DEMOCRATIZATION: Acyn said it, they believed it!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2024

Blue America's leaders at work: Blue America, how about it? 

Did Candidate Donald J. Trump really commit a "verbal glitch"—a verbal glitch which would have been "obvious to anyone watching?"

So said Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post, in her most recent column. 

The column was posted this past Sunday. But the alleged glitch in question actually happen?

Within the past week, we've begun to think of the journalism on most of the Fox News Channel as (metaphorically) part of a (metaphoric) criminal enterprise. We'll have more of that in the weeks to come.

For the next few days, we'll be noting this fact:

The journalism in Blue American is nothing to brag about either. It's part of the way "our democracy" continues to fail as we continue to undergo our so-called "democratization of media."

A quick review from yesterday's report:

In the main, Rubin was commenting on the bizarre claims by Candidate Trump at last week's convention of The National Association of Black Journalists.

Not every claim was ludicrous, but quite a few plainly were. That included the ludicrous claim that Vice President Harris has only recently "turned black"—that Trump never knew, until recently, that Harris identifies as black. 

It was easy to see the sheer absurdity of that ridiculous claim. In our view, Rubin also made a decent point about the work of the mainstream press right at the end of her column

RUBIN (8/4/24): The mainstream media now faces a test of sorts. After the June 27 debate, the media spent three weeks flooding the zone with coverage of Biden’s frailty, in effect demanding every Democrat to defend Biden or distance themselves from him, and consulting a host of experts on aging. Failure to deploy similarly exacting treatment of Trump would confirm Democrats’ complaints that there is a bizarre double standard in coverage that allows Trump to escape appropriate scrutiny. It’s long past time to stop using euphemisms and soft-pedaling his bigotry. (As I have noted, the vast majority of outlets also have steered clear of assessing Trump’s mental and emotional state, despite repeated episodes in which his slurred speech, verbal glitches, incoherent ranting, mixing up people and bizarre references are obvious to anyone watching.)

Truth demands the free press pull no punches, even if that appears to be “taking sides.” (Taking the side of truth is the media’s job.) The NABJ journalists showed how it’s done. Now we wait to see whether others will follow their lead.

It's true! The press corps did "flood the zone" with discussion of President Biden's bizarre performance at the June 27 debate. In our view, that was completely appropriate.

Rubin followed that observation with a perfectly sensible challenge. We're inclined to agree with what Rubin says here:

Failure to deploy similarly exacting treatment of Trump would confirm Democrats’ complaints that there is a bizarre double standard in coverage...

It's true! The press corps deployed "exacting treatment" of President Biden in the aftermath of that disastrous debate. Failure to treat Candidate Trump in a similar way would suggest the existence of a double standard.

In our view, such a double standard actually does exist! But then, we came to the following claim—and we sagaciously clicked a link:

Trump’s mental and emotional state, despite repeated episodes in which his slurred speech, verbal glitches, incoherent ranting, mixing up people and bizarre references are obvious to anyone watching.

Because we've routinely been mugged by reality. we decided to "trust but verify." Beneath the term "verbal glitches," Rubin had supplied a link!

Alas! As with Anna Sergeyevna's husband in Lady with Lapdog, we "believed but we didn't believe." We decided to see if Rubin's link led to an actual verbal glitch—to a verbal glitch which would have been "obvious to anyone watching."

Almost surely, you know what we found.

When we clicked the link in question, we were taken to a pleasing post at The New Republic. No paywall blocked our path.

The post appeared on June 27; it was written by Talia Jane. Dual headline included, this is the way it starts:

Try to Make Any Sense of What Trump Is Saying Here:
Donald Trump’s glitches are getting out of control.

Donald Trump’s glitches are getting worse: During an appearance at a Turning Point USA rally in Arizona on Thursday, Trump incoherently declared, “When I’m president, I will use title 42 to end the tri—” before glitching to “and we have to do this.”

[Video: 9 seconds in length]

It’s not clear what exactly he was trying to say, but Trump’s mental rainbow wheels of death have become more prominent in recent months. He froze for more than 30 seconds during an NRA convention in May, and has been caught slurring his words at numerous campaign stops. Clips of Trump’s glitches, the verbal equivalent of watching a train crash unfurl in slow motion, have circulated widely among critics questioning his cognitive fitness...

According to Talia Jane, the (verbal) glitches of Donald J. Trump were getting out of control! The post included a brief bit of tape which showed Trump saying this:

 “When I’m president, I will use Title 42 to end the tri—and we have to do this.”

