When will YOU no longer believe the MSM – Part 2
A few weeks ago, in this Post, I listed but a small fraction of the less consequential lies the Mainstream Media have told about President Donald Trump. Today I will cover a shorter list of:
MORE CONSEQUENTIAL LIES
1 – Russia collusion
False media narrative
After Trump’s shock win in the 2016 Presidential election, it was alleged that his campaign was assisted by the Russians who it was said preferred that he win over Hillary Clinton. This support was said to be overt and covert – overt in the use of Russian bots to influence social media with pro Trump/anti Hillary ads on Facebook paid for by Russian interests. Covert in alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians that were allegedly first detailed in the so-called Steele Dossier, so named after the British MI6 agent Christopher Steele who wrote a report alleging how Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence partly because he was alleged to have been caught on camera in a Moscow hotel cavorting with Russian prostitutes (the so-called “Pee Tape” for reasons you can guess). This dossier was used by then FBI Director James Comey to persuade the FISA Court (a secret court needed to authorise any spying on US Nationals on US soil) to issue an interception warrant for the Trump campaign and organisation. Inferences of Russian interference and taint by repeated allegation led to a series of incidents that shackled Trump 45’s Presidency for the first two years: the early resignation of Michael Flynn as NSA Director, Attorney General Geoff Sessions standing down in the investigation due to a conversation with the Russian Ambassador and the relentless drumbeat by Trump’s opponents, amplified loudly and incessantly by the MSM, that Trump was a secret Russian agent, that his victory was only of because of the Russian aid and that he was in effect Putin’s puppet. Trump had to endure a lengthy and extensive Special Counsel investigation led by former FBI Director Bob Mueller who found no criminal conspiracy between Trump, his campaign and the Russians.
Truth
Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential election campaign was proven to be isolated to a handful of Facebook ads targeting swing voters with the sums in the low hundreds of thousands. Against the backdrop of a total campaign spend of over $2 billion, this miniscule amount could’ve barely swayed a tiny handful of votes. The source of the rumour was traced, eventually unearthed fully, by the later Special Counsel John Durham (a former DOJ Federal Prosecutor) where it was proven that not only was the Steele dossier fabricated (along with the Pee Tape) but that the company that commissioned and paid for the dossier (Fusion GPS) was hired and funded by Perkins Coe, at the time the official attorneys for the Clinton campaign and a long time luminary in Democrat politics. Furthermore, it was unearthed that Obama CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey knew in advance that the Steele dossier was fabricated and yet they not only used it as the pretext to illegally spy on the Trump campaign but used it as the imprimatur to manipulate intelligence community heavyweights which in turn gave credence to the widely reported Russia collusion hoax by the MSM. The whole Russia Collusion narrative, that utterly and completely dominated media coverage of Trump for years, was built on a tissue of lies fabricated by his political opponent (Clinton and behind her Obama as he had to authorize the illegal surveillance) to hamstring and hamper the early period of Trump 45’s Presidency.
Consequence
The impact of the Russia Collusion hoax was mammoth. It affected who Trump could successfully nominate to key roles forcing him to turn to anti Trump insiders who were nominally and barely supportive. It hung over Congressional Republicans as the narrative was strong enough to affect the outcome of the 2018 mid-term elections seeing the GOP lose control of the House opening the way to the eventual Trump impeachments, another event that greatly overshadowed the 2nd half of his first term in office. Even after being finally refuted by the Durham report, it still was a by-line uttered by Trump haters for many years influencing how moderate Democrats and Independents viewed Trump. The Russia Collusion hoax has a very modern repercussion, that of the recent announcement that the FBI have commenced an investigation of James Comey and John Brennan. Given what they actually knew and what they did illegally to Trump, given Trump’s propensity for extracting revenge for all the Democrat lawfare unleashed on him, he will be hoping that criminal indictments will eventually follow and frankly they are deserved. Only days ago Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified some of the Crossfire Hurricane documents that appear to implicate Obama, Comey, Brennan and Hillary Clinton in concocting the entire fake Russia narrative by deliberately altering the official intelligence report on possible Russian interference in the 2016 election from a finding of minute, inconsequential involvement to the full blown Russian interference narrative that was then peddled relentlessly. Prediction: this will not end well for anyone involved in this treasonous attempt to destroy Trump 1st term.
