Much like the Media Research Center, WorldNetDaily played whataboutism to try and distract from how newly elected Republican Rep. George Santo’s claimed resume was pretty much a total fabrication. Laura Hollis piled on the whataboutism in her Dec. 29 column:
Once upon a time, this would have produced outrage. Now, it barely registers. A “senior GOP leadership aide” reported to the New York Post that Santos’ – ahem – “embellishments” of his background were well-known and a “running joke” with Republicans.
Democrats, of course, are demanding that Santos resign. But they are in no position to point fingers. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, infamously claimed to be a “native American” on the basis of her family stories. She continues to serve as a United States senator and even ran for president.
Speaking of presidents, Joe Biden has made a career out of lying. He has said he graduated at the top of his law school class at Syracuse University (he graduated in the bottom 10%); that he was the Outstanding Political Science student at the University of Delaware (he wasn’t); that he received a commission to the Naval Academy (nope). He plagiarized a paper in law school. He later plagiarized a speech originally given by former British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. He claimed to be the first in his family to go to college (he wasn’t). He said he got arrested in South Africa in the 1970s trying to see Nelson Mandela (he didn’t). He exploits public sympathy for the tragic deaths in his family, claiming that his son Beau died in Iraq (he died of cancer in a Maryland hospital) and that a drunk driver killed his first wife, Neilia, and their 1-year-old daughter, Naomi (the other driver was not drunk, and Neilia Biden was at fault in the crash).
No consequences.
[…]His press secretaries lie. His appointees lie.
No consequences.
This is how American politics devolves. Although Republicans have played their share of dirty pool, the Democratic Party has taken the lead eroding political standards, after which Republicans scramble to play along.
[…]
This somehow ended up with Simpson spouting discredited election fraud conspiracy theories:
The latest rule changes involve not just mailed-in ballots but “ballot harvesting,” which must be viewed in tandem with the Biden administration’s allowing millions of illegals to enter the country. Why? Because Democrat activists and lawyers are also busy fighting election-integrity laws in state after state. When identity and citizenship cannot be verified, improper ballots will not be able to be disqualified.
Do the math.
Or take Maricopa County, Arizona, where anywhere from 20% to 48% of voting machines jammed on Election Day, affected by ballots that had – inexplicably – irregular-sized images and text, creating long lines and wait times of hours for voters – disproportionately Republicans – who opted to vote on Election Day. Thousands of people were impacted. But apparently, as long as it looks like just stupidity and incompetence, again, no consequences.
Nicholas Waddy complained in his Jan. 3 column that Republicans were held accountable for their role in instigating the Capitol riot while not explaining what that had to do with Santos:
What Democrats forget is that lying, while unethical, is protected speech in these United States, and, if we were ever to criminalize lying, or throw everyone out of Congress who has prevaricated, its halls would be empty – of Democrats, in particular.
Many have already exhaustively documented the countless misrepresentations Joe Biden has made about his record, his family background and his opponents. Biden routinely says things that aren’t true. Either Biden is deliberately lying, or his mind is so addled by senility or self-regard that he lacks the ability to discern what is true and what is false. Either way, Biden would seem to be disqualified as a potential public figure, much less as the leader of the free world. And yet, according to progressives, Biden is a true American hero! None of this adds up.
Democrats’ hypocrisy on matters of truth and falsehood goes far beyond their high regard for the serial liar Joe Biden, however. The modern Democratic Party and the progressive movement are built on a tissue of lies. This can be seen with ample clarity in their disingenuous claims and tactics in the recent midterm elections, which even CNN has criticized.
For starters, Democrats castigated their Republican opponents as “insurrectionists” and traitors, even though no insurrection took place in January 2021 and not a single person has been charged with, or been convicted of, insurrection. The sole purpose of the January 6 committee was to misrepresent what happened on that fateful day in order to vilify Republicans, to conceal the share of responsibility borne by congressional Democrats for the frightful lack of security on Capitol Hill, to conflate honest questions about the conduct of the 2020 election with violent opposition to American “democracy” and to capitalize politically on a national tragedy. Nancy Pelosi excluded Republicans nominated by the Republican leadership in the House from the committee precisely because she did not want anyone on it who might challenge the falsehoods and misrepresentations that would pervade its work. (Presumably, Democrats and progressives everywhere adore censorship for the same reason: They hate it when anyone points out that they are wrong.)
