Where’s America’s Apology for Lie after Lie?

By JOHN YOUNG

I’m waiting for my apology from Newsmax. nnLast week it apologized to Eric Coomer, director of security for Dominion Voting Systems, for spreading Republican lies about the 2020 election.

It apologized for “any harm that our reporting” caused to Coomer and his family. They had received death threats generated by the Trump lie machine.

Newsmax is trying to save its tail feathers ahead of a lawsuit for which, in the case of Fox News and its own Big Lie claims, Dominion seeks $1.8 million.

Dominion also is suing Rudy Giuliani and One America News Network, among others.

It dropped Newsmax from its lawsuit after the apology and a retraction of its false reporting.

What I want to know is why Newsmax is not apologizing to me, and to all Americans who value democracy and dread oligarchy.

I want an apology from agents who triggered an insurrection — blood flowing in our Capitol – my Capitol.

I want an apology from those who continue to live by the Big Lie. I won’t get that apology, because they live for lies.

Lies – like the claim that Joe Biden is out to take the hamburger right out of your hands, and cut beef production by 90%. Based solely on a British tabloid’s squirrelly “analysis” of Biden’s climate proposals, Fox News went to town on that Whopper with cheese.

Fox News’ John Roberts later acknowledged the speciousness of that. Though among his on-air comrades, he was the only one with the guts to admit it.

They felt no such obligation, as truth is not what they do.

Further evidence comes from the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, where a reporter resigned after being ordered to write that a children’s book by Kamala Harris had been imposed upon unattended minors at the border.

Lies, lies, lies. But none supersedes the Big Lie about the dethroning of our previous president.

A recent survey found that 60% of Republicans think the election was stolen — a harrowing premise if derived from actual evidence.

Clearly 60% of Republicans need none.

Donald Trump will go down as a most inconsequential president for his lack of accomplishments, but as pertains to lasting radioactivity, the Big Lie looks to have the half-life of plutonium.

As the Republicans populate their leadership ahead of 2022, quite clearly the only thing that matters is allegiance to the Big Lie.

That means that Congresswoman Liz Cheney is toast.

To be nominated by the GOP, truth need not apply.

The folly of the Arizona recount now ongoing, and claims that the results in Georgia and Pennsylvania were rigged, is that several Republicans won in precincts where voters could not hack voting for Trump. Were their ballots tainted as well?

The interesting thing about the posturing to win Trump’s favor in advance of what’s to come in Republican primaries is that he is more reviled today by Americans than ever before – and that’s a lot, because he’s Gallup’s least popular president ever polled.

As low as Trump’s approval ratings are – 38.6% in leaving office, it’s still stunning that even that many Americans support him. But they have been conditioned to accept lie after lie, and so they were quite ready to accept the Big Lie.

Back to the matter of Joe Biden supposedly wanting to take beef off your table:

“Crazy narratives are tough to dispel,” writes Molly Roberts in the Washington Post. “They’re designed to inflame by warping a matter of policy into a matter of identity.”

With the lie about Biden taking our beef, Roberts writes, Trumpians find a way to deflect any serious discussion of climate change, just as Trump did in dismissing wind power: “And they say the noise causes cancer.”

The Big Lie lives on not because of anything factual that supports it, but because angry people don’t want to think about serious responses to serious national challenges. They desire that a clown shall lead them.

America deserves an apology and a retraction.

John Young is a longtime Texas newspaperman who now lives in Fort Collins, Colo. Email jyoungcolumn@gmail.com. See johnyoungcolumn.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2021

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