2 – Hunter Biden laptop
False media narrative
In the summer of 2020, one of Trump’s attorneys, former New York City Mayor Rudi Guiliani, was tipped off by a Delaware computer repair shop of the contents of a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Delaware, then Federal, law enforcement was advised and they came and picked up the hard drive but a copy was made and Giuliani gave a copy to the right leaning New York Post who published some of the explosive findings three weeks out from the 2020 election. The full contents of the laptop were also downloaded by internet sleuths the Bortnick brothers who published the entire contents on their Marco Polo App. Immediately the Deep State swung into action and took the following unprecedented steps to suppress it:
- They persuaded 51 former intelligence operatives (the bulk of whom had worked for Democrat Administrations or were RINO Republicans) who uniformly claimed in a letter they all signed that the laptop contents bore all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.
- Left leaning social media magnates like Twitter 1.0’s Jack Dorsey, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook and Instagram) and Alphabet’s Sundar Pickel (Google and You Tube) all agreed to co-operate with specially assigned FBI and CIA agents manning dedicated portals to first block the dissemination of the NYP story and eventually to remove the Tweets and other social media references to it.
- This draconian intervention went so far as to target any and all social media posts by private citizens that tried to reference or link to the article or even mention Hunter Biden’s laptop with blocks, shadow bans, suspensions and demonetisations. These combined efforts of US Federal Government agencies to silence the 1st Amendment free speech rights of their own citizens were unprecedented.
- The MSM were unrelenting supporters of the official ‘Russian disinformation’ narrative and were completely happy with the suspension of civil rights and freedom of speech if it meant Trump would lose.
Truth
Anyone who has had the opportunity to examine the contents of the laptop (I have had a reasonable look over) will know that it spelt dynamite to Joe Biden’s close electoral chances in 2020. On top of Hunter’s seedy prostitute and drug filled antics caught on film, there was plenty of damning evidence of the Biden family ‘pay to play’ corruption in China and Ukraine where a low life like Hunter was wined, dined, placed on boards and paid millions for no other reason than he was the son of Obama’s then Vice President. Any decent investigative journalists, had they been able to report their work without censorship, would’ve been able to connect some very ugly dots in the run up to the 2020 election. As it turned out, the truth came out officially when the FBI admitted under oath in Federal Court that the laptop was real and NOT Russian disinformation. A few of the ‘gang of 51’ have given halfhearted mealy mouthed non-apology apologies whilst the bulk have remained utterly silent on their big lie and almost no one in the MSM has been bold enough to call these crooks out on their lies.
Consequence
The combined social media, intelligence agency and MSM action to bury a story so damaging to Biden only weeks out from the Presidential election can be very accurately described as election interference. American voters’ free speech rights were deliberately taken away to benefit the electoral fortunes of one candidate (Biden) over the other candidate (Trump). A poll was taken after the truth of the laptop was widely acknowledged asking if Biden voters would’ve changed their vote for Biden had they known about the contents of the laptop and a shocking 15% said they would. Given Biden won by only 44,000 votes across three key battleground states, a margin of less than 1%, this was a most consequential lie.
3 – 2020 Elections were fair – no court finding of fraud
False media narrative
Trump perpetuated the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. I have written much on the topic of the 2020 election fraud in January 2021 so I don’t propose to re-litigate this topic for now except to say that a frequent media refrain has been that the best evidence that Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square was that, despite all the various courts that heard election fraud cases brought by Trump and Republicans, none ruled in his favour. The media have reported this narrative over and over and it too is a lie.
Truth
Whilst a number of courts had election fraud litigation lodged, of the 88 cases filed, the vast majority were never actually heard. All of the large, substantive election integrity cases brought by Trump and Republicans, were dismissed by mostly partisan Democrat judges WITHOUT A SINGLE PIECE OF EVIDENCE BEING PRESENTED for spurious and flimsy reasons such as lack of standing (as if Trump lacks standing to litigate his own election!) or out of time (despite being told that they couldn’t file earlier because it was too early!). 24 (or 28% of the total cases) of the less significant election fraud cases were actually fully heard and of THOSE cases, 75% of the courts ruled in Trump’s favour and in some jurisdictions, some modifications were made to electoral procedures and even laws. I did a whole detailed Post on this topic where there are links to every single election integrity case filed and the details of the outcomes. The narrative that painted Trump’s views on the 2020 election as the “Big Lie” was itself a lie. Some time during Trump 2nd term, a Special Counsel will be empowered to finally litigate, view and hear ALL the evidence of the 2020 election fraud that to date, has NOT seen the inside of a courtroom ….YET.
