>Trump lies easier than he breathes.

And about as often.

Swill
--
MAGA: My Ass Got Arrested

GO TRUMP! Go farther! Farther! I CAN STILL HEAR YOU!

Heroyam slava! Glory to the Heroes!

Sláva Ukrajíni! Glory to Ukraine!

Putin tse prezervatyv! Putin is a condom!

Go here to donate to Ukrainian relief.
<https://www2.deloitte.com/ua/uk/pages/registration-forms/help-cities.html>