Trust in Media
The other big part of the red pilled worldview is a lack of trust in the media.
We’ve all heard the term “fake news.” This is what that term implies: That the media is partisan and lying and have abandoned their fourth estate responsibilities as a check on power.
We need a shared understanding of reality to be able to work as a community and create our future together. And we need someone to hold powerful people accountable.
And we don’t have that. At all.
There’s a phenomenon dubbed the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. I bet you’ve experienced it. It goes like this:
You read an article about a topic you know something about, and you realize how little the journalist who wrote it knows about your topic. It’s an oversimplification, misleading, or downright wrong.
Then you proceed to turn the page and read an article about some other topic you’re not an expert on, and you promptly forget what you just noticed, and you trust that this article surely is telling the truth.
But of course it isn’t.
I’ve had this experience many times. You probably have too.
After Trump got elected, I was seriously concerned about the survival of the US Democracy.
A thriving democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and so I signed up for a paid subscription to The Washington Post. Democracy dies in darkness, as their slogan says. Better shed some light.
I quickly learned the errors of my ways.
Article after article, I saw the same pattern:
There’s some tiny bit of real data. They’ll write a whole article of narrative, interpreting the thing. And then buried in paragraph seven is the real nugget of information that the whole article was based on. But when you go check out the source, it turns out that it doesn’t support the narrative of the article.
Try it yourself. Read almost any article carefully. Ignore any adjectives, assertions, generalizations, loosely defined or undefined terms, and see what you’re left with.
A Fun Game
I’ll walk you through an example so you can see how this works.
Try to look beyond the Trump piece and just notice the machinations at work. Imagine it was Kamala or Obama or Trudeau or whoever your favorite politician is.
I just pulled a random headline from CNN.com today, September 20, 2024:
Headline: “Trump leads, and his party follows, on vaccine skepticism.”
What does that mean exactly?
What does “vaccine skepticism” mean exactly? Does it mean that you have questions about the value of some of the vaccines administered to children? Rejecting them all? Having questions about immunity from liability for vaccine manufacturers? What does it mean? That’s not clear, but it’s clearly bad.
What does it mean that he leads and the party follows?
None of this is clear. But okay, it’s a headline.
More than four years ago, former President Donald Trump’s administration accelerated the development and rollout of the covid-19 vaccine.
Okay, nothing much here. Statement of fact.
The project, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, likely saved millions of lives.
This is an assertion, and one that I personally question. I think it’s more likely that millions of people died because they were prevented from receiving known, effective treatments early on, so that an Emergency Use Authorization could be given to the COVID vaccines. So the exact opposite.
But a substantial number of Republican voters now identify as vaccine skeptics — and Trump rarely mentions what’s considered one of the great public health accomplishments in recent memory.
What is a “substantial number”? What does it mean to “identify as a vaccine skeptic?” What’s the implication of Trump “rarely mentioning” this? And the fact it was “one of the greatest health accomplishments in recent memory” is another assertion not backed by anything.
Note how they repeatedly state assertions as fact, to make it appear as if the question of the efficacy of the COVID vaccines, and vaccines in general, is a settled issue. It’s not. Far from it.
Here’s another article from yesterday, September 29, 2024.
Headline: “Trump lambastes immigrants using false homicide claims.”
Note the word “lambastes.” A very loaded word.
“Immigrants” itself is also value loaded. Are they legal or illegal immigrants? Is their status disputed?
And the claims are deemed “false” right there in the headline. The stage is clearly set.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a speech that repeatedly painted a dark caricature of immigrants, seized on a recent report to claim falsely that thousands of immigrants with homicide records had been allowed to go free by the Biden administration.
“Repeatedly painted a dark caricature of immigrants”. Whoa! That’s strong. What did he say exactly? How many times did he say it exactly?
“Seized” is another one of their favorite words. It sounds dangerous, suspect, and manipulative.
Imagine they’d instead said something neutral, like “Trump, quoting a recent government report, raised concerns about immigrants with criminal records being allowed into the country and remaining free.”
Or, if they were Trump-friendly, they could’ve said: “Trump, quoting a recent government report, raised valid and reasonable concerns about some illegal immigrants with criminal records being allowed into the country and remaining free.”
Notice the addition of “valid” and “reasonable” and “illegal” to add support.
Same set of facts, very different narrative.
All of this really matters. Narrative is everything. These words bypass your mind’s defense mechanism, and seep right into you as truth. “Trump’s a bad guy who hates immigrants.” When there’s plenty of evidence to support the opposite. But that story is never told in the media.
Let’s continue:
“They’re coming into our cities and our small towns, here in Pennsylvania and all over the country,” Trump said in a speech that meandered widely and made several other unsupported assertions. “These towns are petrified. Even if they’re not there yet, they will be there.”
Note the use of “meandered widely” and “made several other unsupported assertions”. Clearly painting a picture of Trump as off his rocker.
Trump cited a new letter from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to falsely suggest that more than 13,000 immigrants convicted of homicide had been let into the United States on President Joe Biden’s watch and then released. But allies of Vice President Kamala Harris and nonpartisan experts say Trump is badly misrepresenting the data.
“Falsely”. Again, they’re asserting the conclusion without backing it up.
Also note “nonpartisan experts.” Who are these experts? What are they experts on? What are their credentials? And what does it mean exactly that they’re “nonpartisan”? You can be nonpartisan and still part of the blob, because the blob is beyond party. It’s intentionally reinforcing an outdated, irrelevant left/right paradigm. Instead of trusting “experts” because someone claims they are experts and nonpartisan, can we just look at the facts directly?