4 – Neo-Nazis as “fine people”
False media narrative
On August 12, 2017 an avowed neo Nazi and white supremacist Alex Fields deliberately drove into a group of people protesting at a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina (held to oppose proposals to pull down a statue of Confederate leader Robert E Lee) killing one person and injuring 35 others. The MSM and Trump’s political opponents immediately accused him of calling the white supremacists “very fine people” igniting a massive wave of liberal and media outrage and protest. It became an article of faith on the left that Trump defended neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Three years later during the 2020 election campaign, Biden tweeted the hoax yet again.
Truth
At a press conference three days later, President Trump was questioned about the incident and specifically the neo Nazis and said, “you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides”. When questioned further, Trump clarified that his comment about “very fine people” did NOT apply to the white supremacists. Trump was clear on how unacceptable their behaviour was. Even prominent mostly liberal leaning ‘Fact Checkers’ like USA Today, Snopes and Politifact accurately portrayed the totality of Trump’s comments and described the claims that Trump called the white supremacists “very fine people” as inaccurate. The MSM and the liberal left have long held the view that Trump is racist and this mischaracterisation was too good to be true for his opponents to pass it up and so it has lingered for some time.
5 – Jan 6 was an insurrection
This topic is way too huge for me to cover in a short couple of paragraphs so look for a dedicated post on the entire raft of false narratives over January 6, 2021.
6 – Robert F Kennedy Jr is anti-vaccine
False media narrative
RFK has been portrayed by the MSM as an anti-vax conspiracy theorist and all the negative connotations that go along with that accusation.
Truth
Kennedy has been largely pro-vaccine all his life but he has challenged ubiquitous vaccine programmes and childhood mandates by saying that not all vaccines are safe for all people. He is very big on safety and wants to ensure that vaccines are properly and thoroughly tested and vetted for safety before authorisation. He contends (rightly) that the safety testing for some vaccines has not been as vigourous and lengthy as they should be and that Big Pharma have used their power and influence over the regulatory process and this has seen some vaccines come to market too soon or maybe some that never should’ve have been approved at all based on larger than acceptable adverse reactions. You can be against unsafe vaccines and still support the concept of vaccination and to support the research, development and approval of truly safe and effective vaccines. Much of JFK’s [edit RFK Jr] nuanced view on vaccines has been chopped up and selectively quoted by the MSM to make his position to be more extreme than it is.
7 – DOGE will cut Social Security and Medicaid
False media narrative
Ever since Trump began to fulfill his oft stated campaign promise to properly cut Federal government waste, fraud and abuse (something many conservative politicians have promised but have only ever tinkered around the edges of) by repurposing the Obama era US Digital Service into the Department of Government Efficiency, when Trump hired Elon Musk to bring in some tech industry leaders and their brightest savant analysts to truly examine the operations of the Federal government with the view to saving billions, all hell has broken loose on the left. Customised algorithms, written to troll through numerous government operations that consume vast sums of US taxpayer dollars such as their retirement benefit programme Social Security and the two Federal government healthcare programmes (Medicaid for the working poor and Medicare for retirees), unearthed staggering amounts of fraud. Once Trump began to cut deep into the fraud and abuse, immediately Democrats (and their shills in the MSM) began a drumbeat of accusations that Trump was cutting people’s Social Security and Medicaid. Social Security is somewhat of a third rail in US politics (much like National Super in NZ or the NHS in the UK), a much beloved policy from the Roosevelt era and traditionally you tinker with it at your political peril. Democrats hoped that scaremongering over SS and Medicaid would curtail DOGE’s investigations and stop Trump from implementing changes.
Truth
The only expenditure that the Trump administration has cut from SS and Medicaid has been the billions paid to millions of people receiving these benefits fraudulently. DOGE discovered over 3 million SS numbers still operational for people over 120 years old! Of these numbers, there were SS benefits still being fraudulently paid in the name of deceased people sometimes for decades after their death due to the woeful internal systems at the Social Security Administration. DOGE eventually cancelled 3.2 million SSNs for people over 120 years old and stopped the SS payments in the millions. Apparently, it was possible to change the bank account number into which SS was paid over the phone with no verification so fraudsters would wait until a loved one died and change the bank account and the SSA had no way to match death records with active SSNs. Also embedded in this massive pile of dead people’s SSNs were illegals who rorted the system to get fraudulent SS cheques. So yes, Trump is making cuts to Social Security but only by cutting out the billions in fraudulent payments to crooks and illegals using existing SSNs to defraud the system. Americans totally voted for that because it preserves the viability of SS for whom the system was intended…..lawful US citizens.
