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As my RedState colleagues and I have previously reported, the Atlantic’s much-touted anonymously sourced story on how President Trump allegedly canceled a planned 2018 trip to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris because he supposedly believed the American war dead buried there were “losers” and “suckers” has crumpled faster than a cheap suit thanks to sources like Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton who are willing to go on the record to counter the claims.
Unfortunately, the fact that Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s hit piece continues to get debunked by people who were actually a part of the disputed discussion on whether Trump should make the trip does not matter to The Usual Suspects™, including disgraced former CBS News anchor and noted Trump hater Dan Rather, who demonstrated Tuesday that he has learned absolutely nothing from the Rathergate scandal:
Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who left the network for airing a false story about George W. Bush’s military service during the 2004 election, doubled down Tuesday on his support for a story in The Atlantic claiming President Donald Trump disparaged the troops.
[…]
Rather, hosting a show on “Radio Andy” on Sirius XM 102, devoted a segment to the Atlantic story, asking callers to react to the story. He asked several whether they believed the allegations were true.
Rather and several callers said that while they could not know for certain, they believed the article’s allegations because of other things the president had said.
“Whether he said it or not, it is believable,” Rather said.
Welcome to the new “fake but accurate“, folks. The story doesn’t have to be true in order for liberals to be able to pass it off as “believable” – so as to insinuate it might as well be true.
Considering his past history of comments disparaging Trump, no one should be surprised by Rather’s stance here, nor the fact that he didn’t learn any lessons from the 2004 scandal on his “reporting” on President Bush’s National Guard service. Rather has maintained that the memos he used to substantiate his “report” on the allegations were never conclusively shown to be forgeries, and to this day believes they were authentic.
What he says is still worth documenting, all the same, especially considering that he’s still considered the “godfather of journalism” in media circles and commands a lot of respect from modern-day news anchors who have taken his “fake but accurate” reporting style to a whole new level when it comes to reporting on Republicans.
Every time I read stories like this about journalists (and Democrats) knowingly pushing discredited stories to hurt their political opposition, Rush Limbaugh’s periodic reminder on how the left considers “the nature of the evidence irrelevant; it’s the seriousness of the charge that matters” comes to mind.
It’s a quote to remember as the Atlantic story, which is reminiscent in some ways of Rathergate, continues to fall apart, and as more strategically timed hit pieces continue to strike at Trump from all directions as we draw closer to the November elections.
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