Friday 28 August 2020

"No one will be safe" if Biden wins

Are there any rules in politics? Is there a clause somewhere in the US constitution for example which states that all men or women elected to be president of the United States are obliged by statute to tell the truth and nothing but the truth? Well no there isn't but perhaps it should be added as an addendum. Donald Trump has taken truth and accuracy to a new level, downwards. Like that wonderful expression "alternative facts" coined by Kellyanne Conway, the soon-to-depart Trump counsellor. She used it when trying to put across the view that more people had attended Trump's inaugural ceremony in 2016 than the number given by newspapers, the police and many others. Trump has a wardrobe of alternative facts at his disposal and uses them liberally. Take his comment about Biden during his big acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday. He said the US would not be safe under Biden because he planned to release from jail 400,000 criminals on to the streets "and into your neighbourhoods" and then defund all police departments across the country. Presumably so that those 400,000 freed criminals can go whoopee and start looting shops and banks at will. It's a great line but is it truthful or accurate or honest? I can't remember Biden hinting at doing anythng like this. But he probably said something about the police after all the shootings involving white police officers opening fire on black people, and he may have said he was worried about overcrowded prisons. I'm not sure. But under the alternative facts syndrome, Trump presumably felt he was justified in going the whole hog and warning people that if they voted for Biden they should expect a knock on their door the next day and be confronted by an Armelite-carrying hoodlum just released from jail. Trump also took credit for reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs. But I could have sworn Barack Obama did that in a piece of legislation in 2014. That's a classic piece of alternative facts. Some people might think Obama was responsible for reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs but if you look at it from a different angle - Trump's angle - he, Trump, did it. Unless you are a devoted Washington politics addict you're not going to know whether Trump did it or Obama did it but if Trump says he did it, then hell of course he did. It's outrageous but if you can get away with it, who cares. Or that at least seems to be the strategy behind many of the claims Trump made in his acceptance speech. IF the whole country believes everything Trump says, whether an alternative fact or a real fact or a blatant untruth, then he will be reelected in a landslide. Biden and Kamala Harris are hoping that not everyone will believe Trump is telling the truth.

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