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It's not just Sharpie-gate. This is part of a broader pattern.
Kevin M. Kruse RetweetedIt's not just Sharpie-gate. This is part of a broader pattern.
I count at least seven glaring examples in which government officials have wheeled into action in an effort to make Trumps lies, errors and obsessions into truths.
Here's my rundown:
Link to tweet
The Plum Line Opinion
Not just Sharpie-gate: 7 other times officials tried to fabricate Trumps truth
By Greg Sargent, Opinion writer
September 5 at 10:30 AM
As youve heard, President Trump displayed a chart that appeared to be doctored with a Sharpie to retroactively demonstrate that he had been right when he falsely warned that Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian.
This has set in motion a very D.C.-style mystery, though with a Trumpian twist: Who, multiple news organizations have asked, doctored the chart? Its a good question.
But its also illuminating to look at this as part of a much larger pattern: Again and again, government officials have wheeled into action in an effort to make Trumps lies, errors and obsessions into truths, in some cases issuing official information explicitly shaped or doctored to do so.
By my count, this has happened at least seven times:
In January 2017, after the media reported on Trumps paltry inaugural crowd size, resulting in enraged but preposterous pushback from Trump, he dispatched then-press secretary Sean Spicer to tell multiple lies buttressing his stance. As Glenn Kessler crucially noted, some of these were part of a prepared White House statement. Trump ordered his then-acting National Park Service chief to hunt for helpful photographic evidence. The NPS does not estimate crowd sizes, and the official was shocked, but he carried out Trumps request, finding nothing.
{snip}
Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog. He joined The Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer. Follow https://twitter.com/theplumlinegs
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It's not just Sharpie-gate. This is part of a broader pattern. (Original Post)
mahatmakanejeeves
Sep 2019
OP
liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)1. If it's what takes him down, I am good
Want him out of office, then we can focus on prosecuting him
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,431 posts)2. More of the same
Trump continues to push erroneous claim about Alabama as Dorian lashes Carolinas
A day after he attempted to retroactively justify his Sunday tweet by displaying a modified forecast map, the president again insisted he was right to say Alabama could have been strongly affected.
By John Wagner
2 hours ago
A day after he attempted to retroactively justify his Sunday tweet by displaying a modified forecast map, the president again insisted he was right to say Alabama could have been strongly affected.
By John Wagner
2 hours ago
Analysis: Trumps insistence that his incorrect Alabama tweet was correct tips into the Orwellian