MARK PENN GOES MASK OFF AS A GOP DISINFORMATIONIST, BUT HE'LL STILL GET TO SCOLD DEMOCRATS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES. by No More Mister Nice Blog

 / by Steve M. / Sep 14, 2024 at 1:33 AM

Kamala Harris wiped the floor with Donald Trump in Tuesday night's debate, so the GOP and its propaganda wing are now insisting that there was A Conspiracy So Vast to throw the debate to Harris. The Murdoch media has signed on to this effort by giving Mark Penn and his fellow Fox News Democrat Andrew Stein a spot on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, where they argue that ABC cheated Trump:

[Harris] enlisted every charge ever leveled against Mr. Trump, regardless of the truth. That included, to name a few, the false claims that he favors a national abortion ban and opposes in vitro fertilization, that he called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., “very fine people,” and that he threatened a “bloodbath” if he loses the election.

Each is untrue: Mr. Trump has made clear he opposes a national abortion ban. He favors IVF and has even said the government should pay for it. He condemned the Charlottesville neo-Nazis. And he predicted a financial “bloodbath” for the auto industry if he loses and the Biden-Harris electric-vehicle mandates progress.

Had the moderators turned to Ms. Harris after these lies and said, “That has been debunked,” we might be having a totally different conversation about the debate, given how she tends to react when challenged.

The moderators fact-checked Trump on outrageous assertions that are unambiguously false: No state allows a born-alive infant to be murdered. Authorities in Springfield, Ohio, have said that no one is eating pets in their community. By contrast, the supposed debunking of the charge that Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville has itself been debunked. The "bloodbath" remark was ambiguous -- Trump was talking about the economy, but then he said, "Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath, for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it," which at least suggests that he anticipates a society-wide apocalypse if he loses the election. And when there's a conflict between Trump's current positions and past statements -- or statements found in the Project 2025 manifesto, which is largely written by Trump advisers -- what are the undisputed facts about Trump's positions?

Beyond that, Penn and Stein's swipe at Harris -- "given how she tends to react when challenged" -- is absurd. How does she react when challenged? Based on the events of Tuesday night, when she was challenged relentlessly by Trump, she reacts with poise, precision, eloquence, and a command of the facts. I'm sure she would have handled an ABC fact-check or two deftly and effectively. (I guess it would be unfair to expect Trump to maintain poise when being questioned on accuracy.)

What's more, Penn and Stein are gaslighting us. Harris didn't out-debate Trump because he was fact-checked. She out-debated him because she showed him for what he is, a vain, angry man with extreme ideas. There wasn't a fact check involved when Trump had a meltdown over Harris's (accurate) assertion that attendees get bored at his rallies and leave early. And Trump's widely mocked slander of Haitian immigrants in Ohio -- "They're eating the dogs" -- occurred before ABC's fact check.

Penn went further on the podcast of John Solomon, a formerly respectable journalist now best known for peddling Russia-friendly falsehoods about the Biden family and Ukraine in collaboration with Rudy Giuliani. Here's what Penn said to Solomon about how ABC handled the debate:

"I actually think they should do a full internal investigation, hire an outside law firm. I don't know how much of this was planned in advance," Penn told the "John Solomon Reports" podcast.

"I don't know what they told the Harris campaign. I think the day after, suspicion here is really quite high, and I think a review of all their internal texts and emails really should be done by an independent party to find out to what extent they were planning on, in effect, you know, fact-checking just one candidate and in effect, rigging the outcome of this debate. I think the situation demands nothing less than that," he added.

(Emphasis added.)

In the Journal op-ed, Penn merely accuses ABC of pro-Harris bias. Here, in a just-asking-questions way, Penn is suggesting that ABC might have colluded with the Harris campaign to rig the debate, even though Harris's triumph didn't depend in any way on ABC's fact checks.

There was no such collusion and Penn knows it, but he's being a good disinformationist in an attempt to bring down the party he hates, a party that exiled him years ago, a party whose nominee he and his wife wanted to defeat with their No Labels project this year.

And yet I'm certain that we'll see Mark Penn on the op-ed page of The New York Times next month, or two years from now, or four years from now, and he'll be scolding Democrats as he always does for failing to move far enough right for his tastes. His bio will still include some version of "Mark Penn was a pollster and an adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton from 1995 to 2008," and no acknowledgment of his time advising Donald Trump on impeachment or his role in the attempt to ratfuck the 2024 presidential election to prevent a Democratic victory. Penn is anti-Democratic hack, but that fact will never be acknowledged at the Times.

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