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Dana Bash Manipulates Tape to Lie About Trump and Elon Musk

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Aug 14, 2024
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Low-Octane Gaslighting – CNN

  • Dana, you were just denying this three days ago!

The action itself is beyond unacceptable, but once you factor in who was behind it, and what she recently said, well, this compounds things to exponential levels.

To start, on Sunday, Dana Bash was speaking with J.D. Vance, and in one portion, she contested a comment from the VP candidate on the condition of the press. In answering why he opposed Trump in 2016, Vance said he had bought into media lies at that time, to which Bash responded: “There aren’t media lies. We play him, and let him speak for himself.” Keep those two brief sentences in mind.

Following the much-hated-in-the-press Donald Trump appearance with Elon Musk, Ms. Bash hosted a panel on CNN, and for her group, she played a clip from the joint discussion, and in the process, managed to disprove her own quote twice over. There was a lengthy discussion the men were having about the effects of nuclear problems, and the clip Bash showed was — to be charitable — quite deceptive.

Suggesting…that what happened 80 years ago — the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — that now it’s okay. Kind of blowing off the impact of that.

This is a contemptible lie. The discussion they were having was about the longterm effects of radiation fallout, with Musk stating that it is not as horrendous as has been made out. The talk was primarily about the nuclear plant disaster in Fukushima:

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DONALD TRUMP: You know, you realize it’s pretty bad.

ELON MUSK: But it’s actually not that bad. So like after Fukushima happened in Japan, like people were asking me in California, you know, are we worried about like a nucleic cloud coming from Japan? I’m like, no, that’s crazy. It’s actually it’s not even dangerous in Fukushima. I actually flew there and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it. And I donated a solar water treatment, solar powered system for a water treatment plant.

DONALD TRUMP: And yeah, but you haven’t been feeling so well lately, and I’m worried about it.

ELON MUSK: No, no, but —

DONALD TRUMP: I’m only kidding, you know —

ELON MUSK: It’s like, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re like full cities again. So it’s really not something that, you know, it’s not as scary as people think, basically. But let’s see.

Gilded Reframe – AXIOS

Axios broke what would normally be considered a huge story – but this is 2024, and normalcy checked out sometime in mid-January. The outlet discovered that the Kamala Harris campaign was taking headlines from major news outlets and editing them to make her sound more favored (as if the press was not fawning over her in full support already), with these altered images used in her campaign ads. 

Sara Fischer does some fine work digging up this effort, as it is a blatant example of the very thing the press claims to despise, especially during elections – misinformation.

Then something odd takes place. Ten minutes after promoting her exposé, Fischer comes back and pulls her punches. She declares that Harris has done nothing wrong, and that her manipulation is actually approved by Google. This would be the same Google that was found to be manipulating search results so that people seeking Donald Trump information were being given links to Kamala Harris sites. 

So manipulating headlines to lie in campaign advertising is not considered an election problem?! We have to guess that some misinformation is more equal than others. Or put simply, “This time it’s (D)ifferent.”

DNC PR Firm – POLITICO

  • There was no way you folks actually believed this.

In a severe dose of wishcasting, Politico seems to be getting high off of the fumes from all of the K-Hive hysteria. The outlet looks at some toss away outlier poll from Florida and tries to suggest that the maroon-red state could actually be in a toss-up position for Harris.

This conclusion is arrived at only because apparently applied math is rather beyond the skillset of Politico pundits:

DONALD TRUMP leads KAMALA HARRIS by 5 percentage points in the USA TODAY/Suffolk University/WSVN-TV poll — a figure that falls within the 4.4% margin of error.

Democratic Custodial Services – ASSOCIATED PRESS

One thing patently obvious about this Kamala Harris campaign is that the issue of immigration is going to be her albatross. It becomes an almost sideline amusement to watch all of the attempts to massage or outright retcon her history on this matter. 

We have seen the denial that she was the border czar, ignoring that as she is claimed to only be a diplomat to Central American countries the influx from there went up 400% since she was given the job. Attempts have been made to blame Republicans or Trump for the mess they made, and her campaign currently wants to sell this as a new problem that she will now undertake as president. So sad…

Now, the AP comes out with yet another strategy. See, Harris actually has a plan in place all along, it is just a long range solution she has installed. We just need to let it marinate and then it will take hold.

Nice concept, but there is one major downside; this means she has actually been in charge of the border all this time, which is in direct defiance of all of the claims made in the press the past three weeks.