If there's one thing that American leftist politicians are good at, it's lying and fabricating. They are the epitome of the joke: "How do you know that a politician is lying? His lips move."
For example, recently one senator Amy Klobuchar tweeted: "Under President Trump, electricity prices are surging, up 11%, leaving millions behind in their utility bills, with past-due balances at an all-time high. American families deserve better."
And, indeed, under Trump's second term in office electricity prices have gone up by about that much on average. So where's the lie?
It's a lie by omission, of course.
What she's failing to tell is that electricity prices were going up at that same rate, and even more, during the entire presidency of Joe Biden. She is implicitly giving the impression that the electricity prices only started going up after Trump's second term in office. In reality, the prices have had an upwards trend for a long time. And, in fact, the increase in prices only accelerated during Biden's presidency. If anything, the rate of increase is now slightly slower than during Biden.
You didn't see senator Klobuchar making such tweets under Biden. I wonder why.
If there would be anything to blame Trump for, it's not that electricity prices have increased, but that he didn't manage to stop that upwards trend. However, even then that would be unfair because electricity cost is one of those things that the PotUS has very little control over, and individual state governments have a significantly stronger effect (and, indeed, the percentages vary wildly from state to state.)
Another infamous leftist senator, Elizabeth Warren, make a tweet blaming Trump for "making your Thanksgiving more expensive."
This is a double lie. The first one is the same as the previous: In other words, making it sound like prices suddenly went up during Trump's second term, while in reality they have been continuously going up during the past several years, and in fact during Trump's administration the increase has only slowed down from what it was during Biden. She is lying by omission, by making it sound like it's all Trump's fault and implying that the prices have only started going up now.
The second lie is that she is blaming Trump's policies (particularly his tariffs) for the increase in price, disregarding other factors. As an example, she posted a picture that lists, among other things, the price of fresh turkey having gone up 36%.
What the graph isn't showing is the reason why the price of turkey has gone up: And that's because not one but two infectious bird diseases have been ravaging American turkey farming, causing significantly decreased and more costly production. It has nothing to do with Trump's tariffs and everything to do with natural contagious diseases. It's, in fact, a miracle that the price of turkey has gone up only by 36% (something that actually might have something to do with Trump's economic policies.)
The graph is also very misleading in its other examples. For example it claims that the price of "elbow pasta" has gone up by 16%. However, when people have dug up the sources for this, it turns out that the graph is deceptively (without telling about it) showing the price of one particular imported foreign brand of elbow pasta, not the overall price of such pasta in the country, which hasn't increased on average. It's a deception so blatant that it's actually astonishing.
Perhaps the most blatant lie of them all happened during a CNN broadcast, where they show a graph titled "your costs are up vs. a year ago", with numbers like "groceries: 85%", "utilities: 78%" and so on.
Many other news sources, influencers, politicians and commentators jumped to the opportunity to claim that the price of groceries has gone up by 85%, utilities by 78% and so on! These are damning numbers! Everything is becoming significantly more expensive under Trump! Heck, that's almost double the price for groceries alone!
Except that the broadcast was highly misleading. The "85%" was not the increase in price of groceries. It was the percentage of people who had been polled and answered that they felt like the price of groceries had gone up. It has nothing to do with how much. In other words:
Poll: "85% of respondents feel the price of groceries have gone up."
Broadcast: "The price of groceries has gone up by 85%."
The other two examples were at least (probably) quoting real numbers, even if isolated from their context. This one is just outright making a false claim and stating a false number.
At least some leftist commentators issued a half-assed retraction when they found out they had been bamboozled. Not that they stopped blaming Trump anyway.
Comments
Post a Comment