Here it comes, that wave of disinformation designed to make America think Putin’s war against Ukraine is all Donald Trump’s fault. The leftist media and the deranged fringe right are publishing around the clock story after story claiming that the former president put the wheels in motion for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It sounds preposterous, but this is their mantra, and they are sticking to it.
The most vociferous aggressor in this deception has unsurprisingly been the flagging cable news network, CNN. And here is what it has used as cannon fodder: In an interview with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, Trump sarcastically referred to Putin declaring a large portion of Ukraine as independent “pure genius.” In a transcript of the interview, this much-maligned statement and what followed were labeled mockery: “Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. (sarcastic)”
But this nugget of pure sarcasm is being used as a peg to write a plethora of misleading articles about Trump and his relationship with Vladimir Putin, claiming the former president is responsible for the bloody invasion. CNN’s White House Correspondent John Harwood penned an article titled “Trump has been on Putin’s side in Ukraine’s long struggle against Russian aggression.” In it, the reporter tried to make the case: “It’s not just that Donald Trump recently hailed the ‘genius’ of Putin’s strike against Ukraine. Since his political career began, Trump has backed Putin in ways connected directly to the Russian’s quest to subjugate [Ukraine].”
Over at The New Republic, Craig Unger called Trump a “useful stooge” in an article headlined, “Donald Trump Was Everything Vladimir Putin Could Have Wished For.” Unger lets the cat out of the bag as to why the leftist media are working overtime to paint Trump as the catalyst for Putin’s war. He cited a recent poll showing 62% of Americans believe “Putin would not have attacked Ukraine if Trump were still in office.” Uh oh, we can’t have that now, can we? Unger then posited those “numbers … strongly suggest that most Americans still have little understanding about the disastrous ramifications of the Trump-Russia relationship.” The upshot here is that the American public is just plain stupid.
Talk about hubris.
Donald Trump (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
However, the game of paper-telephone-cup-journalism continued to make its way through the kindergarten class with HuffPost: “Trump just recently praised Putin as a ‘genius’ for invading Ukraine …” Jumping on the bandwagon was Ben Adler, the senior editor (yes, senior editor) at Yahoo!News: “Trump praises Putin’s ‘genius’ incursion into Ukraine.”
Those on the left aren’t the only ones setting their sights on Trump for Putin’s war. The Republican Accountability Project (RAP) bought ad time on Fox News to air a cleverly spliced commercial that appears to make it sound like the former president is praising the Russian president. The ad is set to run during the popular Tucker Carlson program. Would you be surprised to know the principals of RAP are, among others, Bill Kristol and former Jeb Bush aide Tim Miller?
The establishment left and the fringe right have joined to misinform the American public. Now there’s a healthy alliance. (To avoid confusion, it may be necessary to point out to the leftist reader that this last statement is commonly known as “sarcasm.”)
Mind Games
There’s a word for what is going on in the media. It’s called projection. Psychology Today defines this as “the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person …” It’s commonly used in a defensive manner. Another psychology website explained, “Projection is an unconscious defense mechanism stemming from the ego. In projection, you take an unacceptable part of yourself, such as your feelings, thoughts, tendencies, and fears, disown it, and place it onto someone else.”
In laymen’s terms, one could say the leftist media and fringe right are using projection to hide what at least 62% of Americans know to be the truth: It is the weak and feckless President Joe Biden who is to blame for the ghastly war going on in Ukraine. Perhaps these are the ones who have become stooges for the Russians? After all, it was Vladimir Lenin who said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
~ Read more from Leesa K. Donner.