[…]All in all, George Santos’ résumé-building fabrications pale in comparison to the complex web of falsehoods that undergirds the Democratic Party and its progressive ideology. Santos should apologize every chance he gets – and he should stay in office, to join in the work of rebuilding the public’s trust in the effectiveness and integrity of the federal government. It is the Democrats who, over the last two years, have left this trust hanging by a thread.
James Zumwalt cranked out Biden whataboutism in his Jan. 4 column:
Whether it was embellishment or lying, what Santos did was clearly wrong. However, what is disingenuous is the reaction of Democrats who mercilessly attack Santos for lies that pale in comparison to the whoppers that have poured out of Joe Biden’s mouth during a political career spanning a half century and that continue on through today.
[…]Biden became such a proficient liar he really seemed to believe he could get away with it. Yet, even after learning he could not, he continued to try. The plagiarism he committed in law school failed to discourage his later plagiarism as a senator in using others’ speeches as his own. He took this to the extreme of even using the original speaker’s words to falsely make claims about his own life simply because those words appeared in the original text – words such as he was the first member of his family to go to college. (Biden lied as his grandfather had gone to college.) Biden later had to drop out of his 1988 presidential campaign for lying about having graduated in the top half of his law school class when he really graduated 76 out of 85.
Now occupying the Oval Office and still undeterred about telling untruths, Biden can claim the title of Liar-in-Chief. While some may choose to dismiss his lies as the result of an 80-year-old mind lacking clarity on issues, it ignores the fact he has followed this pattern since age 29.
But what is astounding is to hear Democratic voices rant against Santos that have been woefully silent about Biden. Nor, for that matter, did we hear those voices speak out about Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s, D-Mass., false claim of Native American ancestry. The claim put her on an inside career track both to get a teaching opportunity and to run for the U.S. Senate.
In fact, there’s no evidence Warren knowingly lied when she claimed Native American ancestry,
Jack Cashill used his Jan. 18 column to twist the Santos story toward his Obama obsession:
As an aspiring senator in 2004, the greatest bamboozler of them all punched his ticket into the club, telling America in his breakthrough speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, “My parents shared not only an improbable love. They shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation.” Not a word of this was true.
At the 2008 Democratic convention, Sen. Barack Obama once again mined the apocryphal family saga. “Four years ago,” he told his audience, “I stood before you and told you my story – of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren’t well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to.”
Obama knew he was living a lie, but he had no choice other than to persist. He had built a highly successful campaign around what biographer David Remnick called his “signature appeal: the use of the details of his own life as a reflection of a kind of multicultural ideal.”
[…]Obama finessed that life story to suit his purposes. Even on his most delusional day, Santos would not have told a whopper like the nearly blasphemous one Obama told on a March 2007 day in Selma, Alabama.
Obama had just declared for the presidency a month earlier. The fact that veterans of the celebrated 1965 Selma civil rights march were in attendance did not rein in his conscience.
In his best faux black preacher cadence – better, at least, than Hillary’s – Obama wove his own corrupted life story into the larger narrative of the black struggle. Said Obama for the ages:
“But something stirred across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks were willing to march across a bridge. And so they got together, and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home when I come to Selma, Alabama. I’m here because somebody marched for our freedom.”
As Obama explained, the Kennedys were so moved by the march they organized an airlift “to start bringing young Africans over to this country.” His father “got one of those tickets,” which enabled him to meet Obama’s mother, and “Barack Obama Jr. was born.”
As it happens, Obama Sr. came to America when Eisenhower was still president, and miraculously, Obama’s birth occurred nearly four years before the Selma march.
And we’re supposed to be appalled by Santos?
Cashill clearly is not, because his obsessive hatred of Obama blinds him to worse things being done by his fellow right-wingers.