There’s an old question, “How do you know when _____ is lying? Their lips are moving.”
It’s a funny joke, often applied to lawyers, but it could also be applied to those in the mainstream legacy media and in politics, as we’ll talk about.
Having said that, credit where credit is due: Reuters, one of the two newswires that most news outlets (at least in the U.S.) get many of their stories from, put out a story telling about how folks on the blue side of the political aisle are gaslighting and misleading voters about a mass shooting.
You won’t be surprised to know that, in this case, the story has come up four years after that horrible shooting because it’s trying to make the Republican candidate in that race look bad. From the Reuters Fact Check article:
Audio from a 2022 interview with US Senate candidate Ken Paxton, a Texas Republican, is edited to omit the context of his full remarks about the Uvalde school shooting and misleadingly shared online as “newly uncovered.”
Paxton, who is running in a tight race against Democrat James Talarico, was the Texas attorney general on May 24, 2022, when an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Texas’ Robb Elementary School before being shot dead by law enforcement.
Paxton addressed the shooting in the second segment, of the May 29, 2022, Smart Talk with Trey Graham podcast.
So, a partisan hack took audio from a four year old podcast out of context, released that edited audio with a label saying that it was just now found just before this election (how convenient!), and commented on it as if all of that were accurate and true.
The purpose? It sure looks like the purpose was to make it look like Ken Paxton is heartless and doesn’t care about a bunch of young children killed in a mass shooting.
But when you hear his words taken in context, you get the complete opposite understanding. He talks about how it would be heartbreaking, and he says that, if asked, he would tell those parents to hold on to their faith, that life can and does go on, and that God can take terrible situations like that shooting and use it for a good purpose, His purpose.
You’ll notice what I didn’t say that Paxton said. I didn’t say that Paxton didn’t care about those children or those parents, and I didn’t say that Paxton was heartless. Because Paxton didn’t express any of those ideas.
The gaslighting from that side of the aisle when it comes to anything having to do with guns, including gun rights and gun violence, is stunning.
It’s absolutely despicable, the dishonesty, gaslighting, and lying by omission that political ads show today.
Yes, it comes from both sides of the aisle, but some of the ones opposing 2A rights are some of the worst about it, and, frankly, the fact that anti-2A people tolerate it says quite a lot (and none of it good) about the character and integrity of their own character.
