OPINION:
One truly depressing thing about the end of campaigns is that they tend to devolve into desperation and ugliness.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign seems to have reached that stage, recently recycling some quotes from former White House chief of staff John Kelly about former President Donald Trump’s attitudes regarding Hitler, fascism and whatever. The campaign’s stenographers in the media quickly ran the story, irrespective of its validity.
That’s a problem, in no small measure because the accusations, which are a couple of years old at this point, have never been corroborated — not when they first emerged, and not now. Mr. Kelly is apparently the only person who ever heard Mr. Trump utter those words, and he was careless enough not to mention it to anyone else at the time the purported remarks occurred.
Moreover, Mr. Trump, who is known for repeating things across various audiences, apparently never repeated these remarks to anyone except a chief of staff with whom he never really connected and whom he eventually discharged. And there are at least a handful of people who contest that Mr. Trump never said any such thing and who note that he never said anything like what Mr. Kelly remembers at any time.
I hesitate to suggest that a former general in the Marine Corps is lying. Still, it seems likely that he may not have fully, completely and accurately remembered the episode.
That’s only part of the problem with the story. Apart from the possibility that Mr. Kelly may have misstated Mr. Trump’s comments, there is absolute certainty that the legacy media (again) did absolutely no due diligence concerning this story. Looked at objectively, we have an unconfirmed story told by one person and denied by the only other person who was supposedly in the conversation. As recently as 10 years ago, most media outlets — given the gossamer-thin evidence — would not have reported such a story.
This deterioration in standards has real-life consequences. By running the story as fact, the legacy media opened the door, almost certainly intentionally, for Ms. Harris to call Mr. Trump a fascist.
Leaving aside questions about the definition of “fascist” — and which candidate more closely resembles a fascist in practice — it is difficult to see how Ms. Harris is going to fulfill her campaign promise to bring people together by labeling 80 million Americans fascists.
Words matter. Mr. Kelly tells his story, the legacy media run it, and a day later, Ms. Harris and her advisers decide that calling Mr. Trump a fascist — and by extension, calling his voters fascists — is in bounds in this campaign.
Like all people of goodwill, I hope this election and this transfer of power is peaceful. But if there is violence, you might want to bookmark this week and this experience.
When the ends justify the means and systemic lying becomes just another tool of the revolutionary vanguard, the potential for violence grows.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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