NEW: The Biden Admin sent talking points out today touting their accomplishments to (some) reporters. It can only be described as a war on reality.
Quick 🧵 to break down the end-of-year desperation they’re hoping the press will buy. ⤵️
First, vaccination rates. Without mentioning that the Admin inherited three vaccines from their predecessor, Biden claims credit for a 70% jump in vaccination rate year-over-year.
A year ago, the first vaccine had been administered one week prior, so OF COURSE vax rates were low.
But when Biden was sworn in, the US was vaccinating citizens at the 5th highest rate in the developed world.
And the school opening stat is despite, not because of, the Admin, who has repeatedly pushed for anti-science measures at the behest of the teachers’ unions. foxnews.com/politics/white…
This same ham-fistedness applies to the stats on job creation, too.
Was anything happening in the last 3-5 months of the Trump Admin, guys? Might that factor in?
Taking credit for the creation of local and state jobs is also intellectually dishonest when so many of the largest job creating states - Florida, Texas, etc. - not only didn’t vote for Biden but have (with good reason) rejected his economic advice. worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings…
And I mean cmon. If someone thought REALLY hard, I’m sure they could figure out why hospitality jobs have come back whether or not the Admin had done anything.
But it gets even more ridiculous when the Biden Admin tries to combat reality on inflation.
Biden touts his “aggressive actions to address prices” in an attempt to elide that prices for consumer goods are near a 40 year high as a result of his policies.
Absent from this is that nearly 70% of Americans think Biden is doing a bad job at handling inflation and the economy. That even includes a *majority* of Dems.
You can almost feel the desperation coming off of the memo here.
I mean. How bad must things be to include gas prices dropping 10 cents *below their recent highs* as a victory?
The Biden Admin can spin these “facts” all they want, but it clearly isn’t convincing voters. His disapproval rate is over 50%, fully 6 points below Obama’s at this point before the 2010 midterm wipeout.
For those asking why the Biden Admin would bother doing this, the short answer is that…it works.
Here’s @axios, which I think is among the most fair outlets, parroting back what’s on this memo (with a tiny call-out at the end about inflation) axios.com/biden-year-acc…
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Biden’s disastrous debate performance brought to a screeching halt a multi-year campaign from the media to present the president as mentally fit.
Do you really remember how hard the press pushed you not to trust your lyin’ eyes on Biden’s decline?
Start here ⤵️
I suspect most of you remember the allegations from the White House that videos showing Biden behaving erratically were “cheap fakes.”
The media rushed to repeat this claim. Look at the extent @nytimes went to say you didn’t see anything and that Biden was fine.
Perhaps the wildest was @washingtonpost, who gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to videos showing Biden displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as fakes, “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype.”
Part of their defense was that Biden “doesn’t dance.”
You remember Russian Collusion. But do you remember the “Russian bounties” allegation, where the press ran with a conspiracy theory to make Trump look like a monster?
With the debate tonight, I think it’s timely to revisit a falsehood Biden pushed. Follow along ⤵️
It started with a scoop from @nytimes that claimed Russia had placed bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan, that Trump knew about it, and he did nothing.
Days later, @washingtonpost followed up with the claim that these bounties—again, allegedly ignored by Trump—led to the deaths of American servicemen.
Do you *really* remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? I fear we’ve lost the plot.
With Hunter’s name in the news I wanted to revisit the extent to which the media went to cover up corruption allegations against—and at the behest of—his father.
Follow along. ⤵️
You have to start with the scoop from @nypost and @EmmaJoNYC.
Their lede from October was damning:
“Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.”
The story was fundamentally about Joe Biden’s alleged corruption. It was huge news, on the eve of an election.
The press leapt to claim the scoop wasn’t legit. And they reframed the issue: now it was about Hunter, not Joe. Here’s @NPR before/after
Good to see the NYT’s considerable resources being put to finding the truth in a debate between private citizens that led one of them to raise a flag upside down.
Real afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted stuff here.
It has only become “news” because of the pivot to left wing clickbait that Trump inspired among the press.
It’s politically inspired harassment and not only is it noxious it’s driving a deep animus among its target demo that is fraying what remains of the bounds of our body politic and society more broadly.
I’ve got an oldie-but-a-goodie for you from the archive of unhinged media coverage.
Do you remember how insane the coverage of Trump’s killing of Iranian Gen. Soleimani was?
I bet it’s worse than you remember. Follow along ⤵️
It all started with what I’ve gotta say might be the coldest presidential use of social media in history.
After ordering the strike that killed Iranian General Qaseem Soleimani, Trump tweeted out simply a picture of an American flag.
Many in the media went berserk.
First, the issue was directly with what Trump had done. Outlets claimed that he was rushing America into a war. @washingtonpost tried to point out the hypocrisy of a president who had said he would prevent a war.