The people he cited entered the United States over several decades, including during the Trump presidency. And while they are listed as “non-detained,” that means only that ICE is not detaining them; in many cases, they are being held by another agency, and are often serving prison sentences.
So now we’re getting somewhere. We’re hearing some of the pushback. We still haven’t heard exactly what Trump claimed, or what the letter says. Let’s keep going
“The data in this letter is being misinterpreted,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement. “The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration.” The spokesperson added, “It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”
Great. Now we’re hearing some details about the claim.
I looked to see if I could find the original statement from DHS. Nothing on dhs.gov, nothing on their official X account, nothing on YouTube. Not clear if it was a written statement or an oral statement, nor exactly when and how that statement was made. A “spokesperson” for the DHS doesn’t say much. Hard to determine what that statement is based on. I don’t trust the government on this.
Also, what does it matter that it also happened under Trump’s watch, or before? If murderers are indeed entering the country, and if the question of whether we should allow more or fewer people to enter the country without adequate vetting is a point of differentiation in this election, then it’s still relevant. Could we look at what’s true, and what exactly each candidate plans to do about it?
Can we now hear exactly what Trump claimed and what the letter says, so we can compare?
Not so fast…
Even so, Trump spent much of his two-hour speech on elaborate descriptions of the individuals purportedly roaming the nation, calling them “stone-cold killers,” “worse than any of our criminals,” “monsters,” and people who “have no heart” and “don’t care who they kill.”
“Elaborate descriptions” and some quotes. It’s not clear from the context who exactly he was talking about. If he is talking about members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, for example, his descriptions sound pretty accurate. If he’s talking about regular folks with no criminal background, it’s obviously obsessive. So who’s he talking about? We need to know the context to judge the statements. Will we get it? We shall see.
But note how the way this is presented makes it seem like he’s unhinged and cold and paints immigrants in a bad light with broad brush strokes. Especially if that’s the view you already have of him, because you’ve been told over and over again by the media that he’s a racist, he hates immigrants, and he’s “literally Hitler”. If that’s your view, then you’ll see all of this as confirmation of what you already know to be true and just accept it all at face value. That’s the point.
I have a friend in Venezuela who tells me the claim that Venezuela is emptying their prisons and sending the inmates to America is 100% true. Venezuela is safer than it’s ever been, because all the criminals are gone. I haven’t verified this statement further, but I trust my friend, and it sounds plausible. He’s not particularly involved in US politics, he’s just sharing what he’s observing in his own country.
Sometimes statements that sound awful can actually be true. In that case, which is more awful? The saying of it, the fact itself, or the people who allowed it to happen?
The ICE letter, which has also been cited by other conservatives, was sent on Sept. 25 by Patrick J. Lechleitner, the agency’s deputy director, to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.), in response to his request for information on noncitizens who are on ICE’s docket and havebeen charged with or convicted of a crime.
And here they actually link to the letter. That’s helpful.
So I’m guessing now we’ll hear exactly what the letter says and how it compares?
Not yet.
While Trump focused much of his speech in Erie on immigrants, he hit on several other themes that have made regular appearances in his stump speech, including the notion that he would easily win the election if Democrats did not somehow rig the system.
Wait, what? Now they changed the subject from immigration to election fraud? Note the use of “somehow” to make it seem preposterous and silly. “Several other themes that have made regular appearances” is patronizing.
Contrast that with this way of saying the same thing: “Aside from immigration, Trump also brought up important topics like the need for a secure and trustworthy election process, something Democrats have systematically opposed.”
Same set of facts. Completely different narrative.
Are you starting to see how the sausage is made here?
The “correct” opinions are constantly being assigned to you by the media.
Unless you do the hard work of actually reading the letter and listening to Trump’s speech or reading the transcript, then you have no idea what is really going on here. The only thing that’s clear is how the Washington Post sees it, and how you’re supposed to see it too.
And nobody has time to do this work.
We’re screwed!
Next, the article turns to Trump criticizing Kamala’s mental acuity. Given her performance, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to bring up to me. Especially after four years of Biden, where his obvious cognitive decline was being hidden from the public by the media and his administration, including Kamala. Are we being told the truth about Kamala? What would make us believe we are?
I am going to quote this paragraph:
Harris since the beginning of the campaign has dismissed such comments as part of Trump’s longtime “playbook” of personal insults and derisive comments about individuals and groups. She has said that she is seeking to “turn the page” from Trump’s politics of putting people down to a new era of lifting people up.
Notice how this avoids addressing whether there’s any truth to his statements. “Personal insults and derisive comments about individuals and groups”. Some individuals and groups deserve to be insulted and derided. People lying and stealing from the American people. People cheating in elections, if indeed they do. Criminal gangs like Tren de Aragua, and people intentionally allowing them to enter the country, if indeed they do so. Which obviously Trump believes, and has reason to believe, they do.
But by stating it this way, we’re again left with the impression that he’s just unhinged and angry. But what if his anger is justified? After all, they’ve been going after him with everything they’ve got since before he took office. Maybe he’s seen how the game is really played and it makes him angry?
Let’s continue:
Few issues have become as heated during the campaign as immigration, an area where polls suggest voters trust Trump more than Harris. As Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have unleashed ever-harsher rhetoric about immigrants, Harris has sought to deflect criticism that she and Biden took an overly permissive approach to the issue that led to repeated scenes of chaos at the border.
Note the words used. “Unleashed,” “ever-harsher,” and “rhetoric”. Versus “deflect criticism”, “overly permissive,” “repeated scenes of chaos at the border.”
