truth

Friday January 8, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 8, 2021

‘Incited by the president’: politicians blame Trump for insurrection on Capitol Hill

The riots at the US Capitol shocked many in the US and around the world, but for some, the violent scenes in Washington are simply the natural culmination of Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud and repeated stoking of division in the US.

November 16, 2019

The descent by thousands of Trump supporters on the Capitol – minutes after the president specifically asked them to march towards it – might be the clearest evidence yet of Trump’s responsibility for Wednesday’s debacle.

But in truth, the violent insurrection was a long time coming.

Months before the November election took place, Trump supporters were already being fed a steady diet of misinformation, as Trump repeatedly claimed the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged.

Should that happen, Trump and his allies told supporters, the US would descend into socialism, communism, or worse. In August he told a crowd that if Biden were to win the election, “China will own the United States” – to the extent that Americans would “have to learn to speak Chinese”.

As the world watched the mob of Trump supporters lay siege to the Capitol building, the beacon of American democracy, it clear to some that this had been a long time coming.

November 6, 2020

“What we are witnessing at this moment is the manifestation and culmination of reckless leadership, a pervasive misuse of power, and anarchy,” Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP civil rights organization, said in a statement.

“This is not protesting or activism; this is an insurrection, an assault on our democracy and a coup incited by President Trump.

“For the past four years, we’ve seen him chip away at the civility, integrity and dignity of our nation. The pattern of President Trump’s misconduct is unmistakable and has proven time and time again that it is a grave threat and harm to the fragile fabric of our country.”

Johnson and others called for Trump to be impeached for his role in the siege of the Capitol. Some Democratic members of Congress have already said they support that measure, and Ilhan Omar, a progressive congresswoman from Minnesota, said on Wednesday evening she was already drawing up articles of impeachment.

October 2, 2020

The tone at Trump’s rally before the riot was combative, as the president told the crowd: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.” Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s confidante and increasingly beleagured lawyer, had earlier demanded “trial by combat” over the election results, further stoking the crowd.

Away from Trump’s immediate circle however, many elected Republicans have also lent credence to the president’s baseless accusations of fraud – and have supported Trump even as he defended far-right, torch-bearing marchers in Charlottesville, refused to condemn white supremacy, and spread fear among Black Americans.

“Make no mistake: the domestic terrorism at the US Capitol by armed protesters is not only Trump’s fault alone,” Julian Castro, a Democratic former secretary of housing and urban development and 2020 presidential candidate, wrote on Twitter. (Continued: The Guardian) 

 

Wednesday September 2, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 2, 2020

Trump Keeps Fanning the Flames

November 16, 2019

For the second time in a tumultuous week, demonstrations in an American city escalated into gunfire—and death. Clashes between Donald Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter protesters intensified on Saturday in Portland, Oregon, where a man was shot and killed. According to the New York Times, a caravan of several hundred trucks full of Trump supporters headed to downtown Portland, where demonstrators have gathered to protest police violence for more than 90 consecutive nights in response to the May killing of George Floyd. Confrontations between those participating in the pro-Trump rally and those countering it quickly ensued, with the president’s supporters firing paintball guns and pepper spray at people from the beds of their pickup trucks and protesters in the street tossing items back at them.

While police have not released details about the victim or a suspected shooter, the Times’ Mike Baker—who documented the event as it unfolded in a Twitter thread—reported the victim was wearing “a hat with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in the Portland area that has clashed with protesters in the past.” 

April 13, 2018

In a Sunday morning tweetstorm, the president only ratcheted up tensions by encouraging supporters to travel into cities to engage with Black Lives Matter protests and threatening to again send troops into Portland. He called Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler a “fool” who “has no idea what he is doing” and continued his “LAW & ORDER!!!” pronouncements. “Bring in the National Guard!”, he wrote, reiterating his Friday Twitter threat to remobilize federal agents into the city if Wheeler is unable to quell the chaos. The same day, the mayor firmly rejected the idea of Trump sending federal law enforcement into Portland as he did in July. “You made the situation far worse,” Wheeler wrote in an open letter to the president. “Your offer to repeat that disaster is a cynical attempt to stoke fear and distract us from the real work of our city.”

On Sunday, Trump reposted a video of his supporters unloading paintballs and pepper spray at protesters from their vehicles, calling the behavior “a big backlash” that “cannot be unexpected” under Wheeler’s leadership. The president appeared to approve of his supporters taking matters into their own hands, tweeting, “The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer.” 

Trump also encouraged supporters to go into Portland, praising the participants of the MAGA caravan as “GREAT PATRIOTS” less than a week after one of his supporters, Illinois teenager Kyle Rittenhouse, traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and allegedly shot and killed two protesters. The Kenosha protests broke out after a white police officer fired seven bullets last weekend at Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man who is now paralyzed from the waist down. (Continued: Vanity Fair) 

 

Friday August 7, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 7, 2020

The Misinformation President

Facebook deleted the post – a clip from an interview Mr Trump gave to Fox News – saying it contained “harmful Covid misinformation”.

November 16, 2019

Twitter followed by saying it had frozen a Trump campaign account until a tweet of the same clip was removed.

US public health advice makes clear children have no immunity to Covid-19.

A Facebook spokesperson said on Wednesday evening: “This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation.”

It was the first time the social giant had taken action to remove content posted by the president based on its coronavirus-misinformation policy, but not the first time it has penalised Mr Trump over content on his page.

