Michael Tae Sweeney: In the next 6 months, we're going to see one of the largest propaganda pushes in American history to spread the lie that Donald Trump is a moderate on abortion.

In the next 6 months, we're going to see one of the largest propaganda pushes in American history to spread the lie that Donald Trump is a moderate on abortion.

One of Trump's top lawyers has already said the plan is to stay quiet on abortion through the campaign—then use the Comstock Act to impose a nationwide abortion ban in 2025. Not only a ban on medication abortion, but ALL abortions, in all 50 states. www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/u...

I think it's really worth paying attention to beyond the electoral implications. You will learn a lot about who actually wants Trump to win by looking for who is willing to repeat this lie, and will learn a lot about the techniques for how spreading that lie is achieved.

Absolutely. Something I'd add is that most people in the media who spread this lie will know they are spreading a lie but it's also fascinating to see who is spreading the lie because they are stupid bsky.app/profile/grud...

Getting the media to repeat this lie is as critical as anything is to Trump’s chances of seizing power

Yup bsky.app/profile/penn...

It’s already begun on Reddit. Bot swarms brigading posta about Trump, Abortion, Project 2025. All with “I don’t like Trump BUT” and “mifepristone is unstudied” and “Abortion is dangerous” lies

As usual, when there's a propaganda meme the right wing is trying to inject into the nation's bloodstream, NPR's headline writers leap into action to assist bsky.app/profile/npr....

Former President Donald Trump on Monday made a long-awaited announcement on abortion policy, saying abortion should be left up to the states.

Trump declines to back nationwide abortion ban, says it should be left to the stateswww.npr.org Pressure has mounted on Trump to make his own views on abortion public after the Florida Supreme Court allowed the state's six-week ban on abortion to go into effect.

They know this is a lie and they print it anyway. Why? I know the answer but it's important for you to know the answer too bsky.app/profile/bana...

Just blatantly moving the Overton window so that the current post-Roe landscape is the moderate, default option.

Well. It’s going to be so interesting to see which of these fuckstick ‘journalists’ ie stenographers/Trump enablers gets to feign surprise when the magas outlaw abortion nation wide. And as usual I despise the New York Times and very much look forward to its death.

Well they're abject cowards desperately trying to maintain the illusion of impartiality and objectivity in order to appease conservatives.

Can’t wait for the next big family dinner on this one

Today’s NYT headline was similarly banal and credulous.

I suppose that is the danger of journalism that tries to remain nonpartisan: The headline quotes the source, even if the source is lying. Whereas partisan journalism will simply put their own lie in the headline. NPR does lean left of center, and the article reflects that.

The "long-awaited" in the headline in particular is editorializing and frames the comments as worthy of attention and credible when the opposite is true

you can quibble over what NPR's responsibility is wrt headlines, but it should be noted that no definition of "nonpartisan" includes the repetition of lies from public figures without providing additional context

this isn't non-partisan journalism. This is partisan journalism from someone pretending they are not expressing a preference by willingly repeating one candidate's lies while subjecting everything the other says to scrutiny.

The temerity of the press to even frame these tried-and-true anti-choice extremist weasel words as a "moderate" position on abortion is wild. We've reached the point where the Overton Window's rough opening is being demoed.

Like, excepting the spate of Republican-supermajority states going off the rails, every "nationwide ban no exceptions" motherfucker the last 50 years immediately turns to contrite "we'll leave it up to the states" when faced with even mild criticism, and pundits fall for it every time

Your periodic reminder that NPR stands for Nice Polite Republicans.

Is his statement about abortion or is it about him saying anything to get elected so as to avoid a shittonne of legal and financial difficulties?

"long-awaited"

old enough to remember the "what's Trump said that's actually so racists?" posting circa 2016.

Prominent Dems have to call out the corrupt reporting, and shame journalists by name. I’m looking at you, Maggie and Peter.

Those cowardly motherfuckers will NEVER show up here. Not enough Nazis and TERFs.

There's that.

Plus, they can't treat both Trump's lie and Biden's accurate response that Trump is lying as credible, and they've already decided to treat the lie as credible.

Getting the media to repeat this lie is as critical as anything is to Trump’s chances of seizing power

Many, many, many members of our national press corps *already* are prepared to lie in order to keep Donald Trump’s election chances alive. They have a lot of ad revenue projected, but not if the race is a blowout. Must. Have. Horse. Race.

Also the dipshit contrarians (some “leftist”, some not) who will claim that Biden is no better on choice than Trump is.

hE Won'T sAy tHE wOrD!

The corporate media wants him to win because taxes.

Challenge challenge challenge. He’s lying. He’s lied before & will again & is lying now on this topic. He will erase reproductive rights if he somehow gets power. He is surrounded by Christofascists who he will not disappoint.

Keep repeating that overturning Roe is not moderate.

A 15 week ban is still a ban.

people are gonna say Dems need to fight back on this, and of course it's true that they had better do that (as they've done in state campaigns), but I'm not sure how, because it is no longer clear to me where average normies who aren't Fox News mainliners are even getting their news. do you know?

Local news, a lot of which is Sinclair Broadcasting, which is basically also Fox News.

Yeah, I... have no idea where anyone gets news media. How imploded really *is* Twitter? Obviously the Democrats are gonna run ten billion hours of campaign ads on abortion, but how does an elected official actually reach people on news or social media without being a Republican?

right, I'm not clear how big the audience for TV ads is nowadays. live sports telecasts are probably the place where they're most likely to be seen? when I find myself watching regular non-streaming TV (e.g. in hotel rooms) the ads now are so dire that hardly any effort seems to go into them

I have no idea if the dire (and I agree) ads are actually worse. On the web serial site where I primarily publish, low-effort "meme" ads outperform high-effort ones. I don't understand, I just know that I'm garbage at marketing/promotion so I try to bear that in mind.

I dunno if this is gonna have the same backlash energy as Dobbs brought about during 2022. I say this when the FL Dem Party is telling Biden NOT to run on abortion in his State because they think Joe will hurt the abortion rights ballot amendment. It's so bass ackward.

Gonna be maddening to see so many pundits try to convince people that Trump is a big believer in women’s bodily autonomy.

Clearly the rapist has the utmost respect for women’s bodily autonomy I still can’t get over the media normalizing anything that serial rapist says. He’s not a normal human much less a normal candidate with opinions worth listening to.

"Women must be punished"

Reading those quotes from Mitchell, it makes it obvious he strongly, personally feels exactly this way.

And, The New York Times will lead the charge.

Led. Past tense. bsky.app/profile/pete...

One of the many (to the nth power) ways that Donald Trump is unique in politics, if not world history, is that neither his most fervent opponents or most loyal allies believe he means a word he says. www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/u...

Trump Says Abortion Law Should Be Left to the Stateswww.nytimes.com After months of mixed signals, Donald Trump said that whatever states decide “must be the law of the land,” adding that he was “strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother....

“Leave it up to the states” is not a moderate position. Banning after 1st trimester with exceptions is not a moderate position. Roe as federal law is moderate. That was the compromise.

Aside from the fact that he’s lying.

The lie is that Trump holds any stable policy position other than "Trump must win". He neither supports nor opposes abortion. He follows whoever he thinks will put him in power, not the other way around.

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