Obviously, the way some people see the world and how others see things can be very different. Two people using the same basic set of facts in today’s world seem to come to completely different conclusions. Sometimes that can be completely innocent, and sometimes it really truly, seriously, not.
Sometimes the source of the distortion is traceable, identifiable. Sometimes there’s a pattern at play. In my experience when you hear a certain phrase repeated over and over again, it may be the sign that there has been a deliberate distortion created which can be quickly referenced to short-circuit arguments against it.
We repeatedly hear the argument the Obamacare is bad because the former President said “You can keep your plan if you like it” saying that was a “Lie” when in fact there was a good basis for saying that because the ACA had a provision to allow existing plans to be “grand-fathered” even if they didn’t meet all of it’s requirements. Simply having the ACA in place did not mean those older plans had to be cancelled. Some insurance providers just decided to cancel those old plans, simply because they felt like it, and it was profited to use the ACA as an excuse in order to upsell their customers into a more profitable plan. Some insurers did this using shady means and were fined as much as $65,000 for it. Obama didn’t know that was going to happen ahead of time, no one did. He was being sincere because he thought allowing those plans to be grand-fathered would handle he problem. It just didn’t.
Those who latch onto Obama’s words here predictably never mention that there was a fully legitimate basis for it. Yes, he said it. No, it wasn’t absolutely accurate in the end — but that wasn’t precisely a “lie.” We see this pattern repeatedly. Most recently when right-wing pundits repeatedly claim they’re only referring to existing report from mainstream sources in support of Trump’s “Kooky” claims that Trump Tower was wiretapped by the previous administration despite direct denials of this from James Clapper, James Comey and Michael Hayden.
The main McGuffin in this story of late has been the repeated right wing claim that a New York Times headline boldly claimed “Wiretap data used in investigaion of trump aides” as we’ve seen from sources such as Gateway Pundit.
More Fake News…
The front page of The New York Times way back on January 20, 2017…
“Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides”
New York Times Cover, one day before Inauguration
But Two months later they are trashing their own reports!
Now the NY Times is reporting there is no evidence of a wiretap.
No wonder nobody trusts them!
Breitbart reported:
The New York Times has inadvertently attacked the credibility of its own reporting on the Obama Administration’s investigation of Russia and now-President Donald Trump. Times reporters Michael Schmidt and Michael Shear write that Trump believes the “deep state” intelligence community, staffed with holdovers from the Obama Administration, wiretapped several of his campaign associates because of a spurious article from Breitbart News:
I’ve heard this exact argument about his exactly headline from Kayleigh McEnany and also Jeffrey Lord as shown here.
Most people who’ ve reported on the above fiery exchange between Lord and Jonathan Tasini have focused on the fact that Tasini responded to Lord by saying that Trump is a “pathological liar.” But that’s not the important part of the exchange, this is (via Rawstory):
Citing a New York Times article that vaguely alluded to some Trump staff members being under investigation, Lord insisted that Trump knows something others don’t and Trump should be taken “seriously” if not “literally.”
“The president, I assume reads the New York Times, I assume he reads the Washington Post,” Lord insisted. “He has to see all these stories that his administration is leaking like a sieve. The former president was in charge of his administration. That’s the way it works.”
Rawstory doesn’t quote the title of the article which is a mistake and is significant. Many of us watching this exchange would think that Tasini roundly won the argument, but those on the right will not see it that way. They’ll feel that when confronted by evidence from the New York Times that states “Wiretap Data Used to Investigate Trump Aides” that Tasini simply resorted to “name-calling” and didn’t actually respond to the “proof.” It was clear that only Lord is familiar with this report — because only Lord reads right-wing news sources like Gateway Pundit above — so he’s caught everyone else flat-footed. They haven’t read the article so they don’t know what the frack he’s talking about.
Here’s the thing though: neither does Jeffrey Lord.
If you do a google search for “site:Nytimes.com Wiretap Data Used to Investigate Trump Aides” you don’t get an article with that title because that was only used on the printed version of the Times shown above, the online search reveals this article which was posted on January 19th, one day before the Inauguration.
Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates
Are you seeing the problem yet?
