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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
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For a change of pace from the constant Kavanaugh discussions, this struck me as one of the more ridiculous items of the day (albeit not the most ridiculous). To be fair, this is a day where a porn star’s lawyer alleged a 15 year old ran a high school gang rape ring while having not a single witness come forward for 38 years.

So yeah. Welcome to 2018.

President Trump claimed today that China is meddling in the 2018 elections.

“Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election coming up in November against my administration,” Trump said during remarks at the UN Security Council.

The President offered scant details or evidence, which came during a session meant to focus on issues of nonproliferation. He suggested the meddling attempts came as retribution for the budding trade war he has waged with Beijing.

“They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade,” Trump said. “We are winning on trade. We are winning at every level. We don’t want them to meddle or interfere in our upcoming election.”

CNN continues…

A senior administration official on Wednesday sought to flesh out Trump’s allegation earlier Wednesday that China “has been attempting to interfere” in the 2018 midterm elections, but offered no concrete evidence to back up the President’s claim. None of the activities the official described rose to the level of Russia’s coordinated campaign to influence voters in 2016 in support of Trump’s candidacy.

Notice the buzzwords here. “Scant evidence” and “no concrete evidence.” Never mind that the evidence of widespread Russian meddling in 2016 is still basically non-existent outside of a few small ad buys and some fake twitter accounts. Our valiant media are now extreme skeptics when it comes to foreign powers meddling in our elections.

To further the point, the President was also pressed at his press conference today, with a reporter demanding he provide evidence for his claim and ABC News ran the “no evidence” line all day on their radio bumpers.

The only problem? It’s right there in front of their faces, public knowledge, and Trump even cited it earlier in the day.

Trump rakes China for trying to “MEDDLE” in midterms.

He’s referring to the 4-page ad in the @DMRegister.

“Regrettably, we've found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election, coming up in November, against my administration,” Trump said at UN. https://t.co/mPpSOPZNSO

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 26, 2018

The advertisement, labeled as paid for by the “China Daily, and official publication of the People’s Republic of China” is like a 4-page tweet from the Chinese government.

It calls the trade war with Trump the “fruit of a president’s folly.” pic.twitter.com/shDAOZlC3X

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 23, 2018

Anyone who’s not a complete idiot knows that the China Daily is a Chinese government controlled, communist mouthpiece.

In other words, a foreign power is trying to influence voters within the pages of American publications by printing fake news stories. They bought four straight pages of ad space and published the “stories” in a format meant to fool readers into thinking they were reading something other than propaganda. This act provides far more direct evidence of foreign meddling than anything dealing with Russia’s subversion in 2016. That’s not to suggest Russia didn’t meddle, but for CNN to say that a foreign government running fake news stories in a prominent paper doesn’t “rise to the level” of Russian proxies posting ridiculous facebook memes is just insane.

On another note, what kind of self-respecting newspaper turns over it’s pages to oppressive, murdering communists in order to get a shot in at President Trump?

That’s our media though. After spending two years losing their minds over supposed election meddling and demanding Trump do something about it, they suddenly become uber skeptics and act indignant when Trump names a country that doesn’t fit their narrative.

Now, I’m not suggesting we should stop China from doing this as I think our free society pretty much demands we put up with such non-sense as opposed to censoring speech. What this does reveal, though, is just how partisan the entire “election meddling” narrative actually is. It’s not really about saving democracy for these people or preventing foreign influence. No, it’s simply about having something to delegimitze President Trump’s election with.

If the evidence doesn’t support that end and points somewhere else, well, then the media isn’t interested. Heck, they’ll even get defensive at the suggestion. Funny how that works.