It didn’t take long to get a perfect example of what I wrote in my last editorial about how everything everywhere is lies and election Tom-foolery to such extent that trying to pass along only truth becomes an endless struggle of trying to filter out fakery from frivolous fact.

Over the weekend, The Drudge Report ran with the following as it’s main all-caps headline:

BLOWING IT: TRUMP SIMULATES ORAL SEX ON STAGE!

The headline, CREATED BY DRUDGE created the full story. That is to say that, without the headline, there would have been no story because it was merely a video clip on X. A video of Trump demonstrating oral sex on stage wasn’t someone else’s mistake Drudge fell for. (Easy to do with so much fake news around.) This was a LIE Drudge created with its own headline that made the claim that this is what was happening. The link goes to a video clip that Drudge’s headline TELLS you is Donald Trump faking oral sex on stage.

You watch the video, however, and cannot understand a word Trump says and naturally wonder is that what Trump was really doing? Is he really that far off his rocker? Follow down the comments on X, and you discover the full video posted, which shows that Trump was demonstrating to his audience how his mic didn’t work right and was set way too low for him when he came on the stage. It was NOTHING.

Here’s the unedited video of what was really going on:

https://x.com/saras76/status/1852555883646988542

Total nothing turned into a major fake-news headline by the nation’s largest aggregator of news!

Or was it?

You reflect again and ask yourself, “But why else would the Republican candidate for president of the United States of America be carrying on for two-and-a-half minutes about how his microphone didn’t work?” Was it just so he could factually tell a national audience that his stage crew is “stupid” or because his microphone is that interesting? If he wasn’t making a joke, why is he wasting so much time just to rant about his stage crew? And why did the audience roar with laughter right when he began playing with the mic. stand? It seems like—to those who love him and were there—it was pretty obvious what he was miming. THEY clearly didn’t think he was just expressing a beef about his sound crew. An entire arena doesn’t break out into an arena-filling laugh just because someone grumbles that his crew is “stupid!”

Apparently, Trump didn’t like the Drudge story because on Sunday, Trump posted,

I haven’t seen the Drudge Report for years, but everyone tells me it is doing really badly. It it remaining open, or will they close it up?

To which Drudge responded by posting a page with a simple Trump rally sign on it that said “Save America: President Donald J. Trump” followed by one line:

“ICYMI: ‘Drudge is Dead.’” It bore the date “March 21, 2022.” (ICYMI = “In Case You Missed it.”) Just reminding Trump they’re still here since the last time he declared them dead for no longer loving him.

Is that really the kind of entertainment for the masses Republican presidential candidates have come down to? See how hard it is to filter out the fake from the fact when there is so much fakery but also so much actual outrageous behavior from the top-running candidate that you can no longer tell whether Trump is just going lower than ever, or is the Left going lower by resorting to making ludicrous stuff up?

I had to watch the longer video several times, trying to figure out if the fuller picture really made the situation any better. At first, I was disgusted that Drudge would try to turn nothing into creating news to make Trump a fool. He doesn’t need their help. But then I had to ask, Why else would Trump be carrying on at such length with his mic stand if he wasn’t making a joke; and, if he was making a joke, what would have been so funny about it if you don’t take it as the lewd sexual innuendo that seems like the only thing that could have been that funny to his audience about what he was doing? His own audience certainly took it as a hilarious joke, and I don’t know what the roar-inducing, throw-your-head-back-and-laugh humor would have been if it wasn’t that.

We are talking Donald Trump here, so the outrageous could easily be true, given that he tries to say, at last, one outrageous thing every day just to make sure the press keeps him in the public eye daily. So, this is what we’ve come to as a nation: Is a presidential race so reduced to just being Roman arena entertainment for the masses that a Republican candidate would stoop this low just to get a cheap laugh because entertainment is everything?

It comes down to this: Is a) the press so desperate to destroy Trump that it now has to create outrageous clips of him, saying he’s doing things he is not; or is this b) Trump’s locker-room humor?

