Former President Donald Trump told an entirely fictional story on Saturday about how he had supposedly outwitted his Democratic opponents by releasing āthe tapeā of theĀ 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that was a key factor inĀ Trumpās first impeachment.
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Facts First:Ā Trumpās story is a complete fabrication. No tape of his call with Zelensky was ever released; Pelosi could not possibly have been angry with her allies after hearing a tape of the call because she has never heard a tape of the call. In fact, as of nearly five years after the July 2019 call, there isĀ noĀ known US recordingĀ of the conversation. What Trumpās White House actually released in September 2019 was aĀ rough written transcriptĀ of the call ā whichĀ corroborated, rather than contradicted, aĀ government whistleblowerās central allegationsĀ about what Trump had said.Ā Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said Sunday that Trumpās story is āfact-free nonsense.ā
I mean, yeah, but thatās just playing rational defense against his idiocy.
We should be playing rationally irrational offense. They are straight up making things up. So sane people should make things up in response, but at the same time be careful to make the fabrications close enough to reality (or even just a misrepresentation of reality) that they gain traction.
Seriously: astroturfing shit that stupid people will believe is very obviously a valid political tactic these days. And the right has been aggressively playing that game for a while now, which is why they seem to have an impenetrable 30āish% approval rating as a floor.
Iām with you, but what could possibly be said about Trump that his followers wouldnāt dismiss as āfake newsā or outright praise him for. They donāt even care that heās a rapist.
Itās not about them believing any one story in particular. Itās about moving the median point of the atmosphere theyāre immersed in subtly in a less awful direction.
More directly: Iām saying we should be using dirty tricks to move the Overton window in a more positive and constructive direction, because theyāve been using the same tricks in the interest of increasing wealth disparity and concentration for decades.
āDonāt you think he looks tired?ā
I heard he wonāt release the tapes even though he did nothing criminally wrong, because in the middle he fully pisses himself in the oval office and rex tillerson was like ādude don wtfā