CNN
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In a Donald Trump-influenced era of looking-glass politics, everything seems upside down, traditional loyalties are mixed, history can be rewritten, and the truth is exactly what anyone wants it to be.
A Republican-led House hearing Thursday encapsulated the current political circus ahead of another tense election. In a mind-blowing spectacle, a scion of the Kennedy family and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination was greeted as a hero by Republicans. But it was criticized by Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, as “a living, breathing, false flag operation.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. he was given a platform by pro-Trump Republicans because of his vaccine and Covid-19 conspiracies, and claims that the government has tried to censure him with its efforts to shield Trump by claiming that the government’s political weaponry is a democratic and not republican transgression.
The marriage of convenience in a fiery hearing underscored how the populism and truth-bending pioneered by Trump on the right also has significant currency on the left. It illustrated how the character of mainstream American politics is under siege by fringe voices and extremist positions that once struggled to be heard, but in recent years have found a foothold on social media, on the campaign trail, and even and all in Congress and the White House.
As an example of his creation of alternate realities, a tactic frequently used by Trump, Kennedy forcefully denied that he had ever been anti-vaccination, racist or anti-Semitic. However, CNN’s fact checks show that he has repeatedly shared unsubstantiated conspiracy theories with a false link between autism and childhood vaccines. He has also claimed that artificial chemicals could make children gay or transgender. And just last week, he was hit with new claims of conspiracy, racism and anti-Semitism over comments at a dinner in New York City in which he claimed that “Covid-19 is aimed at Caucasians and blacks. The people more immune are the Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese.”
Despite this controversy, Kennedy seemed shamelessly inventing new truths even during the hearing. He said, for example, “In my entire life, and while I’m under oath, I have never uttered a sentence that was racist or anti-Semitic.” At another point he said, “I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” then added, “But everyone in this room probably thinks I have been because that’s the prevailing narrative.”
In a strange reversal of the normal political order, Democrats in the audience effectively tried to undermine the candidacy of the son and nephew of slain party heroes, former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy. The top Democrat on the House Select Committee on Federal Armaments, U.S. Rep. Stacey Plaskett, for example, condemned the committee’s chairman, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, for letting Kennedy he issued what Democrats consider extreme views. “It’s a free country. You have absolutely the right to say what you believe,” he said, adding: “But you have no right to a platform, public or private.”
Plaskett’s comments raised serious questions about whether, if any, there are limits to a prominent figure’s right to free speech, even if they say things that aren’t true, and to what extent point misinformation has flooded politics and elections. But most of the audience stayed away from those issues and was dominated by Republican attempts to score points and shield Trump and Democrats’ attacks on Kennedy.
One of the former president’s top allies, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, revived conservative claims that Democratic-leaning officials in the federal government suppressed a story about a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden before the last election. , a move she argued had been instrumental in her father winning Trump the presidency. He cited this theory when he asked Kennedy if he believed there was censorship that amounted to government interference in the 2020 election.
Former Twitter executives admitted under oath this year that the social media network temporarily removed a story about the laptop, but said there was no government interference in the decision. CNN previously reported that allegations that the FBI told Twitter to suppress the story are unsupported, and a half-dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with several federal officials familiar with the matter, denied that they ‘had given any such directive.
But the specific truth in this case isn’t necessarily important to Republicans who were using Kennedy to further create the impression of government interference to prevent Trump from retaining the White House. The more public confusion there is, the better it is politically for the former president. Of course, claims that Democrats are really to blame for election interference are a direct attempt to whitewash Trump’s own behavior, as he used the tools of his office to try to subvert the 2020 election and stay in power .
Thursday’s hearing is not the first time that political realities have appeared mixed up or traditional loyalties subverted. Last week, for example, Republicans subjected FBI Director Christopher Wray to a fierce grilling in a hearing while Democrats unusually defended the bureau, long considered one of the most conservative organs in government. of the USA. The GOP storm was raised by Trump allies who want to discredit investigations into his effort to overturn the 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Florida resort. Trump has already been indicted in the latter case and there are growing indications that he will be indicted in the former. He denies any wrongdoing and claims the investigations are politically motivated.
It’s not that Republicans don’t have real ground for oversight. Independent government watchdog reports and internal investigations, for example, have found deficiencies and errors in some investigations involving Trump. In the Russia investigation, there were errors in the use of a dossier compiled by a former British spy and in requests for surveillance warrants. More recently, a deal with the Department of Justice under which Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to two tax crimes and reached a deal to settle a felony gun charge is within Congress’ right to investigate. But neither case, so far, supports the wild claims that a corrupt liberal deep state is carrying out schemes designed to suppress conservatives that Trump and his fellow Republicans often make.
There is ample evidence that the former president is the one who armed the government to persecute his political enemies and evade responsibility. For example, he fired former FBI chief James Comey and told NBC News it was because of the Russia investigation. He used his position as president and the prospect of military aid to try to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into opening an investigation into Joe Biden and his son in a phone call that later led to his first impeachment. And Trump, by pressuring several officials in key swing states and criticizing poll workers and making claims of widespread voter fraud, appears to have used executive power to try to defy the will of voters in 2020.
Voters also risked being misled by Washington’s hall of mirrors on another occasion this week. In a more frivolous but still misleading example of how it’s often hard to figure out what’s true, the Biden campaign released a campaign video that appeared to show one of Trump’s staunchest allies, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, praising Biden as satisfactory. the historic mission of the great democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. The words were Greene’s, but they were selectively edited out of a video speech that disguised his true intent, which was to condemn the Democrats’ historic spending on education, health care and social safety net programs which Republicans say are similar to socialism. .
This example of things not being quite what they seem was more a blatant case of campaign trolling than the widespread reshaping of the truth evident on Thursday. The hearing at one point degenerated into both Republicans and Democrats accusing each other of trying to censor their questions and testimony.
A veteran Democrat, Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, summed up how the session had distorted reality. “I never thought we would descend to this level of Orwellian dystopia. Suddenly the tools of the trade are not to get to the truth but to distract, distort, deflect and disguise,” Connolly said.
Curiously, several members of the Republican side of the committee nodded their heads in agreement, apparently convinced that the Orwellian behavior in question was on the part of what they see as a tyrannical and censorious government rather than the obvious inverted truths.
