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emptywheel: WaPo Enthusiastically Joins Trump's Attack on Rule of Law
emptywheel - WaPo Enthusiastically Joins Trump’s Attack on Rule of Law
November 23, 2024 by emptywheel
One reason why Trump managed to win the election in spite of his four felony prosecutions is because self-imagined journalists never fact-checked him when he falsely claimed his prosecutions — all of them — were partisan witch hunts.
This article, from WaPo, is a remarkable example.
It confirms what was already clear — that Trump will attempt to fire everyone who worked on his own criminal prosecutions — and adds that Trump also intends to use DOJ to investigate his claims of voter fraud that his own DOJ already debunked in late 2020. It describes this fascist project to politicize DOJ as evidence of his “intention to dramatically shake up the status quo in Washington.”
The post notes that Trump, “lost to Joe Biden but continues to insist [the election] was stolen from him in key battlegrounds,” and describes that, “neither the president-elect nor his allies have ever provided evidence to prove their claims of voter fraud.”
But it doesn’t mention that Bill Barr’s DOJ already did investigate Trump’s claims of election fraud. And although Josh Dawsey is bylined, the story mentions none of Dawsey’s several stories on contractors whom Trump hired in 2020, who looked for — but could not find — any evidence to back these claims (one two three).
More tellingly, WaPo’s four journalists don’t bother to correct Karoline Leavitt’s objectively false claim that, “President Trump won the election in a landslide,” a claim that could be easily debunked by pointing out that Trump won’t break 50% of the popular vote and won by less than 2%.
They just let Leavitt lie.
Worse still, they repeated Trump’s claims of grievance over and over, saying only that it is a frequent claim, not a false one.
/snip
November 23, 2024 by emptywheel
One reason why Trump managed to win the election in spite of his four felony prosecutions is because self-imagined journalists never fact-checked him when he falsely claimed his prosecutions — all of them — were partisan witch hunts.
This article, from WaPo, is a remarkable example.
It confirms what was already clear — that Trump will attempt to fire everyone who worked on his own criminal prosecutions — and adds that Trump also intends to use DOJ to investigate his claims of voter fraud that his own DOJ already debunked in late 2020. It describes this fascist project to politicize DOJ as evidence of his “intention to dramatically shake up the status quo in Washington.”
The post notes that Trump, “lost to Joe Biden but continues to insist [the election] was stolen from him in key battlegrounds,” and describes that, “neither the president-elect nor his allies have ever provided evidence to prove their claims of voter fraud.”
But it doesn’t mention that Bill Barr’s DOJ already did investigate Trump’s claims of election fraud. And although Josh Dawsey is bylined, the story mentions none of Dawsey’s several stories on contractors whom Trump hired in 2020, who looked for — but could not find — any evidence to back these claims (one two three).
More tellingly, WaPo’s four journalists don’t bother to correct Karoline Leavitt’s objectively false claim that, “President Trump won the election in a landslide,” a claim that could be easily debunked by pointing out that Trump won’t break 50% of the popular vote and won by less than 2%.
They just let Leavitt lie.
Worse still, they repeated Trump’s claims of grievance over and over, saying only that it is a frequent claim, not a false one.
/snip
13 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
