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In recent days, the mainstream media has taken nakedly ridiculous claims about the tattoos of @PeteHegseth, Trump’s SecDef nominee, to spin up a story alleging he’s an extremist.

It’s an egregious example of politically driven “journalism.” I unpack why. ⤵️ The story really started with @AP, who ran an article claiming that two tattoos that @PeteHegseth has have ties to extremism, citing an extremely thin (and downright suspect) report.

They used that to label him a potential “insider threat” in their headline.

Would be great if Trump’s unconventional picks for his cabinet inspire the media to consider a nominee’s credentials.

They might want to look at the current HHS Secretary, Xavier Becerra, who brings to the table the medical experience of being in Congress for 12 terms.

Or perhaps Obama’s former HHS Secretary, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, who had just finished her stint lobbying for Walmart.

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Mere days before the election the media, en masse, invented a conspiracy theory alleging Trump threatened Liz Cheney with violence.

Below you’ll see what Trump actually said, and how outlets decided to report it.

Maybe the most dishonest coverage I can recall. ⤵️ The quote comes courtesy of @PhilipWegmann, who does fantastic, real journalism.

Look at the quote. Then look at this headline from @washingtonpost.

Does one follow the other?

No. Trump is making a theoretical point about politicos who cheer for war from the sidelines.

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I know it seems silly, but the media meltdown about Trump working at a McDonald’s is clarifying about why trust in the press has cratered.

Before we get to that, let’s revisit some of the most deranged takes. ⤵️ The press’s response to Trump deciding to troll Harris for her unsupported claims that she worked at McDonald’s by working at the chain himself sent the media into a tizzy.

Here’s @CNN, suddenly apologetic about a corporation in the political limelight.

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The media is already trying to memory-hole the (first) attempted assassination of former President Trump.

I suspect many of you have felt it happening, but I walked through the details for The Spectator, and wanted to share some of them here.

Follow along ⤵️ First, I just want to level-set to make sure I’m not crazy.

Someone tried to kill the former POTUS, who, according to a variety of polls, is the odds-on favorite to return to that office. Tons of details didn’t make sense.

Seems like the press story of the year, right?

Well…

8 years after I said I would, 2 years after a brain tumor diagnosis, and 1 year after finishing chemo & radiation, I’m finally running the Army 10-miler in a couple weeks, and raising money for a good cause.

I hope you’ll check out the details in the 🧵thread🧵 below. 👇

The 10-miler is, as the name implies, a 10 mile road race in Washington, D.C. It’s October 13th, so, soon!

If you’d like to donate (100% of donations go to charity, more on that below). The link is here:

fundly.com/drew-s-post-ca…

It’s genuinely unclear who is executing the responsibilities of the leader of the free world and the media — providers of transparency, beacons of integrity — couldn’t seem to care less.

https://twitter.com/katehydeny/status/1837169830429892770

This is like failed state stuff

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The media, focused solely on Trump, haven’t seemed interested in fact checking Kamala Harris. And not for lack of opportunity.

So I decided to. Below are some false and misleading statements from last week’s debate.

I could only fit so many. But give it a read. ⤵️ For starters, I think this image typifies how the media treat the two candidates.

Dale’s sentiment here applied broadly to the rest of the media, who had eyes only for Trump.

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Look, I know there’s bigger news today, but with Biden’s “black jobs” quip on Friday, I’ve gotta revisit the media meltdown on the term, as stupid as it is.

Do you remember how insulted & offended the press were when Trump said “black jobs”?

I’ve got screenshots. ⤵️ Some quick context: Biden in a speech on Friday, referred to jobs as “black jobs,” as in held by black folks.

If that phrase sounds familiar, it’s because Trump said it at his debate with Biden a couple months ago.

The media went ballistic.

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I was struck by the number of dubious statements and flat-out lies at the DNC.

It appears the mainstream media isn’t much interested in them, amid their jubilant, joy-full coverage. So I decided to do some fact-checking, focused on Biden’s speech.

There’s a lot. ⤵️ 1. The first thing that jumped out to me was Trump’s alleged “very fine people on both sides” description of Charlottesville.

Haven’t we been over this, time and again? The context makes clear Trump didn’t mean the neo-Nazis. Even @snopes admitted it!

Yet Biden trotted it out.

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The media haven’t been interested in providing voters with much of a picture of Kamala Harris beyond “vibes.”

So I did the work for them and went back through what she’s actually said and done on policy and beyond.

It isn’t a pretty picture. Follow along ⤵️ There’s nowhere better to start than on immigration. Back in 2020, Harris was among the Dem candidates who supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

Now @politico claims she “promised to go tough on border security.”

Color me skeptical.

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I know it’s difficult to keep track of all of Tim Walz’s “stolen valor,” exaggerations & false claims about his time in the military.

I tried to compile as many as I could, as well as a few egregious cases of the media spinning for him.

Buckle in, there’s a lot. ⤵️ First, the false claims. To avoid a sort of journalistic stolen valor, I want to be clear: others did this work.

I’ll try to source as well as I can, starting with the latest Walz whopper: saying he took part in the Afghanistan surge in a 2010 debate.

From @NoVA_Campaigns:

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The media are already hard at work to mislead about VP Kamala Harris.

The latest is an effort to memoryhole Harris’s role leading Biden’s disastrous immigration policy as “border czar.”

Who’s up for some side-by-sides, lest we forget? ⤵️ There’s no better place to start than with @axios, who made waves today when they claimed that Harris was never the “border czar.”

The problem?

Axios had called her exactly that back in 2021.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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.

https://twitter.com/jodikantor/status/1795610493438054498

This is not, in a well ordered universe, news.

It has only become “news” because of the pivot to left wing clickbait that Trump inspired among the press.

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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.

My hottest take is that, outside of the Beltway (something, to be clear, I am not!) most Americans to the right of MSNBC simply don’t feel anything like “vertigo” about Trump. I think part of why Trump is such a visceral experience for so many people who have been in DC for a long time is that these types of people (again, me included!) weren’t familiar with the idea that they could viscerally hate a politician even when he’s out of office.

If you were making a parody of MSNBC, what would you do differently than what the network already produces? I recognize this is an opinion piece but the decision to run an opinion piece is…a decision.

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The day after my 30th birthday I was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

Two years later, I’m in remission. I don’t talk much about what happened, but I wanted to write it down, both for myself, and in case it could help others.

If interested, follow along. ⤵️ This is admittedly uncomfortable for me. I’m trying to learn how to talk about the experience, because it’s obviously become a big part of my life.

If you aren’t interested in the details, I totally understand. But I want to get this story in one place.