Another way to phrase the exact same set of facts could be something like this:
Trump and Vance have pointed to legitimate concerns about the serious problems caused by the flood of ever-more problematic illegal immigrants unleashed by the Biden-Harris administration’s inscrutable and dangerous policy on the border, practically asking and even paying for millions of people, many of whom are criminals, to come to the US, completely unvetted and unsupervised. This is adding a significant financial, logistical, and law enforcement burden on local communities who have no say in the matter, at the expense of tax paying citizens who have been here for decades and even generations. And it leads to important questions about election integrity, as some of these immigrants have been caught successfully registering to vote illegally.
Note the difference.
I’m not saying this is a true statement of facts, but I’d guess it’s a fairly accurate representation of the view of Trump, Vance and many of their supporters. And it represents how the exact same publication might talk about the exact same set of facts if they were with Trump instead of Kamala.
See how it works?
See how powerful language is in shaping our perception?
The narrative just seeps right into our brains and settles there. And the more that same narrative gets repeated from multiple directions, and not seriously questioned, or alternative interpretations presented, the more it just gets to be taken as fact. That’s just the truth. Obviously!
This is the core of the divide in America right now: we have been consistently fed a very specific, highly questionable narrative.
That’s what’s creating the divide.
When people come together to make sense of reality, they’re very powerful. Crowdsourcing is a beautiful thing. The media and the “expert class” have no monopoly on truth, knowledge, or skill. In fact, journalists are often the least skilled, as we saw with the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.
Let’s do a bit more of the article, just for fun.
Harris visited the southern border on Friday, stressing the enforcement-oriented approach taken by the administration over the past year that has led to a sharp drop in the number of border crossings. She also criticized Trump for urging congressional allies to torpedo a tough bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year.
See how gentle all the Kamala language is? “Stressing the enforcement oriented approach” that “led to a sharp drop in the number of border crossings.” That seems like an admission that the number was too high, though. So why was the number high to begin with? How did that happen? They don’t go there, of course.
“Torpedo a tough bipartisan immigration bill.” Torpedo sounds bad. Trump clearly doesn’t want to shore up the border. Note how the bill is just declared to be “tough,” and “bipartisan.”
I just did a little research, and it looks like the reason they call it “bipartisan” is that it was negotiated by James Lankford, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat Senator from Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, Independent Senator from Arizona.
So one Republican was part of crafting the bill, hence it’s “bipartisan.” That’s certainly not a lie. It’s also a bit misleading.
Since the right worldview includes plenty of RINOs, Republicans in Name Only, who are Republicans on paper, but really are beholden to the blob, I bet it’s easy to find a single Republican that you can get to co-sponsor any bill so you can call it “bipartisan.” Especially since Democrats have very strong party loyalty, and the Republican party is split between MAGAs who are pro Trump and the RINOs who hate Trump.
But by saying the bill was “bipartisan” they imply that there was broad consensus, and that Trump did his usual thing and created chaos to suit his own political agenda. But is that what happened?
I have to admit I haven’t looked deeply into this (I have a company to build and a life to live), but a quick search turned up this relevant criticism from Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, one of the states negatively affected by the Biden administration’s immigration policies:
The Biden-Senate immigration bill is complete disaster The open borders policies it enshrines would destroy our country.
In addition to encouraging nearly 2 million illegal aliens annually to enter the country, paying out over $1 billion to the toxic NGOs that settle illegal immigrants all over the nation, empowering Mayorkas to abuse the asylum process on his arbitrary whim, and ending catch and-release, this bill that gives Biden and Mayorkas everything they want does something far more sinister. It requires that legal challenges to these provisions be heard by the highly partisan Washington, D.C. courts. They know exactly what they are doing: Texas has been able to create major slowdowns to Biden's open borders doctrine because our Constitutional system allows us to sue the federal government in fair venues. What Biden, Mayorkas, and the Senate uniparty in the swamp want to do is PREVENT the Texas AG and all other state AGs from acting as a check on the federal government's tyrannical abuses of power. That is unthinkable. It is un-American. This bill is an unacceptable mess that no serious leader could even think about passing. #BorderBill
He also included this image of a passage of the bill:
I don’t know the truth here, but it seems like very valid criticism that the article in the Washington Post completely ignores.
Again, if the Washington Post was truth seeking rather than partisan, instead of saying that Kamala “criticized Trump for urging congressional allies to torpedo a tough bipartisan immigration bill,” they could’ve said that she “criticized Trump for pointing out what he saw as major flaws in the immigration bill.”
Or if they were on Trump’s side, they might have said she “was miffed that Trump correctly prevented the passing of a border bill from the Biden-Harris administration that would have been disastrous for America’s ability to protect its own borders, possibly forever.”
Same set of facts. Very different narrative.
See the power of narrative? And this is just one article!
Let’s continue.
He also falsely claimed that Harris prosecuted “her political opponents like me.” At one point, Trump again baselessly questioned whether Harris had really worked at McDonald’s, as he has done on several earlier occasions.
Note again how they just postulate that the claims are false. How can you say that? The way I see it, the Biden-Harris admin prosecuting their political opponents is exactly what happened. What basis does the Washington Post have to just state the opposite as fact?
Do you see how we’re constantly being told to not believe our own eyes? When Kamala Harris makes a claim, it’s left unchecked. When Trumpmakes a claim, it’s stated to be false.
And then they bring in the McDonald’s job thing. In the same paragraph! How is that related? One is talking about political persecution through lawfare, which is a big deal. The other is about questioning something she’s said about her past. They put the two together to draw a false equivalency and paint a picture of a man who just says random shit “baselessly.”
