This is on page one of the GOP dirty tricks playbook. Take a truth, find one tiny shred that might be ambiguous, then extrapolate out to the wildest possible derivation. Hillary Clinton and John Podesta shared an email about meeting for pizza. Some clever paid liar decided that this pizza joint could perhaps be cast as the front for a horrific chamber in the basement where the blood of young children was shared by the Democrat elites.
That lie led to a man bursting in with a gun looking to free the poor children, only to be told that this was a one-story establishment.
Shouldn’t that have been enough for folks to jump off the conspiracy theory train? When played the fool, most folks would wonder why they’d been misled, what were the motivations in the creation of the lie, and what’s the nature of the intent to mislead?
But if you’ve drunk the Kool-aid, and for years tied your own personal identity into the cause, there can be no questioning of anything - past, present, or future. For even a sliver of doubt would expose their gullibility, and pride and ego are too committed to allow that.
This week we have a new hoax regarding the FBI orders on the search for Top Secret documents that Trump stole from the White House to hide, unprotected, at his Mar-a-Lago club - potentially for sale or leverage later.
The search approval doc is a form letter, including a reference to another form letter that IN ALL CASES states that agents must be armed, but spelling out the restrictions for use of deadly force.
Even though the raid was done when the FBI knew that Trump was not there, the right-wing punditry today is claiming that the FBI was planning to assassinate Trump, with the proof being that FBI agents were armed upon entry. The simple truth is that they always are at any search to prevent any escalation.
That’s like saying, “A-HA! There were tires on your truck. That means that you intended to run over me!” Simple facts don’t lead directly to malevolent intentions by professionals governed by codes and their own integrity. Nor can they be conflated to a conspiracy which would involve an entire chain of command.
But facts and logic hold no sway on rabid imaginations. Trump and his minions know this.
However, perhaps this is the time that Biden should punch back. He can prove that the allegation is false, because the consensual search of his own home included the same document using the same code references on deadly force.
Biden needs to make this instance (among many others) into a commercial where he explains the WHY on where this lie came from. All he has to do is hold up the two forms, his and Trump’s, and point to that tiny marking that provided the source for the lie that was spread.
Perhaps the ad could run during the NBA Finals. It will be a lesson in how integrity is abandoned by those leading the chorus of “Go, Brandon!”