“Alternative facts” gaffe backfires on Kellyanne, Team Trump
Yesterday’s brilliant choice of words by The Donald’s spokesperson Kellyanne Conway, who was making a futile attempt to spin Sean Spicer’s Saturday temper tantrum press briefing triggered by reports of the comparatively low turnout for Trump’s inauguration, has boomeranged bigly:
Donald Trump’s White House counselor Kellyanne Conway coined a new term Sunday morning when she stated that White House Press secretary Sean Spicer was not lying about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration. Instead, Conway claimed, Spicer simply told us “alternative facts.”
It’s truly hilarious that the Trump team, so vocally opposed to political correctness, is now being PC in describing a lie. Sorry, Kellyanne, I’m not buying it. “Alternative facts,” as NBC’s Chuck Todd so accurately put it in response to you on the air, “are not facts, they’re falsehoods!”
The Guardian‘s opinion writers explained this amazing new term:
Name: Alternative facts.
Age: Ten billion years old.
Appearance: The greatest, strongest, shiniest type of fact that has ever existed anywhere in the known and unknown universe, period.
That sounds like cobblers. No, you misunderstand. It’s not cobblers, it’s an alternative fact.
Sorry? You know, an alternative fact. See this picture of a horse? I want you to tell me what it is.
It’s a horse. No it isn’t. It’s a spaceship.
[Read the rest here.]
The free-market-friendly magazine Forbes’ opinion writer Erik Sherman was appalled:
While you can have alternative explanations or interpretations of facts, you cannot change the nature of reality.
However, the claims and language are chilling in a fundamental way. When an administration wants the rights to redefine facts, it isn’t unreasonable to consider whether it is willing to change data to support itself. Such an action would push the country closer to Orwell’s Ministry of Truth concept and undermine a vital resource for intelligent decisions and strategy.
The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Paul McGeough resurrected this blast from the past:
It brought to mind Saddam Hussein’s hapless spokesman Comical Ali, who bizarrely insisted to reporters that Baghdad was safely in the hands of the dictator in 2003 – even as live TV pictures showed that the city had been captured.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfAeMtcURg0
And The New York Times had one of the most trenchant, succinct, and spot-on analysesof Kellyanne’s “alternative facts” flub:
[T]here it was: an apparent animating principle of Mr. Trump’s news media strategy since he first began campaigning. That strategy has consistently presumed that low public opinion of mainstream journalism (which Mr. Trump has been only too happy to help stoke) creates an opening to sell the Trump version of reality, no matter its adherence to the facts.
As Mr. Trump and his supporters regularly note, whatever he did during the campaign, it was successful: He won. His most ardent supporters loved the news media bashing. And the complaints and aggressive fact-checking by the news media played right into his hands. He portrayed it as just so much whining and opposition from yet another overprivileged constituency of the Washington establishment.
But will tactics that worked in the campaign work in the White House? History is littered with examples of new administrations that quickly found that the techniques that served them well in campaigns did not work well in government.
And if they do work, what are the long-term costs to government credibility from tactical “wins” that are achieved through the aggressive use of falsehoods? Whatever they are, Mr. Trump should realize that it could hurt his agenda more than anything else.
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Copyright 2017 Liberaland
By: dave-dr-gonzo
David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.
* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.
23 responses to “Alternative facts” gaffe backfires on Kellyanne, Team Trump
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StoneyCurtisll January 23rd, 2017 at 12:21
This was no ‘gaffe’….
Kellyanne was speaking the exact words she meant to say….
“alternative-facts” are simply her way of suggesting there are more than one reality….
Straight out of George Orwell’s 1984..(double speak)
Mike January 23rd, 2017 at 12:33
Alt-facts = The lifeblood of the Alt-Right
Jack E Raynbeau January 24th, 2017 at 00:20
Notice that it appears that she is about to have a seizure just before she spits out those famous words. Like trying to swallow a shot of Everclear.
StoneyCurtisll January 24th, 2017 at 20:12
Or vomits just a little bit in her mouth…..:)
granpa.usthai January 24th, 2017 at 01:48
I can see some alternative replacements being made sooner than most have expected.
Mike January 23rd, 2017 at 12:27
Trump’s got his own Baghdad Bob … every dictators dream.
StoneyCurtisll January 23rd, 2017 at 12:27
Baghdad Barbie~!
granpa.usthai January 24th, 2017 at 01:41
and not the best looking one by a long shot!
oldfart January 23rd, 2017 at 12:47
Proof positive she can put her foot in her mouth
and still talk out her AZZ.
robert January 23rd, 2017 at 13:55
Horse = spaceship
What a nitwit He should have kicked her off the show
Guy Lauten January 23rd, 2017 at 14:20
“Mr. Trump should realize…”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Ain’t gonna happen. “Think I’m going to change? I’m not changing.”
whatthe46 January 23rd, 2017 at 15:59
Alternative Fact: tRump shows great admiration and love for Malaria:
https://twitter.com/Green_Footballs/status/823632636048527360
granpa.usthai January 24th, 2017 at 01:40
such short lived smiles such as these can only mean one thing!
……
alternative sexual release!
whatthe46 January 24th, 2017 at 01:43
ok. i just died laughing.
granpa.usthai January 24th, 2017 at 01:57
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLDHCDz7S2g
would fit in real nice on this one!
some tea look just like –
eyelashviper January 23rd, 2017 at 18:05
Not to worry, Sean Sphincter is on it:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b1cfbc11af3ffbdc2d95017290a75dd5ecdf478dbbb973eaa93aec26b7800171.jpg
Mensa Member January 23rd, 2017 at 22:54
alt.facts.trump
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/813721e1653ee6c2abeac57b4f32090ea4f31c8f38d80128477f6fa5eb3148cf.png
allison1050 January 23rd, 2017 at 20:30
Sure Kellyanne, it was “an alternative fact” when someone lied and told you that you looked good in that get up last Friday.
amersham1046 January 23rd, 2017 at 20:37
“an alternative fact” the new official motto of Trump, s administration
Budda January 24th, 2017 at 07:27
Why does any media even have her on? She never answers questions. She just talks over everything with delusional blather. They need to tell her as soon as you go off question we cut your mike…don’t like those conditions? Then don’t ask to come on.
fahvel January 24th, 2017 at 11:55
other than the pleasure of ripping her a new one, why does the press even consider her existence – if the entire fuzz heads entourage were treated like lepers in India, they actually might self implode
William January 24th, 2017 at 11:37
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c6f20805d13818845d895d68326872442e9edeec0048415b523af81bb7857689.jpg
dewired4u January 24th, 2017 at 15:24
“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such con viction.” – Harry Frankfurt
In On Bullshit , the philosopher Frankfurt (2005) defines bullshit as something that is designed to impress but that was constructed absent direct concern for the truth. This distinguishes bullshit from lying, which entails a deliberate manipulation and subversion of truth (as understood by the liar). There is little question that bullshit is a real and con- sequential phenomenon. Indeed, given the rise of communication technology and the associated increase in the availability of information from a variety of sources, both expert and otherwise, bullshit may be more pervasive than ever before. Despite these seemingly commonplace observations, we know of no psychological research on bullshit. Are people able to detect blatant bullshit? Who is most likely to fall prey to bullshit and why?
good read on today’s world.
http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf