WaPo‘s Erik Wemple reports, in a disbelieving voice, on the comments of pro-Trump commentator Scottie Nell Hughes:
In an interview on “The Diane Rehm Show,” Donald Trump supporter and CNN political commentator Scottie Nell Hughes declared the end of facts. Or, in her own words: “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts.”
She explained that contention, too: “And so Mr. Trump’s tweet amongst a certain crowd, a large — a large part of the population, are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some — in his — amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies, and there’s no facts to back it up. So … ” …
“One thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts, they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way, it’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true.”
From 1984 (1956)
“War is Peace“
Source: Cosmic Catacombs
It’s a bit of a jaw-dropper, unless Mz. Hughes wishes to argue that she’s merely suggesting Trump supporters don’t really care about facts, just what St. Donald is saying at this moment. But it doesn’t come out that way. I think there are consequences to ignoring facts, and the only real question is how long those consequences can be covered up. For example, Trump claims to have negotiated with Carrier to remain in Indiana, his first victory in the campaign to retain jobs in the United States. From The New York Times:
The long-promised call from Donald J. Trump to the heating and cooling giant Carrier came early one morning about a week after the election, when he unexpectedly won the industrial heartland.
The president-elect warned Gregory Hayes, the chief executive of Carrier’s parent, United Technologies, that he had to find a way to save a substantial share of the jobs it had vowed to move to Mexico, or he would face the wrath of the incoming administration.
On Thursday, as he toured the factory floor here to take credit for saving roughly half of the 2,000 jobs Indiana stood to lose, Mr. Trump sent a message to other businesses as well that he intended to follow through on his pledges to impose stiff tariffs on imports from companies that move production overseas and ship their products back to the United States.
“This is the way it’s going to be,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with The New York Times. “Corporate America is going to have to understand that we have to take care of our workers also.”
The libertarians, at least the honest ones, will commence worrying about how the government’s interference is going to distort the market. Between businesses running scared because they are no longer free to pursue efficiencies to higher taxes for the incentives – $7 million – that act as the carrot to keep Carrier in the state.
And they have a point. While Trump will achieve his immediate goal – for a while – by his direct carpet bombing approach, the unintended consequences will be subtle, but felt for a generation. Bernie gets at least part of it:
“He has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote in an op-ed on Thursday for The Washington Post.
The question will be whether the effects of Trump’s approach will be strong enough to upset his supporters or not1.
And this feeds back to Mz. Hughes’ statements. I misdoubt they’re accurate; I think Trump’s supporters, unable to observe directly, and no longer willing to take the media’s word for much of anything, simply disbelieve because we’re really not built for issues the size of the United States. We have to take a lot of things “on faith”, even science. And when you’re wondering how to pay the mortgage, where all those lovely jobs went that didn’t require much beyond a high school education, and someone says the media is lying, everyone’s lying, well, it may look like we’re in a post-truth world.
But we’re not.
If & when the ceiling caves in on Trump, those billboards with Obama’s picture asking “Do you miss me yet?” might even be welcomed by the more moderate conservatives; hard-core Trumpists will shake their fists and proclaim that it’s all a conspiracy. But there won’t be many of them.
Will the Democrats have a strong candidate by then?
1The other question is whether all the national and international businesses will collude to make those demands, thus exposing Trump for being a shallow thinker.