Oh, and by the way, how can they claim that Trump’s question about Harris’ work at McDonald’s is “baseless?” As far as I know, we’ve never been able to corroborate that story. No employment records, no W-2 forms, no one has come out and said they were her colleagues or employer. Maybe she did work there and just doesn't have any records of it. Maybe she didn’t and lied about it. Lying about this isn’t the worst thing to lie about, but it is a curious thing to lie about, and it might point to a pattern of deception that’s worth looking at.
And again, no evidence for their claim that it’s “baseless.”
Complete partisan hacks.
Can you see why the right distrusts the media?
After the rally, Erie County GOP Chair Tom Eddy said Trump’s criticisms of Harris were designed to appeal to his most hardcore supporters, with the goal that they would then persuade undecided voters. “At these rallies, he’s talking to his base,” Eddy said. “And I think the hope is that his base will go out and talk to other people.”
Now we have some person who claims to be able to read Trump’s mind and tell us what his intentions were. Last I checked we don’t yet have mind reading technology. Also, the fact that this person is a GOP Chair backs up my claim that “bipartisan” is a meaningless claim. He’s probably another RINO. But WaPo readers have probably never heard this term, or think it’s just another Trump smear for people who won’t brownnose him or something
And by speculating about why he might say that, the article conveniently avoids addressing the truth of his statements.
Much of Trump’s speech re-upped issues he has cited at other rallies. He recited a poem about a snake that he uses to speak on immigration. He recounted a shooter’s attempt to assassinate him in Butler, Pa., saying the city had now become a “big tourist site.” “Lock her up,” the crowd chanted after Trump called Harris “stupid.”
He “re-upped issues he has cited at other rallies”? Really? Did you expect him to have completely new material at every rally? Do you know how many rallies the man does? And if he did, I bet the line would be that his rallies are all over the place and he keeps bringing up new stuff!
“He cited a poem about a snake.” There’s a link to another article about the snake poem. I’m going to spare you from going through that article. The point of it is that if you rescue a snake and take it into your house, it might end up killing you. Seems relevant when talking about letting criminal migrants into the country, but the way it’s presented here, it’s made to seem silly.
And again, in the same paragraph, they jump from reasonable concerns about immigration to the assassination attempt, which is a HUUUGE deal. But here, it’s being made out to be almost trivial. If there’d been an attempt on Biden’s or Harris’ life, would it have been glossed over like this? I doubt it.
“Lock her up,’ the crowd chanted.”
Stated just like that, there’s no mention of why they might feel that way. Could they have reason to believe she’s done something criminal while in office? Seems like a question worth asking.
He repeated his false claim that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “turned down thousands of troops” ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Remember, they still haven’t told us exactly what Trump said, what the letter said, or how they compare. Instead they bring in other unrelated issues. And again just state as fact that the claim is “false.”
In this case, it looks like they might both be correct, but also misleading. On September 20, 2024, the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight released a document citing the transcript of an interview with General Mark Milley and others regarding January 6.
In that, General Mark Milley clearly states that on January 3, President
Trump asks for troops to be present to make sure things are secure.
[January 3, 2021] The President just says, ‘Hey, look at this. There’s going to be a large amount of protesters here on the 6th, make sure that you have sufficient National Guard or Soldiers to make sure it’s a safe event.’
[POTUS said] ‘Hey, I don’t care if you use Guard, or Soldiers, active duty Soldiers, do whatever you have to do. Just make sure it’s safe.’
Colones Earl Matthews of the DC National Guard:
“The President commented that they were going to need 10,000 troops the following day... I interpreted it as a bit of presidential banter or President Trump banter that you all are familiar with, and in no way, shape, or form did I interpret that as an order or direction.”
“[On January 6, 2021] everyone was like, “Did you listen to the President’s speech?” I’m like “The guy speaks for 90 minutes it’s like Castro or something.” No, I’ve got work to do.”
“I was cognizant of the fears that the President would invoke the Insurrection Act to politicize the military in an anti-democratic manner. And, just before the Electoral College certification, 10 former Secretaries of Defense signed an op-ed piece published in The Washington Post warning of the dangers of politicizing and using inappropriately the military. No such thing was going to occur on my watch.”“There was absolutely -- there is absolutely no way I was putting U.S. military forces at the Capitol, period.”
“The operational plan was this, let’s take the D.C. National Guard, keep them away from the Capitol.”
No mention of Nancy Pelosi, but it does sound like Trump wanted the National Guard in there to protect the Capitol, but the DOD generals, who were no fans of his, didn’t want to do that.
So yes, perhaps the claim that Nancy Pelosi turned down the troops is false. I haven’t seen definitive proof of that, but regardless, it’s clear that someone disobeyed Trump’s order to ensure the National Guard was there.
You see how things are much less clear than the WaPo would lead you to believe?
Back to the article:
Even though Trump acknowledged that he is running against Harris, he repeatedly brought up Biden. He reminisced about his June 27 debate against Biden, claimed Biden was a better candidate than Harris and even surmised that “if she does really badly they’ll probably put him back.” Harris officially accepted the Democratic nomination in August, and there is no mechanism for installing Biden as the nominee.
“Acknowledged that he is running against Harris.” That’s such a weird thing to say. Why would he not acknowledge that?
“There is no mechanism for installing Biden as the nominee.” I love that they fact check him on stuff like this. Of course they’re not going to put him back. Trump is part standup comic. I’m no mind reader, but I’d hear that as a joke, maybe referring to the fact they swapped him out for Kamala just like that.
