Monday, August 31, 2020

WE'RE LETTING REPUBLICANS CREATE THEIR OWN REALITY AGAIN

The mainstream media is now implying that violent protesters are the central issue in the presidential election, or at least one of the central issues.





That's what Donald Trump's campaign wants the #1 issue to be. Is it? No, it isn't.



Here are the top six responses in August to the question "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?" according to Gallup.
Coronavirus/Diseases: 35%
The government/Poor leadership: 22%
Race relations/racism: 10%
Economy in general: 7%
Unifying the country: 4%
Crime/violence: 4%
But Trumpworld has been bellowing about blood in the streets for months, and the media wants a horserace, so that's what we're talking about.

Will Stancil says the press is turning the issue into "this year's 'e-mails.'"



Will it work? We'll see.

*****

How else are Trump and his allies creating their own reality? Well, you might believe that the Trumpers' attempt to promote coronavirus misinformation over the weekend failed...
Twitter on Sunday took down a tweet containing a false claim about coronavirus death statistics that was made by a supporter of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory -- a post that President Donald Trump had retweeted earlier in the day.

The tweet -- which has been replaced with a message saying, "This Tweet is no longer available because it violated the Twitter Rules -- from "Mel Q," copied from someone else's Facebook post, claimed that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had "quietly" updated its numbers "to admit that only 6%" of people listed as coronavirus deaths "actually died from Covid," since "the other 94% had 2-3 other serious illnesses."

That's not what the CDC said....

The CDC's latest regular update to a public statistics page on the pandemic -- there was nothing especially "quiet" about it -- said that for 6% of the deaths included in its statistics, "Covid-19 was the only cause mentioned" on the deceased person's death certificate.

That is not at all the same thing as saying only 6% of reported Covid-19 deaths "actually died" from Covid-19. It simply means that the other 94% were listed as having at least one additional factor contributing to their death.
Highlighted in the "Mel Q" tweet -- you can see a screenshot here -- was the sentence "For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned." This is treated as a new revelation.

However:


Yes -- if you go the link directly above, you see the same CDC page from May 28, with the sentence "For 7% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned."

It won't surprise you that this fake "revelation" is still circulating on right-wing sites:



But it's also still out there in the mainstream press. Here's a story from WFLA in Tampa: "New CDC Report Shows 94% of COVID-19 Deaths in US Had Contributing Conditions." Here's Fox 5 in San Diego: same headline. The story is up at this local TV channel's news site, and this one. It's presented as new information, and the context is ignored:



Republicans know how to lead the media around by the nose. They knew how to do this long before Trump came along. They can do it with a frontal assault or a subtle release of disinformation about an innocuous government report.

The press doesn't have to rise to the bait. But it usually does.

*****

UPDATE: And there you have it.



It's now established fact on the right. They don't even have to explain what they're referring to.


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