Lbc – “Lying To The British Community” (?)

[birdie1971]

I was listening to LBC radio earlier today when the host – Matt Frei – who was doing a phone-in about the upcoming USA presidential elections – received a call from a chap who said (and I'm paraphrasing from here on in), “Trump didn't instigate the temporary imprisonment of children in cages at the USA border; that was done by Obama”. Frei immediately cut him off and said, “I lived in the USA during the Obama era and I can say categorically that Obama didn't instigate the imprisonment of children in cages. That statement is false.”

Of course, Frei – having cut off the caller in question – didn't give him the right of reply so Frei's statement stood as a 'fact' according to him and by extension, LBC.

Unfortunately, facts don't care about people's opinions and Frei was dead wrong. Even the left-leaning “Snopes” website admits that it was the Obama administration that installed and used the cages: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-build-cages-immigrants/

So my question is thus: Why are people in the mainstream media so quick to cover Obama's backside – even resorting to flat-out lies in an effort to protect him from criticism – when they hysterically decry falsehoods emanating from Trump?

[birdie1971]

tomus42 - “I seem to have touched a nerve there Birdie. I bet you'll be getting all angry about the 'plandemic' next.”

I could say the same.
Change the subject much? A classic move favoured by all weak minded fools who cannot defend their own deeply held positions. Well done you.

[jim360]

Please don't be rude, birdie. Just make your point and leave the low blows to the other side.

Here are a few from the Guardian, which is mainstream, at least:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/17/barack-obama-old-white-men

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/20/thanks-obama-but-these-patronising-lectures-are-getting-old

[birdie1971]

Jackdaw33 -

This is an attempt to get a BAME person in the Whitehouse.

If elected, Biden will be declared incompetent by reason of dementia, therefore gifting the office of President to Kamala Harris.

It's about time a woman was in the Oval Office you see?
Just as it was Hillary's turn in 2016 until that pesky orange buffoon got in the way.

[birdie1971]

jim360 -

Thanks for the links.

Having read them, the phrase “mealy-mouthed” come to mind. The weakest, most timid criticisms imaginable.

Compared with the vitriolic verbal assassinations of Trump from every angle, your links from the Guardian are inconsequential at best. Fair play for posting them though.

[Old_Geezer]

Folk can be wrong. We all are, well you lot anyway, not me, at some time.

[naomi24]

//Why are people in the mainstream media so quick to cover Obama's backside//

It’s not just Obama and it’s not just mainstream media, Birdie - although the BBC takes some beating in that respect. From ‘Black Lives Matter' to the LGBTQ and @Metoo brigades to the cowardly No Platformers and every social media board, ‘Woke’ has become endemic within our society and lies are now the new truth. Four legs good … two legs better. Myopic donkeys led not by pigs but by arrogant, crowing cockerels.

[ToraToraTora]

Same think with the wall, plenty was built under Obama but it's only Trump that gets the stick.

[ichkeria]

That is because Trump pledged to build a wall along the entire border, couched it in very confrontational terms, and pledged to get the Mexicans to pay for it.

Don't you mean "credit" not stick :-)

[Gromit]

Building a Detention Centre In 2015 to secure illegal immigrants was undoubtedly the right thing to do. And it is good that Trump has credited Obama for the excellent facility that Trump is now using.
But who built it is irrelevant.
How it is being used is the important detail. Obama did not build in to ail children. There is no documentary evidence or photographic evidence from 2015 of children being caged. The use of the facility for that came later when Trump was in charge. There are plenty of photographs from the last couple of years of children in the cages.
Blaming Obama for building the prison for the how it was eventually used is like blaming King Augustus the Strong who built Colditz Castle for the deaths of POWs.

[Gromit]

As for Matt Frei, he is a journalist, and sometimes journalists get things wrong, and when they do, their errors should be exposed.

[Gromit]

// "I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall." //

93 Miles of wall has since be built, but 90 miles of that was replacing existing wall.

[Gromit]

A Private organisation, ‘We Build the Wall’ was set up by Trump ally Steve Bannon, to crowd fund the building of 500 miles of wall. It managed to construct half a mile of wall. Meanwhile Brannon as been arrested and indicted for nicking $1,000,000 of the donations.

[THECORBYLOON]

GROMIT, minors were being detained in 2014,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/us-border-patrol-texas-fewer-unaccompanied-minors

[ichkeria]

Trump of course now claims that he never approved of the Bannon scampaign. His son has been uncomfortably close to it.

[jim360]

// Having read them, the phrase “mealy-mouthed” come to mind. The weakest, most timid criticisms imaginable. //

The strength of the criticism is presumably subjective. After all, taking Naomi's complaints about woke culture at face value, being accused, in a sense, of not being "woke" is meant to the most stinging criticism possible. I can see why from your perspective it's like someone winding up for a one-hit KO punch and then tapping you lightly on the shoulder, but the intent is still important even if the delivery falls flat.

The question I'd have then is what counts in your view as criticism from the left that would bite? There's still plenty of it, even if you'd have to go back to 2016 and earlier. But, again, that's kind of the point. No criticism of Obama is really *topical*, seeing as how he is no longer president; and, moreover, comparably he is at least seen as far less of a problem, from that political angle, as Trump.

[carolegif]

Wasn’t it Clinton that brought in the detention of children? I am sure it goes that far back. Obama was asked to stop the practice and didn’t, but I don’t think he instigated it.

[youngmafbog]

The left have tried every trick in the book to get rid of Trump, never has there been so much investigation and vitriol, but failed.

This has escalated, on both sides, to what we see today. It will only get worse and no doubt will appear here at some point.

[jim360]

The thing is, though, that a lot of this vitriol clearly predates Trump. He's the culmination of this, not the origin of it (either from what he gives or what he gets).

[Deskdiary]

Gromit at 10.57am and then THECORBYLOON’s at 11.48am.

Oh dear - that’s a bit embarrassing for Gromit.

As per, Gromit has been proven to be wrong and then does a flit from a thread.

He has lots of form.

[Atheist]

Why are presumably Brtish people here so keen on supporting Trump? Is it because his personality (if that's the right word) and political (if that's the right word) beliefs are in tune with their own?