Trump even recalled the moment in their debate when the two presidents bickered about their golf game.
“The worst of all was when he said ‘I want to play him in golf’,” Trump said. “He wants to play me in golf. You ever see him play?” Trump then proceeded to imitate Biden. “That guy can’t play.”
And this is how the article ends. We still don’t know exactly what he said, what the letter said, how the two compare, or what the true number of criminal immigrants the Biden/Harris admin have let in. All of which would be great to know. But they’d rather make Trump look stupid. Because that’s their real business. Gaslighting.
What’s the Truth?
Would you like to dive into that together, since the Washington Post won’t do their jobs?
Let’s do it.
First off, the report, dated September 20, 2024, opens with this:
Thank you for your March 13, 2024 letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). I am responding on behalf of the Department and apologize for the delay.
Talk about a delay! Six months to report these numbers. Seems like a long time. You’d think they have these numbers ready by now.
Continuing (highlights are mine):
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recognizes the importance of its relationships with its law enforcement partners to carry out its mission.
In recent years, however, as you know, some jurisdictions have reduced their cooperation with ICE, to include refusal to honor ICE detainer requests, even for noncitizens who have been convicted of serious felonies and pose an ongoing threat to public safety.
ICE recognizes that some jurisdictions are concerned that cooperating with federal immigration officials will erode trust with immigrant communities and make it harder for local law enforcement to serve those populations.
However, “sanctuary” policies can end up shielding dangerous criminals, who often victimize those same communities.
That seems like an indictment of “sanctuary city” policies, and a support of Trump’s tougher stance on immigration.
Despite the challenges of operating within a broken immigration system, and in the face of an enormous workload and consistently limited funding, DHS continues to enforce the law to secure our borders.
We are removing and returning record numbers of migrants who are unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States, and prioritizing for removal those who present national security and public safety risks, and recent border crossers.
From mid-May 2023 through the end of July 2024, DHS removed or returned more than 893,600 individuals, including more than 138,300 individuals in family units. The majority of all individuals encountered at the Southwest Border over the past three years have been removed, returned, or expelled.
Why is there such an enormous workload and consistently limited funding? Is that a Biden administration policy? I don’t know, but it seems like something the administration should want to fix.
Removing and returning record numbers of migrants begs the question why they were there in the first place, and what we’re doing to keep them out. Maybe building a wall and implementing a “remain in Mexico” policy would help?
Removing or returning almost 900,000 individuals in a little over a year seems like a lot. A whole lot. That’s almost 60,000 per month, or close to 2,000 per day. How are that many people getting in that need to be removed or returned? And how many are not being caught and removed or returned? I’d love to know!
Your letter requests the number of noncitizens on ICE’s docket convicted or charged with a crime. As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket, which includes those detained by ICE, and on the agency’s non-detained docket. Of those, 435,719 are convicted criminals, and 226,847 have pending criminal charges.
Over half a million noncitizens with criminal histories that the ICE knows about? Again, seems like a large number to me. But hey, I grew up in a country with only 5 million people total.
There’s a paragraph about how they determine who to detain or not detain. You can find the doc and read on your own.
Then there’s a table of data:
425,431 convicted criminals that are currently not detained by ICE seems like a large number.
And then they say this:
You also requested ICE’s current detention capacity. Under the DHS appropriations bill enacted on March 23, 2024, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) is funded at 41,500 beds through the rest of the fiscal year (FY), which is an increase from 34,000 in FY 2023.
So they have 600k+ possible criminals, and only 41,500 beds.
Now, remember what the article said?
Trump cited a new letter from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to falsely suggest that more than 13,000 immigrants convicted of homicide had been let into the United States on President Joe Biden’s watch and then released.
That number comes from the table here (stitching together the header with the relevant detail row):
And this was the WaPo’s rebuttal:
The people he cited entered the United States over several decades, including during the Trump presidency. And while they are listed as “non-detained,” that means only that ICE is not detaining them; in many cases, they are being held by another agency, and are often serving prison sentences.
The spokesperson added, “It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”
Fair enough. This still begs the question, what are these people doing in the US still? And how many exactly are currently incarcerated by federal, state, or local law enforcement? Do we even know?
Isn’t the job of ICE to detain and deport non-citizens who commit murder and other crimes?
And what about the total number of over 600,000 criminals or individuals pending criminal charges who are still in the country?
If that’s the number of noncitizens who have committed crimes, how many noncitizens are there in the first place?
Okay, so let’s turn to what Trump actually said.
I downloaded the video and transcribed it so I could find the exact quotes.
In total, during her term, [...] she let in 13,099 convicted murderers. Some of them had murdered 10 people. Some murdered seven, one murdered six. What I'm looking at these, these are stone cold killers and they let in people that are worse than any criminal we have.
And these killers are stone cold monsters, and have so little heart, they have no heart. [...] And they don't care when or who they kill. They wake up the following morning. They don't ever remember. So it's just like a routine part of life.
And then he plays a campaign video from 2018 with a convicted criminal laughing about killing cops, saying his only regret is he didn’t kill more of them.
Here’s what the article said again:
Even so, Trump spent much of his two-hour speech on elaborate descriptions of the individuals purportedly roaming the nation, calling them “stone-cold killers,” “worse than any of our criminals,” “monsters,” and people who “have no heart” and “don’t care who they kill.”
What they’re saying isn’t outright false, but it’s far from accurate. “Spent much of his two-hour speech on...” I collected all the portions I could find where he described the criminals, and it amounted to just under 50 seconds. Is that “much” out of two hours? You decide.
