WhatFinger


Not even arguable.

Washington Post flat-out lies to cover for Meryl Streep's slander that Trump mocked a disabled reporter



Meryl Streep should understand this well. It's Hollywood's specialty to use images and clever editing to make things appear to be what they actually are not. This is what the movies are all about - fakery done so cleverly and convincingly, you can suspend disbelief and think of it like it's real, even though you know better. Maybe Streep has done this for so many years, she can no longer recognize that these fakeries, however clever, are in fact fake. Maybe she thinks that only Hollywood does this, and she doesn't realize that in their own way the news media are just as good at it.
Whatever is behind her delusion, Streep has credulously and uncritically bought into the media-peddled nonsense that Donald Trump mocked the disability of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski. It was the leading slander she offered in her attack on Trump the other night at the Golden Globes:
There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.
Bulls***. We dealt with this in October. The charge is a total falsehood. It simply never happened. You could do worse to read our entire piece on it again, but all you need to do is watch the video presentation by Catholics4Trump that we showed you then, and will show you again right now:

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Once you see this, you realize what really happened is that the news media cleverly used still shots and edited video to make it appear Trump had mocked Kovaleski, when in fact he did no such thing. And speaking of people who possess outsized power, the media's ability to peddle this lie unchallenged day after day has many people to this day believing the story is true. I am somewhat reticent about calling people liars. In my headline, I chose to call Streep wrong instead of calling her a liar because I don't think it's likely she knows the truth. I think she pretty well laps up whatever the MSM feeds her, and she is not smart enough to think critically and consider the possibility that she's been fooled. After all, what Meryl Streep does for a living is read words other people write for her. It is not her specialty to think for herself. I know many actors and I respect them immensely. Many of them are very smart and very fine people. But not many would do well getting up in front of the nation and making a political speech because most would not know what they were talking about. The fact that Meryl Streep is a very famous actor doesn't make her an exception to this rule. If anything, she is worse because her fame has her convinced she speaks with authority, when in fact she is just a dupe spouting things that aren't true. I am less willing to be charitable, however, to Washington Post writer Callum Borchers. He is a liar. And I say that because he is well aware of the information that proves the charge against Trump to be a bad rap, and yet in a column published this morning he defended Streep's charge and doubled down on the assertion that Trump did, in fact, mock Kovaleski's disability. It is the worst kind of commentary - devoid of any evidence to back up the assertion offered, and based on mainly on the presumed authority of the people making the charge:
As I've written before, Trump's defense simply isn't believable. Kovaleski, who covered Trump long before the real estate mogul entered politics, has said that "Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years." Trump was undoubtedly aware of Kovaleski's disability.

Trump apologists such as Ann Coulter have claimed that he has mocked other, non-disabled people in exactly the same fashion — supposedly proving that he was not imitating Kovaleski — but their assertions are not supported by video evidence (more on that here). Trump's impression of Kovaleski was unique and clearly specific to him.
Go ahead and click the link and watch the very brief video segments Borchers includes, then go back and watch the video we embedded above from Catholics4Trump, then tell me who has the stronger argument. Even the clips Borchers offers don't show that Trump's motions are very similar to Kovaleski's. He captures one still shot that happens to show Trump's hand in a similar position, and claims this is proof. This is exactly what I was talking about at the start of the piece. Hollywood uses images like that to make things appear other than what they really are. Now the Washington Post is doing the same thing. But it gets worse: Borchers goes on to try to support his position by citing - I am not making this up - CNN's Chris Cuomo and the Post's hyperpartisan "fact checker" Glenn Kessler. Cuomo comes from a family of Democrat politicians. We've told you about Kessler, including his 2014 attack on a cancer victim for truthfully telling the public about how ObamaCare wreaked havoc with her coverage. But none of this matters to Borchers, who figures his appeal to authority in citing Cuomo and Kessler can pass for credibility:
On CNN Monday morning, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway protested the notion that the incoming president made fun of Kovaleski's disability. "You can't give him the benefit of the doubt on this, and he's telling you what was in his heart?" Conway asked anchor Chris Cuomo. "It's a gesture that he's making on video," Cuomo replied. "Everyone can see it." Exactly. There is no doubt.
There is no doubt? Based on a few seconds of edited video, and despite all the evidence to suggest the video is being misconstrued and misrepresented? No doubt? This from the people who claim to be skeptics for a living, and demand evidence of things that seem to be, and say, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out"? No doubt? Black Lives Matter leader hit with restraining order after threatening LA police official Not only is there plenty of room for doubt, there's almost no room for believing the conventional narrative on this once you know the whole story. Borchers is well aware of all the reasons for doubt, and he dismisses them simply by declaring them not believable. He can't possibly be so stupid as to believe the argument he is making. Meryl Streep is merely a gullible fool. Callum Borchers is a liar, as are the editors of the Washington Post for publishing his garbage. They also know it isn't true. But it's their story and they're sticking to it because they can't admit the media creates deceptions intentionally with an agenda in mind. If the Washington Post tells you your mother loves you, check it out. And if Callum Borchers tells you that, ask your mother how you can win her heart back. You've lost it.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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