Imagine a Hillary Clinton surrogate said something an interviewer knew to be false, then repeated that obvious and knowing falsehood to a prominent journalist like Andrea Mitchell. That’s the amazing thing that happened when Republican Senator and Donald Trump supporter Cory Gardner appeared on MSNBC to defend Trump’s latest remarks about his support for violating the U.S. Constitution and human norms.
After allowing Gardner to tell a probable lie by saying he hadn’t heard Trump’s comments about denying counsel and medical care to a U.S. citizen suspected of terrorism, Mitchell meekly tried to challenge Gardner on what was a definite lie, only to have him insist that it wasn’t a lie. Watch Mitchell’s reaction when Gardner doubles down, then watch the next thing she says to him:
Sen. Cory Gardner: Gardner: we have a president whose avowed, who acknowledged his policy was one of leading from behind, who called the United States junior varsity — called the terrorists junior varsity when it comes to acts against the United States, that’s not leadership, that’s leading from behind…
Andrea Mitchell: I don’t think he would say it was his avowed policy of leading from behind, but that’s for another debate…
Sen. Cory Gardner: Well, that’s what he said the United States was, that we would lead from behind…
You can see that Mitchell knows it’s a lie, she’s shaking her head “no” while he’s saying it, yet she never bothers to correct him. It is a fact that the phrase “leading from behind” was an anonymous quote from a New Yorker article, and was never uttered by President Obama. It was a shorthand, which may or may not have been shopped by an Obama administration official, that was used to describe a policy that the Obama administration publicly described in a distinctly more nuanced way:
“This is the Obama conception of the U.S. role in the world – to work through multilateral organizations and bilateral relationships to make sure that the steps we are taking are amplified,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “Maybe this is a different conception of U.S. leadership. But we believe leadership should galvanize an international response, not rely on a unilateral U.S. response.”
The size of the lie here is irrelevant, though, because the important thing to recognize is that Mitchell knew it was a lie, but let it go anyway. The news media is utterly failing to stem the tide of falsehoods streaming across the airwaves, and as this clip demonstrates, it doesn’t even matter if they know they’re being lied to.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