Over at Medicaid the problem was just as massive (as in billions wasted) except that the fraud was mostly by illegal immigrants obtaining free heath care on the US taxpayer. This was usually done in Democrat controlled states (many so-called sanctuary states that grant protections and benefits to illegals) one of which is access to Medicaid which, whilst Federally funded, is administered at the state level so as to dovetail with individual state’s health benefits for the poor. Previously, even prior Republican administrations allowed Medicaid to reimburse any state’s burgeoning Medicaid bill (budgets blowing out because of funding healthcare for illegals) but Trump has put a stop to all the Medicaid funding of illegals by blocking the reimbursements to states which is used to cover their generosity to illegal immigrants. Now states that persist in this must do so from state funds which means either big state tax hikes or curtailments in programmes for illegals. So yes, Trump is cutting Medicaid ….. but only to those who were receiving it illegally. Any deserving poor who are US citizens, their benefits remain untouched but the MSM are more reluctant to publish that truth than to parrot Democrat false claims of across-the-board cuts.
8 – Salvadorean illegal as innocent “Maryland father”
False media narrative
In March 2025, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran illegal immigrant living in Maryland, was deported to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. The media and prominent Democrats portrayed him as a dedicated father and husband who was legally protected from deportation since 2019 due to rival gang threats back home. Social media and Democratic leaders, including Senator Chris Van Hollen, slammed the move as cruel, accusing the administration of ripping apart a family, including Garcia’s autistic son, without due process and visited him in the Salvadorean jail in a photo op stunt.
Truth
Garcia’s claim of lack of due process was fake news. In April 2019, the US Department of Justice Immigration Review Court heard an appeal to his deportation status and declined the appeal due to his known gang affiliation, danger to others and flight risk. That case was his due process. In March 2025, the Department of Homeland Security Investigative Referral Unit not only detailed his MS 13 gang affiliation but referred to his years earlier interrogation by Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) on suspicion of human trafficking as he was driving a van full of 8 Latino adults with no luggage. The weak DHS under Biden authorised the THP to release Garcia. His MS 13 gang affiliation had first been documented by the Gang Unit of the Prince George County Police where his clique was identified. This “Maryland Father” was also accused by his wife of domestic violence and in March 2021, she filed a Domestic Protection Order with Prince George County Court. And finally, the issue that had caused a previous court to notate his file that there was fear of his life from retaliation by a rival gang in El Salvador, since the election of President Bukele, his tough on crime agenda has effectively wiped out not just MS13 in El Salvador but also the rival gang Garcia claimed to be afraid of! MSM reporting of Garcia’s deportation pathetically frequently repeated the “Maryland Man’ mantra as if he was some innocent by-stander caught up in Trump’s “vicious” anti-illegal sweeps and almost none of the legacy media reported the truth, that he was in the country illegally, he got his due process in the Immigration Court hearing, he was part of the notorious violent MS13 gang that Trump had vowed to expel, he was a known human trafficker and a wife and child beater. Democrats, and their media allies, did their popularity no favours championing so aggressively the cause of someone so disreputable. Sadly, there have been dozens of violent illegals deported as Trump promised who the media have also similarly portrayed as “a Brooklyn mother” or “humble farm worker” (when illegals were arrested for employing child labour on a marijuana growing operation in California just last week). The media are determined to lie continuously about ICE and DHS carrying out Trump’s popular campaign promise to expel violent criminal illegals first.
9 – Trump’s cuts led to drownings in Texas
False media narrative
After the horrendous flooding in Kerr County, Texas (north of Austin) on July 4th where over 100 people perished including dozens of school children at a camp, various MSM operatives, including no less than ABC’s flagship interviewer George Stephanopoulos, hot off losing his network $15 million for slandering Trump, proceeded to tell his audience that these awful losses were all Trump’s fault because of his recent cuts to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that led to staffing shortages and insufficient warning.
Truth
I’ll leave the truth to be told by a Trump hating Democrat with knowledge of the relevant agency in Texas in charge of the weather monitoring.
“These are the facts. The National Weather Service issued its first flood watch on Thursday July 3rd. Just after midnight on July 4th the NWS issued a second food watch and 1 hour later at 1am they upgraded that flood watch to a flood warning which would’ve triggered automatic alert tones to every owner of a mobile phone in the affected flood plain. Then, at 4am July 4th they declared a flood emergency and the Guadalupe River reached its crest at 4.30am. Normally on a holiday weekend there are two forecasters on duty but on this weekend, there were FIVE forecasters. So, as you can see, there was no shortage of warnings and no shortage of forecasting capability … you know how I feel about that creature in the White House but politicizing a national disaster and trying to place blame where none is due just makes us look bad.”
