Last night, the leftwing media was out if force playing the gotcha game. How it worked was a reporter would present a Republican politician with a quote that allegedly came from President Trump. The GOP politician would be asked if they agree with it. It was the old game of “have you stopped beating your wife” because the target had no way of knowing if the quote was accurate and, unfortunately, many people assumed they were dealing with an honorable individual. (ProTip: never assume the average political reporter has any more substantive sense of honor and decency than your typical debauched Arabian whoremonger.) But so many people fall for it that they don’t know how to handle it when they meet up with someone who is wise to the game.

This latter event was the case when a Huffington Post reporter named Arthur Delaney tried to use deception to get a quote he could use either to ride the “Republicans are fleeing from Trump” narrative or to file in the “Republicans will do anything to cover for Trump” narrative. Unfortunately for him, his target was Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.

This is how Delaney describes it:

Brought Senator Hawley a printout of this Trump quote, but he wouldn’t look at it and said I made up a fake quote, and then he bragged that he owned me on Twitter pic.twitter.com/z8DiFeYZnj

— Arthur Delaney (@ArthurDelaneyHP) September 24, 2019

I think his issue is that I described the president asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden as the president asking a foreign government to help him win an election, as tho those are different things

— Arthur Delaney (@ArthurDelaneyHP) September 24, 2019

The problem with Delaney’s statement is that is composed of a couple of lies. The main one is that at no point in the White House statement does Trump imply that he wants Joe Biden investigated. Delaney simply makes that up out of whole cloth and because we have to assume he’s not so stupid that he can’t read, our only explanation left is that he’s lying. The other issue, of course, is that Senator Hawley’s timeline doesn’t show him even acknowledging Delaney’s presence on Twitter before what happened next. That is either a lie or the garden variety megalomania you find in failed reporters.

Why don’t you try a little of this thing called journalism – where you report actual facts, not fake quotes from the President you’ve made up to drive a partisan agenda. And then get back to me https://t.co/cHJj0icN4B

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 23, 2019

Just admit you want to see the President impeached – and you’re willing to distort & mislead to get it done https://t.co/6FvcubC6up

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 24, 2019

And then Hawley unloaded on Delaney by revealing what was really said.

As impeachment circus begins, here’s a case study in how leftist “reporters” twist words and distort facts to advance their agenda. My exchanges over two days with HuffPo’s Arthur Delaney … pic.twitter.com/bSpK7zWSJ5

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 25, 2019

This is the transcript for your convenience:

This is actually stunning behavior by Delaney. He not only lied to Hawley to elicit a response, he then compounded the lie on Twitter to get the story Hawley refused to give him.