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justaprogressive

(4,730 posts)
Thu Jul 17, 2025, 11:20 AM Thursday

Donald Trump: The Boy Who Cried Hoax - David Corn

So often when Donald Trump is cornered, he manages to escape thanks to a simple tactic: He cries hoax. With his latest troubles—caused by his administration’s declaration that there’s nothing new to see or investigate regarding deceased pedophile and sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein—Trump is once again screaming “hoax.” Yet it is not quite doing the trick.

One of Trump’s brilliant moves as a demagogic politician was to train his supporters to believe that he was the target of conspiratorial forces and “fake news.” So whenever he was hit by a critical news report or investigation, he could explain it away by declaring that he was a victim of evil forces that aimed to destroy the nation.

This began in the earliest days of his first presidency. As the press, the FBI, and congressional committees investigated Moscow’s attack on the 2016 election and interactions between Trump’s campaign and Russia, Trump tried to swat all that away by declaring it was a “hoax” and a “witch hunt”—a product of “fake news.” No matter that the intelligence community, a special counsel, and congressional committees repeatedly confirmed the basic facts of that scandal—Vladimir Putin launched a covert operation to try to help Trump win, and Trump and his campaign aided and abetted that attack by repeatedly echoing Putin’s false denials—Trump consistently repeated these catchphrases. “Russia, Russia, Russia” became the derisive nickname he deployed to obliterate a significant reality of the 2016 election.

It worked.

His devotees fully embraced his characterization. Right-wing media constantly cast the Russia investigation as a scheme orchestrated by Democrats, something called the Deep State, and mainstream media. For Trumpland, it was indeed a “hoax.” For instance, Kash Patel, now Trump’s FBI director, has routinely asserted that the Russia inquiry was “the greatest political scandal” in US history, describing it as a con job entirely cooked up by spooks, Dems, and journalists. He has gone so far as to claim absurdly that Russia did not intervene in the 2016 election


https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/trump-epstein-hoax-russia-ukraine-charlottesville/]
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Donald Trump: The Boy Who Cried Hoax - David Corn (Original Post) justaprogressive Thursday OP
I hope the old maxim proves true: "you can fool some of the people all of the time, and some of the people part of the CTyankee Thursday #1
Another good quote: emulatorloo Thursday #2
It appears that even the MAGA mob draw the line at messing with under age girls. Trust_Reality Thursday #3

CTyankee

(66,590 posts)
1. I hope the old maxim proves true: "you can fool some of the people all of the time, and some of the people part of the
Thu Jul 17, 2025, 11:26 AM
Thursday

time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

emulatorloo

(46,012 posts)
2. Another good quote:
Thu Jul 17, 2025, 11:33 AM
Thursday
But the MAGA crowd wants more. After years of the right promoting conspiracy theories that demonized Democrats and elites as cannibals and pedophilic globalists—see Pizzagate and QAnon—Trumpers expected the Trump administration to finally produce the goods with presumed evidence from the Epstein case. Patel, Donald Trump Jr., deputy FBI director Dan Bongino, and other MAGA leaders had long demanded the Epstein files be released. Trump himself had indicated he would do that if elected to a second term.

Instead, nothing has been revealed, and Trump is saying it’s time to move on and castigating his fans who feel betrayed. That’s not playing well. There’s no telling yet if his familiar move of yelling “hoax” will work this time. His steady shouts of “hoax” over the years have themselves been a long-running hoax. Usually, his voters responded as he wished. This time they may see the real hoax.

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