“Elaborate” descriptions is another one of those loaded words. “Trump briefly described some characteristics of the worst of the criminals in question” would be a more accurate and neutral way to describe what he did. But then, that wouldn’t make him look evil, would it?
“Individuals purportedly roaming the nation” is another phrase that (a)doesn’t make it clear he’s talking specifically about hardened criminals, and (b) makes it seem like he’s hallucinating.
The letter from the DHS doesn’t say during what time period the criminals and possible criminals entered the country, whether they had a criminal history before they got here, or whether any criminal history was ever assessed.
It also doesn’t say what “non-detained” means.
If the supposed statement, that I cannot find the source for, is accurate that these are numbers covering 40 years or more, and that non-detained could mean that they’re in jail somewhere, then it looks like Trump misinterpreted the numbers. And, by the way, so did Senator Tony Gonzalez, to whom the letter was directed.
Maybe ICE could have been more specific, given that it took them six months to produce a four page letter. Five pages if you count the cc list on page five.
The take-away from all of this is that:
1. The media works overtime to present a narrative that is consistently against Trump and the right-wing worldview.
2. They rarely do the kind of investigative work that I just did to even attempt to present the facts and get at the truth.
3. They focus on pointing out any errors in what Trump says, while obfuscating the real issue he’s pointing to, in this case immigration and criminal noncitizens.
This is not a book about Trump. It’s a book about principles.
And there’s no question that Trump’s strength is not accuracy. Something I don’t love, since one of my core values is integrity.
However, the distinction I see is that Trump tends to be directionally accurate, meaning that while the details are incorrect, he is pointing towards something that is both true and relevant.
In contrast, in my experience, the Democrats, the corporate media, and the government are lying to obscure the truth.
There’s a big difference.
As you start to pay attention, see if you notice the same pattern.
Hoaxes
Phew! That was quite the journey. I did this work routinely for close to a year I think.
In the end, I wasn’t able to keep that kind of effort up while also building a software and a coaching business. No normal human being with a life has the time to do that. Which is why the techniques used by corporate media workso well.
But it is really worth the effort to do it for just a period of time, in order to learn all the tricks they use.
Another recurring pattern is the hoaxes.
I’m going to look at just one of the hoaxes, in an effort to demonstrate how it works.
My point is not to say “this is true,” my point is to demonstrate the mechanics of how hoaxes work and how the media uses them to tell you what to think.
Even if you think “Calvin’s off his rocker,” understand that a big chunk of the country agrees with this. It’s worth it to at least understand how they see the world.
The other side is not your enemy. It’s your neighbor, your uncle, your aunt, your niece, your nephew, your sister, your brother, your parents, your children, your coworker, your barista, your local police officer.
It’s worth understanding how they see the world, even if you disagree completely.
What’s a hoax? A hoax is a frequently spouted, officially accepted lie built around real events, but where what happened is twisted to mean the opposite of the truth.
Hoaxes are often easily debunked, but that doesn’t matter, because they match a narrative that has already been planted in people’s minds, and the media and the intended targets won’t look up the original source and see what was meant. Hence they continue to work.
Kamala, during her debate with Trump, did quite the feat and managed to cram in a whole slew of hoaxes in the span of just two minutes and six seconds. Here’s what she said:
I was at the Capitol on January 6th. I was the vice president elect. I was also an acting senator. I was there. And on that day, the President of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation's Capitol. To desecrate our nation's Capitol. On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And some died.
And understand, the former president has been indicted and impeached for exactly that reason.
But this is not an isolated situation.
Let's remember Charlottesville—a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing anti-semitic hate and what did Trump say? “There were fine people on each side.”
Let's remember. that when it came to the Proud Boys, a militia, the President said, the former President said, stand back and stand by.
So for everyone watching who remembers what January 6th was, I say, we don't have to go back. Let's not go back. We're not going back. It's time to turn the page.
And if that was a bridge too far for you, well, there is a place in our campaign for you. To stand for country, to stand for our democracy, to stand for rule of law, and to end the chaos, and to end the approach that is about attacking the foundations of our democracy because you don't like the outcome.
And be clear on that point. Donald Trump, the candidate, has said in this election there will be a bloodbath if this and (sic) the outcome of this election is not to his liking.
Let’s do inventory. We have
1. The Insurrection hoax
2. The Fine People hoax
3. The Stand Back and Stand By hoax
4. The Bloodbath hoax170
That’s impressive.
To understand hoaxes, think about the Nigerian prince scam. Why do scammers continue to mention Nigerian princes, even though everyone already knows about the Nigerian prince scam? Precisely because it self selects for people who are gullible enough to go along with it anyway, either because they’re so uninformed they haven’t heard of it, or willing to suspend disbelief anyway.
The Fine People Hoax
Let’s start with an easy one: The Fine People hoax.
The hoax says that after the Charlottesville riots in 2017, Trump said theneo-nazis and white supremacists were “very fine people.”
Here’s Biden announcing that he was running for president because of the Fine People Hoax:
With those words, the President of the United States, assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it.
And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike anyI had ever seen in my lifetime. I wrote at the time that we're in the battle for the soul of this nation. Well, that's even more true today. We are in the battle for the soul of this nation
So what did Trump actually say? Here’s the relevant part of the transcript:
And you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. [...]You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
And you had people—and I'm not talking about the neo nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally—but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis, and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers. And you see them come with a, with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You got a, you got a lot of bad, you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.