I guess the very fact that I even have to wonder this says enough about Trump as a quality presidential candidate … but it also says enough about the state of the press. They both go so low so often and deserve so little respect that I can no longer tell which way to read this! We now live in such a fake-news, constant-clown world that both explanations seem highly likely. So, I’m running with “c) all of the above.”

(I am interested in hearing your take—humorous or otherwise—on what is going on in this Trump video in the comments below. Did he know he was doing what so many would see as mimicking a sex act on stage?)

More fake financial news just in time to help Harris

In another example of fake news created by the mainstream financial media today, we have an article that actually claims the next president could inherit a booming economy, and we get to hear Biden boasting about it:

The next U.S. president could inherit a booming economy. That’s a daunting challenge.

Not only is the idea that the present economy is booming bombastic in the eyes of the average American where more than forty percent now say they think the economy stinks, but even more outrageous is the fact that CNBC, refers to the booming job market as evidence of the strong economy.

Really? The job market that just came in with a whopping 12,000 new jobs on Friday, which, if it gets revised down as all past government jobs reports have been, will actually become a net loss of jobs next month? You’re going to use such highly errant and borderline negative numbers as proof of how strong the economy is?

Days ahead of the election, the U.S. economy is earning strong marks on private job creation, pending home sales, consumer sentiment and gross domestic product.

Huh? The first three of those are all horrible. I not only just read that “private job creation” was horrid because the 12,000 new jobs wouldn’t have happened without an increase in government jobs that exceeded that 12k, but I also read that home sales were terrible, and this very article actually shows that consumer sentiment is in the toilet. That was all over the news last weekend. I guess they will make up any lie out of thin air just to help Harris on the final day before the election even if they must surely know it sounds ludicrous.

But the flurry of remarkably good economic news over the past week creates a daunting mandate for whoever becomes the next U.S. president: Don’t ruin it.

Seriously? How about a daunting question of “can you do anything to help it?”

“Remember how we were going into a depression and all that stuff. Guess what? We have the strongest economy in the world. The whole damn world,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday during an event announcing new infrastructure grants at the Port of Baltimore.

If it’s so good, why do …

Forty-four percent of U.S. adult respondents say they believe that “total economic collapse” is at least somewhat, if not very, likely, according to an October YouGov poll.

So good that nearly half the nation thinks it is so bad that it is somewhat likely to go into “TOTAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE!” Not a recession, but complete and utter ruin! The economy is so strong that Kamala has stopped campaigning on how good it is because few are buying it as an achievement anyone would want to brag about.

The mood of economic pessimism within the electorate has prompted both Trump and Harris to roll out a slate of policy proposals that promise a new economic future for Americans.

How can you claim strong consumer sentiment in an article that shows such extreme consumer pessimism, except that you know longer even think about whether your lies make any sense. Why would I trust either of those two clowns to give me a new economic future when the one that both of them gave us with their joint lockdowns and massive bailouts and deficits and enormous money-printing and ongoing trade wars is such a hideous wreck it appears to be sitting on the brink of total ruin?

Zero Hedge had a completely different take on it than the baldface lying mainstream financial media:

Next US President To Face Slowing Economy, Experts Warn

Only about 21 percent consider business conditions “good”—a far cry from the nearly 40 percent who thought so five years ago, according to Consumer Confidence Index surveys.

I.e., pre-Covid and all the stupid things both candidates did to the economy during Covid!

Economic indicators likely won’t remain as encouraging for long, said Lance Roberts, the chief investment strategist at RIA Advisors.

“I think you’re going to start looking at much lower rates of economic growth somewhere sub-2 percent growth as consumers become challenged by making ends meet,” he said.

Steve Hanke, professor of Applied Economics at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, shared a similar concern.

“The economy is running on fumes and is bound to slow down….”

There is plenty more in that article about the slowing of the economy, but that gives you the gist of it. I hope you’ll use the comment space below to give us your take on these stories in the media. Are they lies?

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