This page was last updated on June 16, 2016.
ANOTHER REASON TO OPPOSE TRUMP; Carl Davidson; Facebook; May 30, 2016.
You can learn more about BCR’s leftster management here. “Leftster” is the combination of leftist and gangster, inspired by the left-originated “bankster.”
They know they can’t win if they don’t lie #12. (links to the other episodes in this series)
If you believe them, lefties have been “licking their chops” over Donald Trump’s (DT) candidacy. If so, why attack DT with lies? Is it out of habit?
On his Facebook page, Carl Davidson (KD) of Beaver County Reds (BCR) wrote, “ANOTHER REASON TO OPPOSE TRUMP...if you needed one. The simple way to improve SS is to lift the cap off FICA, which stops collecting the tax on incomes over $116K.” KD’s referring to a post on Crooks and Liars (C&L) entitled “Surprise, Surprise. Trump’s Been Lying About His Opposition To Cutting Social Security.” C&L is a lefty opinion website.
You can skip to the end if you are short on time. You’ll find one of the contributors to the lie had an Emily Litella moment.
Every presidential election lefties drag out the “Republicans want to take away your SS benefits” BS. This year is no different.
KD knows his “simple way to improve SS” is false but he repeats it over and over nevertheless. Please read “Socialist Security and Medicare” for details. By “incomes,” KD means “income from wages and salaries” (12/31/12), as it is today.
The C&L piece is a lefty interpretation of a lefty interpretation (Huffington Post) of a poorly-written Bloomberg Businessweek (BB) article plus selective quoting. Read the BB piece and you will find at least two places where it says Donald Trump opposes SS cuts. By the time C&L spits out its story, however, we’re told “Trump’s Been Lying About His Opposition To Cutting Social Security.” This is an example of what I call propaganda laundering. You’ll see what I mean below.
According to the BB article, “[DT] conveyed and defended a clear set of ideas that drew record numbers of Republican primary voters, even though—or more likely because—they often cut against right-wing orthodoxy: protect Social Security benefits, …” You won’t find this excerpt quoted by KD, C&L, and HuffPo.
When the BB author asked “what he thought the GOP would look like in five years,” DT responded, “Love the question. Five, 10 years from now—different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry. What I want to do, I think cutting Social Security is a big mistake for the Republican Party. And I know it’s a big part of the budget. Cutting it the wrong way is a big mistake, and even cutting it [at all].” If you’re like me, you likely asked yourself, did “it” in the last sentence mean SS or “the budget?”
Following what DT wants to communicate can be challenging at times because he does a poor job of covering multiple topics at the same time. In this case, DT was talking about the budget and SS and everything in the quote was okay, until the last sentence. Did “it” mean SS or “the budget?” Unfortunately, the BB author didn’t ask for clarification. Elsewhere in his piece the BB author wrote DT wants to “protect Social Security benefits” and “Trump criticized Ryan’s proposed entitlement cuts as unfair and politically foolish.” With this context, I lean to “it” meaning “the budget.” This would also explain why the BB author didn’t ask for clarification. Further, if DT had ever given an indication he wanted to cut SS benefits, lefties would have been all over it and wouldn’t need to resort to quote laundering.
Later in the BB article, the author wrote, “According to a source in the room, Trump criticized Ryan’s proposed entitlement cuts as unfair and politically foolish. ‘From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,’ Trump told Ryan. ‘But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’”
The last paragraph is a mess. The BB author quoted DT, but the author got those quotes from an unnamed third party. Add in DT’s aforementioned problem covering multiple topics at the same time and you have a quote ripe for abuse, and HuffPo took advantage.
HuffPo turned “According to a source in the room, Trump criticized Ryan’s proposed entitlement cuts as unfair and politically foolish. ‘From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,’ Trump told Ryan” into “‘From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,’ Trump said of cutting Social Security.” This is why HuffPo excluded DT’s other SS comments from its hit piece. You can’t write HuffPo’s version of DT’s position if you’ve already established DT opposes SS cuts.
Now we have HuffPo’s Emily Litella moment.
During my final fact-checking pass, I ran into the following correction issued by HuffPo on May 31st:
“A previous version of this article misrepresented the quote attributed to Donald Trump as saying that the candidate suggested support for cuts to Social Security. The article below has been updated. We regret the error.”
HuffPo also changed the title to “Trump Opposes Cutting Social Security From A ‘Moral Standpoint’: Report (CORRECTED),” followed by “The presumptive Republican nominee stuck to his public position during a private meeting with Paul Ryan.” I lost the original title, but this portion (donald-trump-supports-cutting-social-security-report-says) of the article’s URL tells the story.
While it’s nice HuffPo acknowledged lying about DT’s SS position, the damage – if any – is done. People tend to remember an accusation but not the correction, and that’s if a person even saw the correction.
As of the “last updated” date at the top of this review, KD, C&L, and so on have not passed along HuffPo’s correction. I won’t hold my breath waiting.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity. <g>
© 2004-2016 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.