THE.personal.IS.political

Hillary Takes A Page From Bush’s FEMA, Fakes The News

So it turns out that the Hillary campaign has come up with yet another unethical underhanded tactic in this campaign: faking the news. Apparently there is a radio ad out in Ohio meant to sound like a news report from the Associated Press.

The fake news ad proceeds to distort the facts surrounding the hyped up factless Canada-NAFTA “controversy” in an attempt to make it sound like Obama has been deceiving voters, even though there is absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever. The “news piece” also fails to point out the Clinton campaign was implicated in the original report for the exact same reasons (to be fair, equally without evidence). Details details. The “new document” in question is nothing more than a memo written by a low level official at the Canadian consulate in Chicago describing (erroneously according to the Obama advisor in question) a conversation with an Obama advisor concerning many things, one of which was NAFTA. The Clinton ad makes it sound like they were quoting the Obama advisor, when in fact they were just quoting the words of the low level Canadian official, which the Obama advisor in question has said in no way reflect what was actually said.

The Canadian Embassy has backed up the Obama campaign’s side of the story, and Liberal leaders in the Parliament angrily accused conservative Prime Minister Steven Harper of helping to leak documents that misinterpreted Obama’s position. PM Harper has since distanced himself from the memo in question. CTV, the Canadian network that originally broke the story, has also changed its story multiple times, further diminishing the credibility of the claims. Democrats in the US have accused the Right-wing Canadian government of trying to interfere in American politics in order to help the Republicans win the election. Yet despite all of that, Hillary is not only lying to voters about the story, she is now trying to make voters think these lies are coming from a trusted news source. Here is the transcript of the fake news report, with my commentary added:

This is an election news update with a major news story reported by the AP (deception). While Senator Obama has crisscrossed Ohio giving speeches attacking NAFTA, his top economic advisor was telling the Canadians that was all just political maneuvering (lie). A newly released document from the Canadian government (exaggeration) shows that Obama’s senior economic advisor met with the Canadian Consul General and made clear (lie) that Obama’s attack on NAFTA were just, quote, “political maneuvering,”(lie) not policy (lie). Political maneuvering, not policy (lie repeated). In fact, the document shows (lie, it actually “shows” nothing) that Obama’s advisor also assured the Canadians that these attacks against NAFTA would not continue (lie). Obama would not want to be, quote, “fundamentally changing the agreement.” (deceptive, neither of them want to “fundamentally” change the agreement, this is consistent with what Obama has been saying all along) As Senator Obama was telling one story to Ohio, his campaign was telling a very different story to Canada (lie). How will Ohioans decide whether they can believe Senator Obama’s words? We’ll find that out on election day. Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President. (true)

(lie by omission: Hillary was implicated as telling the Canadian government the same things:

The conversation turned to the pledges to renegotiate the North American free-trade agreement made by the two Democratic contenders, Mr. Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Brodie, apparently seeking to play down the potential impact on Canada, told the reporters the threat was not serious, and that someone from Ms. Clinton’s campaign had even contacted Canadian diplomats to tell them not to worry because the NAFTA threats were mostly political posturing.

The Canadian Press cited an unnamed source last night as saying that several people overheard the remark.

The news agency quoted that source as saying that Mr. Brodie said that someone from Ms. Clinton’s campaign called and was “telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt.”)

I don’t know which is worse, completely misrepresenting what amounts to hearsay in an attempt to smear a fellow Democrat and likely nominee, or resorting to faking a news report to do it. Probably the former, but only because there is little worse than backstabbing your own party out of spite and damaged pride.

Update: There has also been questions swirling around whether or not Hillary’s campaign darkened Obama’s image in their ads in order to make him look “blacker”. Interesting. I know better than to put anything past them now. Check it out. It should also be noted that the ad itself is one giant (and hypocritical) distortion, as usual. Honestly, would we expect any less?