Here, it turns out, is all you need to know about the defamatory, evidence-free allegations against President Trump retailed on Thursday by Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic.
A mere 24 hours after the story was published at Atlantic, the Democratic fundraising outfit ActBlue is soliciting donations via the façade of the leftist group VoteVets. (In fact, the tweet with the VoteVets video was posted at 9:04 AM EDT on 4 September, substantially less than 24 hours after the first archive of the Atlantic post at Wayback, which shows an Atlantic website time stamp of 5:32 PM EDT on 3 September.)
So what? you might ask. This is what:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Donald Trump called our fallen troops "suckers" and "losers."
They can't speak for themselves, but these 6 Gold Star families speak for our fallen.
Here is their POWERFUL message.#GoldStarParentsAgainstTrump #VeteransAgainstTrump pic.twitter.com/ZnbFevqkNR— VoteVets (@votevets) September 4, 2020
This video was quite obviously not just thrown together, uncued (and overnight!), in the space of less than 24 hours. This had to be in the works beforehand.
Which means, from the sentient being’s analytical perspective, that a bunch of people other than Jeffrey Goldberg knew what he was going to publish on 3 September 2020. Not just any people either, but a network of PAC activists and fundraisers for the Democratic Party.
As regards Mr. Goldberg and his story, there seem to be two likely scenarios. One is that he shared the findings of his diligent journalism with Democratic operatives before he published the story.
The other is that this was a packaged story supplied to him by one of the leftist media “war rooms” that now concoct so much of the outline copy, and so many of the talking points, for the visible front-men and women of the mainstream media.
Notice what happens who you hover your cursor over the video clip in the tweet, as I did.
Feel free to follow the link to the VoteVets site to verify the ActBlue connection. That ActBlue is cited in the video’s metadata is, again, all you need to know.
There are, however, a few other things to know. One is that whoever is putting this media campaign together is trying to create the semblance of a growing drumbeat, by piling on with purported “confirmations” of the claim that Trump said “losers” and “suckers.”
The “confirmations” continue to be as anonymous as the original allegations. For all we know, there are no independent sources at all. This whole thing is utter fiction distributed on some schedule from a media war room.
The confirmations are getting more asinine too, like this one, in which a nameless officer heard from someone else unnamed that Trump said the fateful words. AP ponied this one up.
#TheAtlantic | An anonymous Marine who was – told about the alleged comments – confirmed some of the comments to the AP.
Told?
This story is disintegrating fast. https://t.co/o7zjcZU86s
— ????????? (@CifJamestown) September 4, 2020
Great: double anonymous hearsay. Can we go for a triple, please? Because America has been dangled with a “dossier” based on just that elevated standard for four years now. We’re getting fretful and nostalgic now that the magic is fading.
I am really saddened to see a journalist I’ve respected, Jennifer Griffin, getting sucked into this, complete with source anonymity. We are free to assume the most likely scenario, which is that the “confirmation” came from the same source Jeffrey Goldberg used (i.e., regarding the “Vietnam” part of the tale).
NEW, @JenGriffinFNC confirms former Trump admin official confirms details in The Atlantic story, including quotes about veterans. When the President spoke about the Vietnam War he said, “It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker.”
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) September 4, 2020
I don’t know if Fox News is having to be sucked into it or not. The media organizations that still have any compunction need to seriously consider what they’re doing here, selling their credibility down the river, a-bob with the river trash in a rushing current that will never bring it back.
Others have made the valid point that if the alleged outbursts from Trump really happened, there’s no way we wouldn’t have heard of it before now. The first opportunity, according to the story line, would have been in 2018. No one anxious to defame Trump has ever shown the slightest patience, loyalty, or ability to keep his counsel; we are justified in simply dismissing the possibility that anyone managed to keep quiet about this until now.
No, the confident bet is that this is all a big lie. The praeter-immediate fundraising pounce with the repulsively exploitative VoteVets video seals the deal. It’s not just a big lie; it’s a toyetic Hollywood-level big lie with tie-ins. Next up, the fast-food kids’ meal, the T-shirts and soda-can coozies, and the special edition crossover-hybrid vehicle with a carbon mitigation certificate.
I’m seeing anti-Trump users on social media pile on with the theme that those who don’t believe the story are “cultists.”
The non-believers point out that the Trump derangement of their antagonists is a “cult.”
That’s exactly where the substance of this particular debate belongs. Not in the void of scurrilous allegations for which there will never be any sort of empirical validation, but in the pointless back and forth:
“You’re a cultist!”
“No, YOU’RE a cultist!”
Only one side in that debate rushed out with a slick video raising money off the memory of America’s war dead within 24 hours of the evidence-free story’s publication. You don’t have to be King Solomon of Israel to figure that one out.
