Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:51 pm
“A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary tweeted after Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway tried to rebrand Trump administration’s false statements (aka, lies) as “alternative facts” on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“Fact (“a piece of information presented as having objective reality”) spiked dramatically on January 22nd, following an exchange between Chuck Todd and Kellyanne Conway on NBC’s Meet the Press that was fraught with epistemological tension,” the Dictionary explained.
“In contemporary use, fact is generally understood to refer to something with actual existence, or presented as having objective reality.”
The exchange the dictionary is referring to went as follows:
Todd: You did not answer the question of why the President asked the White House Press Secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood. Why did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the entire White House Press Office on day one.
Conway: No, it doesn’t. Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that, but the point…
Todd: Wait a minute. Alternative facts? Alternative facts. Four of the five things he uttered. The one thing he got right was Zeke Miller. Four of the five facts he uttered were just not true. Look. Alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods.
From their definition page, “Fact: the quality of being actual : actuality a question of fact hinges on evidence.” Oh, dear.
So we’re still doing that thing where facts are things that actually existence, not just the best story. This is not going to bode well for the Trump administration’s Minister (Ministerin?) of Propaganda.
The Trump administration is trying so hard to train the press like a dog, beating it down with individual humiliations and public shaming so that the press questions itself and hesitates out of fear of being wrong before reporting observations.
The Trump administration is unashamedly pushing back hard, spinning their own pretty stories, inventing new reality, and shaming the press for reporting reality.
It would work very well for the Trump administration if reporters had to ask them first if the low attendance for Trump’s inauguration were real or if a missing bust were really missing. That would mean that even the most banal of details and most readily apparent facts must be confirmed first with the Trump propaganda team before it can be disseminated to our “free press”.
Even Fox News can’t abide the lies. They are that bad and that obvious.
I’m sure you can see where this is going… and it’s not to democracy.
Things are so bad that even the Dictionary is getting in on the action to troll the ridiculous claims of the Trump administration.
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