“A billion dollars was stolen from FEMA to use it for illegal migrants…”
“The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money” for hurricane relief…
“They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to vote for them.”
The titanic lies that Donald Trump is currently pumping into our media ecosystem, via the sewer pipe that’s attached to his face hole, fulfill the MAGA mantra best articulated by Steve Bannon, who said years ago that it’s imperative “to flood the zone with shit.” The sheer cruelty on display – sowing disinformation at a time when people who’ve lost homes and loved ones are desperate for help – would automatically disqualify the serial liar from any public office if this were still a civilized society. But alas it is not. As sane conservative commentator David French remarked on Saturday, millions of MAGAts have been conditioned to “follow liars, and when liars lie, they believe them and hate anyone who tells the truth.”
Worse yet, the massive lies now in mass circulation about the Hurricane Helene cleanup – migrants are pocketing FEMA money, Biden is steering disaster money away from distressed Republican towns, FEMA is sending “no helicopters” to North Carolina, blah blah etc. – are a mere dress rehearsal for the main event in November, when the presidential votes get tallied.
The truth, for what it’s worth these days, is that Trump has long been laying the groundwork for a multi-faceted assault on the ’24 election if defeat is imminent. He’s been lying in advance about “fraud” and “election interference” and undocumented immigrants voting en masse. He signaled the latter, during his disastrous debate with Kamala Harris, when he lied that Democrats are bringing in “many many millions of criminals…because they think they’re going to get votes.”
Plus, he has lawyered up to challenge voting rules in every swing states. As the New York Times reported in a comprehensive piece this summer, “The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump.”
“The Republican party” indeed. Charlie Sykes, the former Wisconsin-based conservative talk show host, says it well: Trump has subsumed “an entire political party that has been conditioned to acquiesce in or actively support his complaints – no matter how full of shit…Trump knows he may face prison if he loses. A desperate man is a dangerous man.”
Grassroots Republicans have swallowed so much of Trump’s sewage that it has broken their brains. According to the latest Gallup poll, only 28 percent have faith in the accuracy of election results, and nearly half say they won’t accept the ’24 results if Der Leader loses.
(Trump’s most prominent toadies still won’t admit that Trump lost the ’20 race. Yesterday, on ABC News, House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked if Trump lost. His response: “This is a gotcha game.”)
The current disinformation crisis triggered by Hurricane Helene – and fueled by totalitarian allies like Elon Musk (“I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA”) – tees up what’s to come. Trump and his fellow liars couldn’t care less that FEMA’s fact-checkers have set up a “rumor response” page, and they couldn’t care less that top Republicans like North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp are praising FEMA’s relief efforts. The lying is all that matters. Lying is the means and the end-game. Its ultimate intent is to exhaust us, to “flood the zone with shit,” to the point where people can’t tell truth from fiction, to short-circuit the workings of democracy itself.
We’ll see this in November, unless Harris wins overwhelmingly. So fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.
Somehow I went from Steve Bannon to Bette Davis, but so be it.