“Intercepted Russian Communications” are indeed Wiretaps, but they aren’t necessarily said to be taking place inside Trump Tower unless those communications are with, or between Russians.
If Jeffrey Lord had bothered to actually read the Times report he’s so haughtily referencing he would not find what’s he thinks it contains. For example the report doesn’t really specify which investigation we’re dealing with, the Russian hack of the DNC or allegations of Russian collusion with Trump associates.
It is not clear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign, or Mr. Trump himself. It is also unclear whether the inquiry has anything to do with an investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and other attempts to disrupt the elections in November. The American government has concluded that the Russian government was responsible for a broad computer hacking campaign, including the operation against the D.N.C.
So that pretty much kills Trump’s claim right there. This report doesn’t prove that Trump Tower was wiretapped. And there’s this:
The counterintelligence investigation centers at least in part on the business dealings that some of the president-elect’s past and present advisers have had with Russia. Mr. Manafort has done business in Ukraine and Russia. Some of his contacts there were under surveillance by the National Security Agency for suspected links to Russia’s Federal Security Service, one of the officials said.
They don’t say here that Manafort was under surveillance, and at this point one day before the inauguration Manafort had long ago left the Trump campaign, it wasn’t surveillance by the FBI requiring a FISA warrant — it was NSA surveillance of contacts of Manafort’s who largely remain overseas for links to the FSB. That would include Manafort’s right hand man from the Ukraine Konstantine Kilimnik, who has an admitted history with Russian intelligence.
A Russian Army-trained linguist who has told a previous employer of a background with Russian intelligence, Kilimnik started working for Manafort in 2005 when Manafort was representing Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, a gig that morphed into a long-term contract with Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-aligned hard-liner who became president of Ukraine.
Kilimnik eventually became “Manafort’s Manafort” in Kiev, and he continued to lead Manafort’s office there after Yanukovych fled the country for Russia in 2014, according to Ukrainian business records and interviews with several political operatives who have worked in Ukraine’s capital. Kilimnik and Manafort then teamed up to help promote Opposition Bloc, which rose from the ashes of Yanukovych’s regime. The party is funded by oligarchs who previously backed Yanukovych, including at least one who the Ukrainian operatives say is close to both Kilimnik and Manafort.
Now Lord claims this is all being led by the White House because of one sentence in the Times report, but I’ll include the entire paragraph.
The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.
Lord claims in the above clip that this proves “Obama directed this” when the full paragraph clearly shows the opposite. The FBI was largely directing this effort to route out Russian Spies — which is something they honestly should be doing — and it’s not really news that this was “provided to the White House” because we already knew that. This investigation is clearly linked to the Christopher Steele dossier which alleges contacts between the Russians with Manafort, Carter Page and Roger Stone as mentioned in the Times report among others. There is now ample evidence that these contacts and many more including Flynn, Kushner, Sessions and Trump himself meeting Russian ambassador Kislyak did happen.
We all now know that Obama, Vice President Biden and Trump himself were briefed on the Russia hacking investigation the week before the inauguration, including in that briefing was a 3 page summary of the Steele allegations as confirmed by DNI James Clapper.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In a statement released Wednesday evening, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper essentially confirmed the CNN report that Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer had derided as "fake news."
CNN had reported that President-elect Trump's last security briefing had included a two-page summary of a 35 page dossier making unverified claims that Russia had compromising financial and personal information on Trump.
So that’s a perfect example of information being “provided to the White House” — which even at that point included Donald Trump since he was already receiving briefings.
This report does not prove the case that Trump associates — rather than their overseas contacts in Russia, the Ukraine and elsewhere — were targets of wiretaps. It does not prove that these wiretaps were directed by President Obama in an effort to “dig up dirt” on Donald Trump.
Lord makes the mistake of blindly trusting what Breitbart and other right-wing pundits claim without closely examining the source material and fully comprehending it, but straight reporters and Liberals in this case make the same mistake by presuming their nothing at all underlying his and Trump’s claims. There is something, it’s just not what they think it is and you can’t bridge the reality gap, you can’t “win” the argument against them until you’re at least working from the same page, with the same data, and the same basic not-alt Facts.
