Evidently it’s contagious if you’re a liberal. The “it” being the propensity for importing out of thin air facts or testimony to support a desired narrative absent the real thing. We saw it most famously in Rep. Adam Schiff’s “dramatic reading” on the House floor of the transcript of the phone conversation between Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president. In Schiff’s “free translation,” he substituted incriminating language for the actual dialog.
Now it’s happened again. This time the inventor is former Bill Clinton press secretary and current CNN analyst Joe Lockhart, who tweeted yesterday:
Ok maybe I made up the convo, but you know that's exactly what they're thinking.
— Joe Lockhart (@joelockhart) January 22, 2020
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The problem of course with sharing such “wishful thoughts” aloud is the danger of their being repeated often enough to “become reality.” Or perhaps that’s the whole idea. As the Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra points out, Lockhart’s imaginary dialog was retweeted by the Washington Post’s resident “conservative” Jennifer Rubin. Rubin subsequently deleted it, but who knows how many of the 9.8 thousand Twitter users who retweeted it didn’t?
The problem of course with sharing such “wishful thoughts” aloud is the danger of their being repeated often enough to “become reality.” Or perhaps that’s the whole idea. As the Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra points out, Lockhart’s imaginary dialog was retweeted by the Washington Post’s resident “conservative” Jennifer Rubin. Rubin subsequently deleted it, but who knows how many of the 9.8 thousand Twitter users who retweeted it did the same?
Maybe I am overthinking Lockhart’s and Schiff’s motivation in sharing aloud their fantasies. Maybe like Homer Simpson, they simply make up their own “movie” when they get bored:
