One thing that no one can deny is that [Trump] exposed the media for being essentially a propaganda agent. It’s not just the news and they never covered anything he did that was positive. They spent years talking about some fake Russia collusion story and never apologized for it and they’ll [still] allow people on the show … to say he did collaborate with Russia.
Joe Rogan, Feb. 25, 2024
I used to be 100% a left-leaning person. I never voted Republican my whole life. … [However,] over time, … I, who used to be on the Left [have concluded that] you guys [on the Left] are out of your minds. People exist outside of these blue bubbles” where everyone’s gone insane.
Joe Rogan, The Rubin Report, Jan 31, 2024
One of the main storylines that the Democrat News-media Colluders (hereafter the DNC) is constructing for the 2024 presidential election campaign is that Trump has admitted that if he is re-elected in 2024, he will use his office to seek revenge on his political opponents. This is even the storyline across the pond at The Telegraph of London which reports that “Trump promises ‘ultimate and absolute revenge’ if he wins the election.”
Actually, no he didn’t. What Trump said (meant) is precisely the opposite. Talking to CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee), Trump actually said this:
“Your [conservative] victory will be our ultimate vindication. Your liberty will be our ultimate reward and the unprecedented success of the United States of America will be my ultimate and absolute revenge.”
It may be necessary to go slow here as if one is talking to children … or Democrats … or the “news” media … or communists. The reasoning is simple. Trump here tells CPAC precisely what his “revenge” will consist in, namely, “the unprecedented success of the United States of America”. Newsflash: that is not “revenge”. That is a reward for the American people.
If an employee at a company fears that her boss is going to seek revenge on her for some alleged mistake, and if she asks her boss about this and he replies that “my revenge is that you will be getting a big pay raise from now on,” the boss as not saying that he will be seeking revenge on the employee. Yes, he used the word “revenge”, but used it in an ironical way to say that he will not be seeking revenge but will rather be rewarding her.
Recently the Democrat News-media Colluders (or DNC) tried to accuse Trump of seeing revenge on his political opponents when he said, again to CPAC, this,
I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.
However, it is one of the standard points in the philosophy of law that retribution is not the same thing as revenge. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains: “Retributivism has also often been conflated with revenge or the desire for vengeance. But the two concepts should not be confused.” Indeed, “retributive justice” is one of the four main theories of punishment, deterrent theory, retributive theory, preventive theory, and reformative theory. Whereas deterrence theory holds that punishment is justified because it can deter people from committing crimes, retributive theory holds that punishment is justified by giving the lawbreaker their “just deserts” (what they deserve). The fact that it is a “just punishment” is what distinguishes retribution from mere revenge. Although not directly relevant to the present discussion, preventative theory (also called the “disablement” theory) holds that punishment is justified because it is necessary to prevent further crimes being committed by disabling the criminal (perhaps by putting them in prison). Reformative theory holds that punishment is justified if the criminal is transformed by it into a better person (rehabilitation).
The point for present purposes is that in order to fabricate the idea that Trump said he would seek revenge in his second term, the DNC, in that past hoax, had to change Trump’s actual word, “retribution,” to “revenge”. In the present case, the Telegraph recasts Trump’s ironic use of the word “revenge,” which, in context, is used to mean that he will not seek revenge, to a straightforward threat that he will seek revenge on his political enemies.
It is worth pointing-out that the “news” media has an inherent motive not to treat Trump fairly in their reporting. Since the media has been exposed promulgating one anti-Trump hoax after another, the silly Trump-Russia Collusion hoax, the Trump had police tear gas protestors in Lafayette Park hoax, the “Trump said all Mexicans are rapists and drug traffickers” hoax, the “Trump called Mexicans ‘animals’” hoax, the “Trump derided people from Haiti and Africa in his “s***hole” remark” hoax, the “Trump didn’t care about Russian bounties paid for dead American troops” hoax, the “Trump said he grabbed women by their p***y” hoax, the “Trump called the Coronavirus a hoax” hoax, the “Trump told people to inject bleach to kill the Coronavirus” hoax, the “Trump has never condemned white supremacists” hoax, the “Trump admitted in the audiotape that he retained classified documents” hoax, the “Trump used Hitlerian language that immigrants ‘poison the blood’ of America” hoax, the “Trump is stupid” hoax, the “Joni Ernst called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot an insurrection” hoax and so on and on and on until the present day. Since the “news” media has been exposed promoting so many hoaxes against Trump, it is in the DNC’s interest that he be found guilty of some serious wrongdoing. For in that case they can say, “well, we might have been mistaken about some of the past accusation but we were right more generally that he is unworthy of the presidency.” The DNC’s multiple past hoaxes motivate them to continue the hoaxes until they get him convicted for something.
Since the profession of journalism requires a mastery of the language, one would assume that “journalists” would be able to understand ordinary English sentences. Unfortunately, they cannot seem to get anything right concerning Trump. With all the documented mistakes they have made over the years one would think they would make a concerted effort to get things right going forward. But they never do. Part of the problem is that given the destruction of our “educational” system, “journalists” simply do not have the conceptual resources to get things right. Many of them do not even seem to understand the English language. But another and more serious problem is that “journalists” do not want to change. They have, by and large, accepted a leftist paradigm, in something like Thomas Kuhn’s sense of “paradigm”, and literally cannot engage in serious self-criticism. Since most “journalists” have bought a leftist script hook, line and sinker, nothing they say can be trusted. It is no worder that trust in the “news” media is at an all-time low. Even Joe Rogan, who had once supported Bernie Sanders, now sees that the media has become a propaganda agent for the Left. Conservatives did not do this to the media. They did this to themselves with their ideological descent into their “insane … blue bubbles.”
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McDonough has again successfully dissected the distortions of language perpetrated by the ignorant, leftist press. Beyond that I am happy to see that he accurately labels much Trump criticism as communist in orientation. For a long time, labeling people as communists was considered a right wing strategy meant to denigrate liberal voices. To some degree I agreed that that could be an intellectual pitfall. But now there is clearly a communist thread in many Democrat Party communications, beliefs, and goals that cannot be denied simply by insisting that they are “liberal.”