Former President Donald Trump told an entirely fictional story on Saturday about how he had supposedly outwitted his Democratic opponents by releasing “the tape” of the 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that was a key factor in Trump’s first impeachment.
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Facts First: Trump’s story is a complete fabrication. No tape of his call with Zelensky was ever released; Pelosi could not possibly have been angry with her allies after hearing a tape of the call because she has never heard a tape of the call. In fact, as of nearly five years after the July 2019 call, there is no known US recording of the conversation. What Trump’s White House actually released in September 2019 was a rough written transcript of the call — which corroborated, rather than contradicted, a government whistleblower’s central allegations about what Trump had said. Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said Sunday that Trump’s story is “fact-free nonsense.”
I’m with you, but what could possibly be said about Trump that his followers wouldn’t dismiss as “fake news” or outright praise him for. They don’t even care that he’s a rapist.
It’s not about them believing any one story in particular. It’s about moving the median point of the atmosphere they’re immersed in subtly in a less awful direction.
More directly: I’m saying we should be using dirty tricks to move the Overton window in a more positive and constructive direction, because they’ve been using the same tricks in the interest of increasing wealth disparity and concentration for decades.
“Don’t you think he looks tired?”