OPINION:
The conventions are over, thank goodness. And now we enter the campaign season for the presidency of the United States. The Democrats know they can’t win on the issues, so they rely on what they know best: lies, manipulation, distractions and ghoulish cynicism.
During the past week, the nation’s dire economic situation has become undeniable, but you wouldn’t know this as the legacy media, like the good poodles they are, fixate on a contrived media firestorm involving Khzir Khan, father of a soldier killed in Iraq, and his attack on Donald Trump at the Democratic convention.
During an interview on ABC with Clinton operative George Stephanopoulous, Mr. Trump responded to a question about Mr. Khan’s comments. The premise about sacrifice was Mr. Stephanopolous’. Mr. Trump offered condolences to Mr. Khan’s family, but Mr. Stephanopolous pressed him to discuss “sacrifice.” In other words, Mr. Trump was being set up.
You may not like Mr. Trump’s answers, but there was no attack on the family, and yet the media would have you believe that Mr. Trump now hates dead soldiers and their families.
It is also perhaps the death of irony when the people responsible for the war that took the life of Mr. Khan’s son are pointing fingers at a man who had been opposed to the war itself. Hillary Clinton not only voted for the war, she argued for it. Yet, Donald Trump is the problem? I don’t think so.
The legacy media vomited up this exercise in absurdity for days, and the usual Republican and establishment suspects couldn’t resist piling on. Keep in mind, these are the same people who have allowed the Department of Veterans Affairs to become a hellhole for our heroes, with 300,000 vets dying while they waited for medical care that would never come.
Suddenly, the contrived Khan-Trump feud finally dropped from the top of the news when the Washington Examiner did a little investigative work. Asking a question that apparently no other media was interested in, they found Mr. Khan’s law practice specializes in immigration law, the exact subject he spoke about at the convention.
According to the Examiner, “The father of a Muslim-American soldier killed in Iraq who is caught up in a war of words with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is an immigration lawyer who specializes in a highly controversial program accused of letting immigrants buy their way into the U.S.,” reports the newspaper. Upon exposure, Mr. Khan has now completely deleted his law firm’s website from the internet. Now why would he do that?
Mr. Khan spoke at the convention about immigration, a subject with which he has a singular financial interest, and on which U.S. policy would change if Mr. Trump is elected. Breitbart.com also broke with news: “It looked like the Khans were just Gold Star parents who the big bad Donald Trump attacked. It turns out, however, in addition to being Gold Star parents, the Khans are financially and legally tied deeply to the industry of Muslim migration — and to the government of Saudi Arabia and to the Clintons themselves,” reports Brietbart. “Khan, according to Intelius as also reported by Walid Shoebat, used to work at the law firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, a major D.C. law firm that has been on retainer as the law firm representing the government of Saudi Arabia in the United States for years.”
It’s not just false firestorms about contrived issues that the media promotes in order to rig the system, they also openly and deliberately cook the books.
Pat Caddell is a respected Democratic pollster who has worked for George McGovern, Joe Biden and President Jimmy Carter, among others. He is charging Reuters has tampered with its own daily presidential tracking poll in order to present a “surge” for Hillary Clinton post-convention.
Speaking to Alex Marlow on SiriusXM Radio, Mr. Caddell charged, “They not only changed their formula to put Hillary ahead. They went back and changed the results, for a week of results where Trump was ahead, and then they turned those into Hillary leads,” said Mr. Caddell. “They also erased all the former polling off the site. They didn’t tweak their procedure — they cooked it.”
Why are Mrs. Clinton, the Democrats and the lapdog media fueling this? Because the facts on the ground about our economic situation condemn her and every other bureaucrat whose policies are ripping this nation apart and destroying the future for every American.
Buried under fake Democratic outrages about Mr. Trump is news like this from the past few days:
• “U.S. homeownership rate drops to lowest since 1965.” (Bloomberg).
• “Another GDP stunner: Growth only 1.2% over the last 3 months.” (USA Today).
• “Worst economic recovery since 1930s; salaries fall $17,000 short.” (Washington Examiner).
• “Let’s face it — the U.S. economy is going nowhere fast.” (CBS).
It is no surprise then, when this newspaper, The Washington Times, reports on a shocking new Harris poll finding that “82 percent of Americans believe that the people running the country don’t really care what happens to them. Another 78 percent say the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer while 70 percent believe that most people in power try to take advantage of people like them.”
Perhaps they feel that way because it’s true.
• Tammy Bruce, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk show host.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.