Trump was clearly condemning neo nazis and white nationalists, while also saying that there was a legitimate disagreement between fine people over tearing down the statue and renaming the park.
That is not how the media and the Democrats tell it, and yet, everyone who was there, and anyone who bothered to actually watch the video or review the transcript—all 2 minutes and 28 seconds of it—would instantly know thetruth.
And yet neither Kamala or Biden or the journalists in the media have bothered to do so.
Or, worse and more likely, they have, and yet they continue to spread this hoax, because it’s working, and they know that most people will never find out the truth.
The Insurrection
This is a big one.
Was January 6 an attempt at insurrection, was it a peaceful protest gone wrong, or something else entirely?
If you’re certain it was an attempted insurrection, how do you know? Would you have ever thought to use that word if it hadn’t been fed to you over and over and over again by the media?
As I was writing this, I wanted to get to the bottom of it, so I went into detail about why the media claimed it was an insurrection. And I found it to be pretty weak sauce.
The argument comes down to the fact that Trump said “will be wild” about the Jan 6 protests, and that in his speech he said “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”
Yet, in the same speech he also explicitly called for people to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” So in order to believe that Trump intended to cause an insurrection, you have to ignore “peaceful” and hear “fight like hell” and “will be wild ”as implying physical violence, even though both could just as or more easily be heard as non-violent.
You can easily imagine “fight” and “wild” without violence. You cannot have “peaceful” with violence. You see the selective interpretation?
You also have to believe that he wanted to cause a violent insurrection, even though we saw earlier that he deliberately asked for the National Guard to be ready to prevent any violence.
But there’s even more things you’d have to believe in order to believe Jan 6 was an insurrection:
● Trump supporters, the most heavily armed part of the US population, decides to conduct an insurrection by leaving all their guns at home
● You can take over the most powerful country in the world with the most powerful military ever to exist by trespassing unarmed in a government building
● Obstructing or delaying an official proceeding is enough to overthrow the government
But wait, there’s more!
Remember my heuristic about assuming the government is guilty unless they’re forthcoming with everything?
In this case, there was 44,000 hours of surveillance video that didn’t get released until November, 2023, almost three years later. Over the protest of Democrats because “security concerns,” which is one of those convenient catch-all phrases that sound good, but can be used for anything without having to provide any specifics. Like “sources and methods” in the intelligence community.
So what did this show? Well, 44,000 hours is a lot, and I haven’t looked through all of it, but most of the clips I’ve seen show people peacefully walking through the Capitol, with Capitol Police quietly watching. There’s no violence, no threat, no mention that they’re not supposed to be there, no drama.
There’s no question that people in the front knew that they were breaking into the building.
But imagine being someone further back. If you’ve ever been at a large event, you know what that’s like. You cannot see what’s happening at the front. Suddenly the crowd starts moving in the direction of the Capitol.
When you get there, you just follow the crowd into the building. You look around. The Capitol police are there waving you in. There’s no indication that you’re committing a crime, let alone an “insurrection”. That’s what they experienced. Now they’re serving long jail sentences. Is that fair?
There’s several other questions.
Why was the National Guard not deployed, despite Trump’s request that they were, and despite the fact they were ready and wanted to?
Why was Ray Epps never charged? Ray Epps is a big guy in the crowd that is on video repeatedly saying “we’ll go into the Capitol, into the Capitol,” with the people around him pointing to him and chanting “fed, fed, fed, fed!”
They knew what’s up. Search for his name. You’ll find countless clips of him.43
What happened to him? Nothing. He’s clearly instigating crime, yet he got a year of probation, and as far as I know we’ve never gotten a straight answer to whether he’s an FBI asset. That information needs to be table stakes.
Speaking of feds (FBI agents or informants). I don’t think we ever got a straight answer either to how many feds were in the crowd that day, and what they were doing. The latest article I could find was from the NY Post, dated September 19, 2023, with the headline “FBI lost count of how many paid informants were at Capitol on Jan. 6, and later performed audit to figure out exact number: ex-official.”44
Crime Factory
This is important, because we have indications from other episodes that the FBI is in the business of fabricating crimes.
In his book Terror Factory, Trevor Aaronson makes the case that the FBI has “built a network of more than fifteen thousand informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the Bureau can then claim it is winning the war on terror.”
I haven’t read the whole book, but if there’s any truth to this, that would be a big deal, and put into question a lot of what the FBI does.
The plot to kidnap the Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 also involved FBI informants.
As I was researching, I found an article from the Daily Beast with the headline “The Right Is Rewriting the Whitmer Kidnapping Case.” However, if you read the article, you’ll see all the hallmarks of activist journalism we’ve covered before. They’re quoting sources and making postulates without backing any of it up with facts or doing any actual journalism.
One statement stands out:
But her award to the Null brothers echoed a campaign of online commentary that cast the Whitmer plot as a hoax, even after most of its alleged participants were convicted or pleaded guilty.
They’re using the fact that some participants were convicted or pleaded guilty (we’ve seen how credible a guilty plea is already; these are poor people who can easily be intimidated by government prosecutors) as evidence that it’s not a hoax.
But that’s not how FBI-instigated plots work. They wouldn’t do them if they didn’t routinely get convictions. The allegation against the FBI is that these crimes would have never been conceived of if the FBI hadn’t been there to goad people into them and provide the supplies.
Here’s another quote from the article:
When two men were acquitted in the scheme, a GOP gubernatorial candidate running against Whitmer baselessly asserted that “the FBI conceived a plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer and preyed on Michiganders to push it along.”
