Fox News and the Trump campaign will gleefully take Joe Biden’s comments condemning the demonization of Latinos out of context. Will they get away with it?
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If you were wondering what you’ll see on Fox News from now until the election, the answer is: “President Joe Biden saying something barely intelligible about a comedian or racist Trump supporters or all Trump supporters.” And in case you are wondering which interpretation the propaganda network will go with, it’s going to be option C.
There are some important lessons to be learned from GarbageGate, so let’s get right to them:
Lesson 1: When your political opponents want to destroy themselves by holding a Nazi rally and having some clown insult an important voting bloc, let them. And, since you know that those opponents will look for any way to change that harmful narrative, try not to give them an opening.
Lesson 2: While it may be a tiny bit damaging for conservative news outlets to be able to portray Biden as “vacationing” in Delaware all the time, parked on a secluded beach is the perfect place for him. The opposite of a perfect place is a Zoom call in which he says the following:
And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr- — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.
Lesson 2 (continued): Obviously, you will not see this entire quote on Fox News because that would harm the narrative. There is clearly some ambiguity as to what Biden was saying. How could there not be? It’s barely comprehensible. You get the gist of it, but there is plenty of room for interpretation.
The White House tried to take advantage of that (and the rules of grammar) by cleverly placing an apostrophe in “supporter’s” to highlight that Biden was referring to one person.
Was he? Nobody will ever know, and there is a decent chance that the president himself already forgot all about it.
In any case, what he said isn’t actually all that controversial if you take the time to listen to the entire thing.
Lesson 3: Whatever he actually meant, the Trump campaign and its allies will make this sound as bad as possible. Before we know it, “Old man Biden criticizes the demonization of Latinos by one/many Trump supporters” will become “Kamala Harris says all Trump supporters are evil garbage.”
The former president got in on this racket right away.
“While I am running a campaign of positive solutions to save America, Kamala Harris is running a campaign of hate,” said the man who calls his political opponents the “enemy from within” and says the entire country is a “garbage can for the world.”
Trump added that Harris “has spent all week comparing her political opponents to the most evil mass murderers in history.”
Of course, that is also false. Harris has merely stated that she believes Trump is a fascist, which makes sense since he behaves like one and his former chief of staff, a well-respected general, said he meets the definition of one.
But, of any campaign in history, Trump’s is the one least likely to let facts get in the way of… well, anything.
Lesson 4: Speaking of not letting the facts get in the way of anything, the former president’s campaign pretends that Trump is just a bushel of joy and loves everybody.
It responded with a bunch of social media posts showing pictures of all kinds of different people and the text: “This is who Kamala and Joe Biden call ‘garbage.’ President Trump calls them Patriots.”
Of course, that is not whom President Biden called “garbage.” Conversely, the group that former President Trump primarily calls “patriots” is the people who sacked the Capitol on his behalf on January 6.
Lesson 5: You really shouldn’t believe anything the Trump campaign and its allies tell you.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