Conclusion
This last example is a picture child of everything that is wrong with the MSM. The instant rush to judgment to find anything to blame Trump and make him look bad, the utter incuriosity of reporters to check facts with relevant authorities and find out the TRUTH, the blatant politicising of a tragedy and the shameless telling of a lie, any lie, to make Trump look bad.
And so this goes on, day after day, month after month, year after year. I’ve highlighted but a few but you get the gist. The media loathing of Trump has become blatant, personal, partisan, vicious and relentless and it’s getting worse not better. And yet still some of you reading this blog, perhaps even David himself, continue to despise Trump perhaps rationalising to yourself that he deserves all this biased negative coverage. But at what point do you realize that MAYBE PERHAPS SOME of what you believe about Trump is because of the relentless drum of media negativity. Surely, you rationalise, with so much ubiquitous negativity, some of it must be true. Trump is not without flaws. He’s bombastic, inartful, sharp tongued, vengeful at times, has an inflated sense of his own importance, is full of braggadocio and exaggeration, uses hyperbole constantly and, like, almost all politicians, tells outright lies. But he has accomplished more in the first 6 months of his 2nd term than many two term Presidents managed to accomplish in total!
The media opposition to Trump is now counterproductive and is backfiring and boomeranging. More and more people see the blatant bias and are switching off from MSM sources all around the world and embracing newer media outlets prepared to be more balanced or give the other side. For those of you who still despise Trump, I would invite you to do the following: the next time the MSM report on Trump, remember this long list of lies, some of them consequential, and ask yourself, “am I getting a fair assessment of the facts?” Perhaps think, “I’ve trusted the MSM all my life but could it possibly be true that they have become so biased, so oppositional, so compromised that they can no longer be trusted? And if they can’t be trusted any more, who can I trust?”
In today’s hyper-polarised political world, there are very few truly unbiased and respected commentators of US politics but I am going to give you two names of people who you cannot tell which way they vote. The first is Mark Halperin, host of the Next Up podcast and his own TV show 2 Way TV. He can be found on You Tube, X and the 2Way App. He is one of the few down the middle unbiased, experienced but extremely well-connected commentators. The second is John Solomon of J Solomon Reports and founder of Just the News, again on the internet, X and You Tube. He’s a former journalist at the AP, WaPo and The Hill. I’d like to give an honourable mention to former Rolling Stone Political Editor Matt Taibbi, formerly a pretty solid lefty now much more centrist and nuanced and very good on the left’s war on free speech.
If people want to hear centre right/conservative viewpoints, the best sources are:
Cable/internet: Newsmax, Real America’s Voice, a few Fox News hosts are solidly conservative (Jesse Waters, Sean Hannity, Greg Gutfield, ) otherwise Fox can still be pretty anti Trump.
Media platforms: Megan Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck – The Blaze, Mollie Hemingway (The Federalist).
Podcasts/Shows: Joe Rogan, Charlie Kirk (TPUSA), Vince Coglianese, Dave (x22 Report), Dinesh D’Souza, Tom Fitten (Judicial Watch), Steven Crowther.
Substack: Brian Cates (Rise of New Media), Julie Kelly, Captain Seth Keshel (election integrity expert). All three are also on X.
X (Twitter): DC Draino (Rogan O’Handley), Clandestine, Data Republican.
We are reaching a tipping point with the MSM. Almost all face declining ratings, some precipitously, and whilst government funded MSM sources can soldier on oblivious to the ratings impact of their blatant biases because most governments, even on the centre-right, are fearful of making massive cutbacks and so will still pour money down unprofitable government owned media sinkholes. For the privately owned MSM, things are more dire. In the coming months, I predict that JFK Jr [edit RFK Jr] will announce the implementation of a policy that he campaigned on (and I believe Trump supports him on), and that is to ban all media advertising of pharmaceutical drugs. The impact of this policy will be devastating. Most visual broadcast media get over 70% of their advertising revenue from Big Pharma, slightly less in major print media. These outlets are already hemorrhaging due to falling ratings, this ban will be the death knell for a number of well-known long-standing media titles. The amalgamations that will follow, at the hands of less ideological owners, may be the only way we seem some balance return to the MSM. Their myriads of lies about Trump will come to haunt those who drove the editorial decisions to abandon impartiality and defeat Trump at all costs. And maybe, just maybe, with exposure to more balanced media, we might see fewer cases of TDS.