Note the use of “baselessly.” Nothing to back up why it’s baseless. As usual.
They’re accusing the GOP gubernatorial candidate of doing exactly what they’re doing! This is a straight up projection. Accuse other people of doing the exact thing that you’re doing.
I’m not going to dive deep into the Whitmer case here. I don’t want this book to be longer than it already is. The point is, there are credible accusations of the FBI being involved in fabricating crimes, and January 6 very well might be one of them.
There’s also serious questions about a pipe bomb found near the DNC headquarters. Was that bomb planted by the FBI? We don’t know for sure. But what we do know is that the FBI has been behaving very strangely in this investigation.
Revolver News and Thomas Massie have been on the case, and there are so many questions, including why the FBI has only released degraded video material of the person planting the bomb, even though higher quality video exists. And why the FBI had seemingly deleted the video by March 18, 2022, even though this was a high priority investigation.
Again, the assumption has to be that if the government is covering up the facts, they’re complicit. How deep this goes we don’t yet know. But it’s all suss as hell.
My best misconception on January 6 at this point is that it most likely was instigated by the government so they could use it to impeach Trump to prevent him from running again. That would be totally in line with past behavior, and I’m far from the only one who’s arrived at this conclusion.
Their plan didn’t work, but they did manage to imprison a bunch of regular folks peacefully protesting what they believed to be a stolen election.
The Stand Back and Stand by Hoax
The story here is that Trump, during the September 29, 2020 presidential debate with Biden, was asked if he would tell the Proud Boys to stand down.
Instead of doing that, he asked them to “stand back and stand by”.
The media claims this as proof that he refused to tell them to stand down, and instead used some kind of coded language to signal to them that he wanted them to be ready to attack.
Was it a truly sneaky “dog whistle” way to avoid denouncing them, or was it just clumsy wording?
You be the judge. Here’s the official transcript:
WALLACE: You have repeatedly criticized the Vice-President for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups. But are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland.
TRUMP: Sure, I’m willing to do that.
WALLACE: Are you prepared specifically to do it. Well go ahead, sir.
TRUMP: I would say almost everything I see is from the left-wingnot from the right wing.
WALLACE: So what are you, what are you saying?
TRUMP: I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.
WALLACE: Well, do it, sir.
BIDEN: Say it. Do it. Say it.
TRUMP: You want to call them? What do you want to call them?
Give me a name, give me a name, go ahead who would you like me
to condemn.
WALLACE: White supremacists and racists.
BIDEN: Proud Boys.
WALLACE: White supremacists and white militias.
BIDEN: Proud Boys.
TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you
what, I’ll tell you what: somebody’s got to do something about Antifa
and the left because this is not a right wing problem this is a left
wing. This is a left-wing problem. . .
BIDEN: He’s (sic) own FBI Director said unlike white
supremacists. . .
TRUMP: This is a left-wing problem.
BIDEN: Antifa is an idea not an organization. . .
TRUMP: Oh you gotta be kidding.
BIDEN: … not a militia. That’s what his FBI Director said.
TRUMP: Well, then you know what, he’s wrong.
WALLACE: Gentlemen, gentlemen. No, no, no, we’re done, sir.
Moving onto the next… [crosstalk]
Seems like a clumsy choice of words to me during a heated portion of the debate. All three are talking over each other, Biden is interjecting multiple times.
Compare to what Biden said during the 2020 election:
We have put together, I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.
I kid you not. Joe Biden really actually said that! Is this a Freudian slip? Just a gaffe? It for sure is way stronger than what Trump said about the Proud Boys, but the media has completely ignored it.
Had Trump said something like this, the media would have pounced on it.
But since the media is part of the blob/Democrat machine, they ignore this Biden quote just like they covered up Biden’s dementia for years.
It’s important that you see how the media works, so you can spot and immunize yourself against the manipulation.
The Bloodbath Hoax
Here’s what Kamala said during her debate with Trump again:
And be clear on that point. Donald Trump, the candidate, has said in this election there will be a bloodbath if this and (sic) the outcome of this election is not to his liking.
She’s implying that he’s going to instigate violence if he doesn’t “like” the outcome of the election, just like he supposedly did on January 6.
Yikes! That sounds bad.
But where did this idea come from?
It came from a rally in Ohio on March 16, 2024, where Trump said this:
China now is building a couple of massive plants where they’re going to build the cars in Mexico and think, they think, that they’re going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border.
Let me tell you something to China, if you’re listening President Xi, and you and I are friends, but he understands the way I deal. Those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now, and you think you’re going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans, and you’re going to sell the cars to us? No. We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected.
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. But they’re not going to sell those cars.
So is he saying there’ll be violence? Or is he using “bloodbath” as a metaphor about car production, the economy, and the job market?
It’s not entirely obvious, but there’s nothing to indicate he was talking about violence.
It’s the same trick as with Jan 6 where they ignored the “peaceful” part and seized on “wild” and “fight”.
But you know what one could do to be certain? You could ask him! “Mr. President, were you talking about physical violence, or were you talking about the economy?” My guess is he’d be very clear he wasn’t talking about physical violence, and that would be the end of that.
But the media doesn’t want that. What they want is to leverage these hoaxes so they can paint a particular picture of Trump to make him seem dangerous and scary and unhinged and “literally Hitler.”
And it works, because, like with the Nigerian scam, the constituency they’re targeting won’t look up the original, think critically, or seek out alternative views. Just like I didn’t for most of my adult life. We’ve got lives to live. The media exists to do their jobs and bring us the relevant news. Or that’s what we thought.
