A couple of days ago the New York Post ran a story that alleged copies of VP Kamala Harris' children's book, Superheroes Are Everywhere were being included in welcome packs for immigrant children at Long Beach, California and she was therefore profiting from immigration. This would have been illegal, if true, so it was eagerly seized upon by several prominent Repuglicans and repeated on social media such as Twitter without the slightest attempt at fact-checking first. Why spoil a good scandal with truth, eh?
The New York Post link was shared by a whole bunch of prominent Republicans. (And that's not even counting how other right-wing outlets copied the story.) Now -- after a Washington Post fact check -- the New York Post story is no longer there. I'm inquiring. pic.twitter.com/OkkRXzAOSL
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 27, 2021
An announcement: Today I handed in my resignation to my editors at the New York Post.
— Laura Italiano (@Italiano_Laura) April 27, 2021
Like all good lies it is based on a small grain of truth - a single copy of the VP's book was donated to the immigration centre and included in a library to which the immigrant children have access. No-one bought the copy and none were included in any welcome packs, so there was no way that Kamala Harris could have profited from the donation.
When the Washington Post did what the Repuglican politicians and their dutiful lick-spittle flunkies in the news media could have done - fact checked and discovered the lie - the New York Post, from the same stable as Fox News, first pulled the story, then issued a reedited version. But so far, no apology.
Laura Italiano has now resigned her post as a reporter for the New York Post, saying that her failure to push back hard enough against the order to write it was her breaking point..
The Repuglican party, which believes it is entitled to govern America, regardless of what the American electorate want, can be expected to continue this sort of campaign of smears and lies until at least 2024.
Many of them believe their hero, the odious Donald J Trump, will then rise phoenix-like from the ashes of his disastrous four-years of playing at being president from his bedroom, and again lead the party to victory - something he never actually achieved, either in 2016 and certainly not in 2020, when he increased the margin by which he was beaten in the popular vote - the first ever presidential candidate to manage that feat.
And we can expect a sub-text of racism to accompany these smears and lies as the Trumpanzees play to their white supremacist, Talibangelical Christian base. The one thing that terrifies them is the thought of a black woman VP becoming president should Biden die in office. They were nearly beside themselves with rage when Barak Obama won the presidency and a black family occupied the White House for two terms. Just imagine their rage if another black person and a woman even! achieves the same!
That is the stuff of nightmares for GOP politicians and their white supremacist, conservative Christian base, so we can expect a dirty, no-holds-barred campaign between now and 2024.
American politics is not a pretty site at the moment with conservative Christians pulling on so many of the strings. And they have already attempted a coup d’état once...
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