or, at least not lying any more than any politician routinely does. Let me define what I mean by “a lie”. A lie is a knowing telling of an untruth with an intention to deceive. Now I can comment on Gerard Baker’s Wall Street Journal remarks:
Now it’s important to say here that the past few years haven’t exactly been a golden age for presidential credibility. Mr. Biden’s predecessor set the bar for authoritative misdirection extremely high.
But you’ll recall that President Trump’s whoppers were, in the somber reporting of the time, cast as an existential threat to the very fabric of American democracy. News articles would report something he’d said as either an outright lie or with the censorious clarification that his words were “false†or “without evidence.†(I earned infamy a few years back as editor of the news pages of this newspaper for insisting that reporting something confidently as a “lie†required a level of knowledge about a person’s mind that we probably didn’t have.)
I don’t see news organizations reporting that President Biden has “falsely†stated that there had been no complaints from U.S. allies, or that he has said “without evidence†that Covid was on the wane. Republicans lie. Democrats merely misspeak.
accompanied by a recital of Biden’s “lies”. Note that his criticism is more of media hypocrisy than it is of Biden mendacity. My take is that President Biden has probably been in politics long enough that he can no longer tell what the truth is. That’s an occupational hazard. My take on the media is that most outlets don’t care whether it’s true or false as long as it’s well-intentioned. They can tell whether it’s well-intentioned by the political agenda being advanced.
Hmmm, I think all politicians spin and they all walk the line on lying but part of the problem here is that Baker is also lying, or at least walking that line. Look what he said here.
“Take that slightly menacing speech on vaccine mandates last week. Even within the span of a few minutes Mr. Biden managed a baffling inconsistency. One moment he assured us that if we were vaccinated we had an infinitesimal chance of getting sick enough to need hospitalization. But the next moment he said the unvaccinated were threatening the health of those of us who are vaccinated.”
Anyone with a brain and understands covid or made some minimal effort to learn about it and vaccines knows that what Biden said is true. You do have a small chance of getting covid if vaccinated and it is true that the unvaccinated are a threat. As much of a partisan hit piece as anything.
Steve