In a phone call, Trump tried to pressure Arizona's governor to overturn the state's 2020 election results. Trump then asked his vice president to repeatedly follow up.
A spokesman for Trump declined to respond to questions about the call with Ducey and instead falsely declared in a statement that “the 2020 Presidential election was rigged and stolen.” The spokesman said Trump should be credited for “doing the right thing — working to make sure that all the fraud was investigated and dealt with.”
It’s so frustrating that in order to maintain a semblance of balance, the Washington Post has to ask a Trump spokesperson for a comment on allegations of yet another crime and then has to print their response, even when it’s as baseless as this. I know they cushion it by saying the spokesperson “falsely declared,” and I’m not frustrated at them for doing their job, but more at the world we live in for getting to the point where you can so brazenly make such abjectly false claims over and over and get people to believe them.
Do they have to, though? Couldn’t they just say “A spokesman for Trump made a factually incorrect statement which did not add any context.” and just leave it at that?
Oh, what I would give for this to have been their response…
However, there’s a part of me that says it might be better to publicize what they actually said for posterity? I guess in my fantasy world, after some time (years? decades? centuries?) we’ve magically fixed all our problems and people can look back at quotes like these and have yet another data point for how insane this political world became and what to avoid in the future. (I’m obviously ignoring problems like the fact that this article will disappear between now and then, and quotes like that cause real damage in today’s world, so it’s probably not worth it in reality.)
It’s so frustrating that in order to maintain a semblance of balance, the Washington Post has to ask a Trump spokesperson for a comment on allegations of yet another crime and then has to print their response, even when it’s as baseless as this. I know they cushion it by saying the spokesperson “falsely declared,” and I’m not frustrated at them for doing their job, but more at the world we live in for getting to the point where you can so brazenly make such abjectly false claims over and over and get people to believe them.
Do they have to, though? Couldn’t they just say “A spokesman for Trump made a factually incorrect statement which did not add any context.” and just leave it at that?
Oh, what I would give for this to have been their response…
However, there’s a part of me that says it might be better to publicize what they actually said for posterity? I guess in my fantasy world, after some time (years? decades? centuries?) we’ve magically fixed all our problems and people can look back at quotes like these and have yet another data point for how insane this political world became and what to avoid in the future. (I’m obviously ignoring problems like the fact that this article will disappear between now and then, and quotes like that cause real damage in today’s world, so it’s probably not worth it in reality.)