Speaking by telephone to morning show Fox and Friends on Wednesday, Mr Trump argued it was time for all schools nationwide to reopen.

He said: “If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – almost immune from this disease. (BBC) 

After 1,267 days, President Trump had made 20,055 false or misleading claims according to the Washington Post on a website devoted to chronicling his misinformation. Some of the most repeated claims include the following: 

January 24, 2017

“We built the greatest economy in history, not only for our country, but for the world. We were number one, by far.” 

“And we’re also — on the southern border, as you know, the wall is going up. It’s going up very rapidly. We’re at 182 miles.”

“My job was made harder by phony witch hunts, by ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ nonsense.”

“The Ukraine thing was a hoax. It was a pure hoax.”

“China was ripping off this country, $530 billion a year, think of it, 530 billion a year ripping us up for years.” (Washington Post) 

 

Friday April 3, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 3, 2020

Trudeau must reveal COVID-19 national projections

It’s time for Justin Trudeau to tell us just how bad the COVID-19 pandemic could get in Canada.

Coronavirus cartoons

The prime minister holds in his hands science-based models that project how many people might get this illness and, just as crucially, how many might die from it.

Yet he’s doggedly keeping this vital information secret, despite the fact many other political leaders are levelling with their public about the viral tsunami barrelling their way.

Even Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who had previously resisted publicizing such projections, just did a complete about-face.

“You deserve to know what I know,” he told Ontarians Thursday as he announced that the province’s top doctors would on Friday provide the modelling numbers for where Ontario was, is and could be. 

It was only Wednesday when Ford said people might panic if they learned those projections. Now, he says the information will provide the public with “a real wake-up call.”

This is one of those rare occasions when Trudeau should follow Ford’s lead. Trudeau’s condescending, father-knows-best rejection of the public’s right to know infantilizes mature Canadian adults and leaves them in the dark — just when they most need the bright light provided by the latest scientific research to guide them forward.

Not only are his excuses for doing this flimsy, they’re self-contradictory. In one breath, Trudeau says he won’t release the pandemic predictions prepared by Canada’s top public health officials until they’re more accurate. 

In the next breath, he suggests those projections are unreliable because the response of Canadians in the coming days will change them. But that argument, taken to its logical conclusion, means even Ottawa’s best projections will always be useless because they could always be altered by future events. 

And if that’s so, why does the government bother making such projections at all? If they serve no purpose in helping Canadians know how to act, they serve no purpose in directing federal policy.

Finally, if the pandemic models are so problematic, it made no sense for Trudeau to promise that he looks “forward to sharing more information with Canadians in the coming days” after he consults with the premiers.

The only way people will truly comprehend the life-and-death stakes of COVID-19 is if Trudeau gives them the facts as he knows them.

That’s what Premier Ford rightly decided to do. It’s what even the much-maligned Donald Trump has done. On Tuesday, the president allowed the release of sobering projections from the top U.S. scientists battling the coronavirus. They indicated it could kill 100,000 to 240,000 Americans. 

Likewise, in mid-March new modelling from the Imperial College of London demonstrated stronger measures were urgently needed to cut the projected COVID-19 death-toll in the United Kingdom from 260,000 to 20,000. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who entrusted the nation with these numbers, changed course almost immediately.

Trudeau owes the public this kind of transparency — and trust. There are too many rumours and fake news stories spreading alarms in this country. There is no cure, as yet, to COVID-19. A steady flow of solid information from the government, however, is the best cure for public confusion and fear. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

 

Wednesday June 12, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 12, 2019

Vigilance the best protection from plague of fake news

Canadians will be voting in federal elections in four months. Many have already made up their minds. Regardless, attempts will be made to shift voters’ perceptions. We know this is coming and we need to prepare for it.

Facebook admitted in 2017 that Russian operatives bought political advertising on its social media site intent on disrupting the U.S. elections the previous fall. U.S. citizens (let’s face it: all of us) were subjected to fake news, absurd memes and all manner of slander in a Moscow-driven attempt to affect the vote.

It didn’t end there. Facebook closed down hundreds of fake Facebook accounts, at least one of which had 3.6 million users, set up to help Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Facebook also shut down hundreds of accounts linked to an Israeli political consulting firm, Archimedes Group, whose primary goal is to win campaigns in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

In Canada, we can expect the same. An alleged email made the rounds recently purporting to be from a People’s Party of Canada organizer bizarrely suggesting that non-white Canadians who join Maxime Bernier’s anti-immigrant, Islamophobic party should be displayed prominently but never consulted about policy because “they are all liberals anyway.”

Similarly, the U.S. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was featured in a video in which she was made to look like she was slurring her speech. U.S. President Donald Trump was among those who tweeted the fake video. In this case, Facebook refused to take the video down, claiming it is not its responsibility to censor.

On Monday, Facebook Canada announced that anyone wishing to buy political ads on its platform will need approval. The authorization process involves several steps to confirm the group buying the ad is real and based in Canada. Starting June 30, political ads appearing on Facebook will show who bought the ad and will allow social media users to view information about the ad’s reach.

The Pelosi video, however, is not considered advertising and would have been allowed on the site.

In that case, Facebook is actually correct. Free speech is free speech is free speech. As disgusting as the video is — it was created by slowing down an actual clip of Pelosi speaking and then altering the pitch of her voice to mask the manipulation — it does not qualify as hate speech. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)