According to this journalist from our own Blue America, Trump's declaration had been incoherent. It wasn't clear what he'd been trying to say!

Like that famous fictional husband, we believed the New Republic, but also we didn't believe. We decided to search for the speech in question, just to see, for ourselves, what the candidate might have said.

The full speech was fairly easy to find. C-Span's videotape of the full speech can be suffered through here.

To see what the gentleman actually said, you need to jump to the 49-minute mark of the lengthy address. If you do, you'll see Candidate Trump making a statement which is perfectly clear:

What Donald Trump actually said:
“When I’m president, I will use Title 42 to end the tri—and we have to do this—to end the child trafficking crisis by returning all children to their families in their home countries, and we will do it immediately. We have to do it." 

We're sorry, but that's what he said. As you can see on the videotape, the meaning of his statement was a million percent, wholly clear. There was nothing confusing about it.

"It’s not clear what exactly he was trying to say?" That statement was baldly inaccurate! 

Alas! If Talia Jane had simply played 16 seconds of the speech instead of cutting it off at 9, everyone in the New Republic's readership would have been able to see what Trump actually said.

She went with 9 seconds instead of 16. Six weeks later, there was Rubin, linking to what the New Republic had done, saying that the verbal glitch would have been "obvious to anyone watching." 

This episode had the obvious stink of Acyn to it, and sure enough, there he was! Talia Jane had borrowed her 9-second clip from Acyn Torabi, the mysterious Internet personage who has been driving this fraudulent conduct along all through the course of this year.

As usual, Acyn had been a bit more colorful in his own fraudulent conduct. You can see his original post here—and here's the enjoyable way he transcribed Trump's inscrutable "verbal glitch:"

Text of original Acyn post:
Trump: I will use title 42 to end the tryyyyyyyy

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh boy, that was good!

That's the way Acyn transcribed what Donald J. Trump had said. He did so secure in the knowledge that people like Talia Jane would take his doctored tape and would run.

Go ahead! If you google Acyn's doctored text, you'll see some of the other giants of Blue America who took his bullshit and ran. To see Alternet's gong-show, just click here. 

For Yahoo News, click this.

We've already linked you to The New Republic; they published this bullshit too. Six weeks later, along came Rubin, and this piece of fraudulent flyweight foofaw jumped to the Washington Post.

Just a guess:

Acyn committed a fairly obvious act of fraud. We're willing to guess that nobody else actually fact-checked his work.

Talia Jane ran with it at the New Republic. Six weeks later, Rubin came along and saved some time by failing to fact-check the New Republic.

Because we've seen this bullshit a thousand times, we did fact-check Rubin's claim. We decided to click the link she provided. We've shown you what we found.

The fraudulence of this conduct is obvious. Even worse is the undisguised dumbness. 

Dearest darlings—ladies and gents—let's visit the facts of life:

At that June 27 debate, President Biden did seem to be suffering from some sort of cognitive challenge. To date, the mainstream press has made little effort so speak to medical specialists concerning what the apparent condition might entail.

That said, it seemed obvious that something was wrong. A good deal of commentary followed.

In our view, Candidate Trump is a badly disordered person—but no, Virginia, the nature of the problem he seems to exhibit isn't the same as with Biden. As thirty-freaking-seven medical specialists discussed in a best-selling book in 2017, it's entirely possible that this extremely strange person is suffering from a clinical "personality disorder"—indeed, from a severe personality disorder.

We'll guess that he could be diagnosed with "antisocial personality disorder"—colloquially, as a sociopath. In theory, that would be a very serious mental health issue—but no, it isn't the same disorder as the one which may be afflicting Biden.

Watching the Fox News Channel, we increasingly think that we're watching a (metaphorical) criminal enterprise. Watching people like Acyn, Talia Jane and Rubin, we occasionally get the sense that we're observing the laziest, but also the dumbest, people on earth.

The upper-end press has agreed from the start—Trump's possible psychiatric condition must never be discussed. People like the three we've mentioned are too dumb or too compliant to strike out on their own, and they're dumb enough to think we can win by pretending that Candidate Trump has been behaving the same way as President Biden.

Acyn makes the bullshit up; the other speak-chuckers advance it. With people like this as our tribal "thought leaders," is it really any surprise that our tribe can't quite seem to win?

The "democratization of media" has opened the world to people like Acyn. His clowning jumped to Morning Joe, but also to The New Republic and now to the Washington Post!

Tomorrow: When Trump claims Minnesota was stolen, CNN tries to object!