It is interesting to watch liberal pundits disguise themselves as Truth Detectors. Two of my favorites are Snopes and FactCheck.org. Each uses the finest of nuance to push an article and associated title to fit their narrative. That narrative is always, 100% of the time, liberal good – conservative bad.
Take the example of Hillary Clinton and Uranium One. I recently posted an article regarding Chuck Schumer’s selective investigative syndrome (SIS). Of particular note is his strong urge to have two investigations into the Trump administration and Russian ties. Yet, when the Secretary of State was Hillary Clinton, when she was running State business on her own personal server – Uranium One made four donations to the Clinton Foundation totaling $2.35 million. Chuck Schumer said of this situation, “I think all this other stuff is going to be bumps in the road when you look back on it.” The old, nothing to see here… move along.
When you run to Snopes or FactCheck.org to review the Clinton/Uranium One issue you get headlines that could have been written by Chuck himself… move along, nothing to see here. FactCheck.org’s title on this topic is, “A False ‘Corruption’ Claim”. Snopes gives it a “False” rating. By the way, Snopes will never give a conservative viewpoint a clear positive claim. It is usually “mostly this” or “mostly that”, or so I’ve notice.
I’ll just take FactCheck.org (Snopes is pretty much the same) to make a point. By selectively choosing the angle of argument, they paint the picture of non-corruption. I notice this technique often with liberal media outlets. Morning Joe is famous for this slight of hand. You will always hear one contributor say “people I know”, “people are telling me”, “friends say to me”, “crowds tell me”, “everywhere I go people say”… and then they make the point they want to make. This trick is used to lend credibility to the point they want to make. Of course, they are just saying that – you can’t prove people are saying this or that. You don’t know if it is their other liberal friend saying that and they are being “liberal with the facts” making it sound like half of America.
FackCheck.org’s (FC) title on the Clinton/Uranium controversy as noted before is “A False ‘Corruption’ Claim”. FC makes the following point regarding the April 23, 2015, a New York Times article.
“The story doesn’t find evidence of a pay-to-play scandal or say that Clinton was responsible for the uranium deal.”
In building their selectively narrow narrative they add “New York Times wrote about the uranium issue, saying the paper had “built upon” Schweizer’s information.”
This now allows a pivot to Schweizer and Fox News:
“A few days after the Times story, Schweizer made the false claim on “Fox News Sunday” that Clinton, as secretary of state, had “veto power” and “could have stopped” the sale. We found that only the president had that power.”
So now we have the narrative foundation built. You see it isn’t about the potential corruption, or linking a private email server and donations to the Clinton Foundation to the Russians. No it is about the false claim that Hillary had veto power? That now becomes the false claim!
FC’s goes on to note:
As the Times wrote, there are certainly ethical considerations when a former president is accepting foundation donations from people who have a stake in a business deal and his spouse sits on a committee that approves such deals. But Hillary Clinton wasn’t responsible for “hand[ing] over American uranium rights to the Russians,” Well no, she didn’t mine it, put it in a bag and give them the rights to take it – this is true and a good fact check!
So you see, the issue of impropriety in an administration that said they would be the most transparent in history has no quarter here. When combined with a personal email server, the Secretary of State being closely tied to large donations and being paid large sums of money to speak, combined with getting access to US Uranium is boiled down to A False ‘Corruption’ Claim.
(and don’t give me the Annenberg connection. The Annenberg Foundation was originally founded by Walter J. Annenberg, a conservative who supported Ronald Reagan. However, when Walter Annenberg died, his family took over the management of the foundation and it took a turn to the far left and has ties to radical left individuals such as Bill Ayers and his friend and fellow left wing radical colleague Barack Obama. See Chicago Annenberg Challenge)