(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) With the modern American Left pushing farther and farther to the Marxist fringes, it comes as no surprise that one of its mantras hails from the father of Soviet communism, Vladimir Lenin.
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth,” Lenin is quoted as having said. Fittingly, the quotation itself is likely misattributed, as are many of the famous aphorisms that we now consider to be conventional folk wisdom.
"The problem with quotes found on the internet is that they are often not true." – Abraham Lincoln 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/geqUsLq4UM
— Brent Janse van Vuuren (@BrentJvV) January 27, 2016
While Abraham Lincoln’s famous takedown of quotes from the internet may be words to live by, the problem with disinformation in the modern era goes much deeper.
Telling gullible information-consumers to vet their facts against “trusted” sources—ones that also have their own vested interests or agendas at stake—simply lures them into a false sense of complacency.
That, of course, is the precise intention of the corrupt establishment, which has the power to stamp the institutional imprimatur of officiality onto its own version of the truth.
If, for example, four out of five dentists recommend eating a particular type of candy, the obvious questions are: Why? Who’s paying them? And what about the other 20%?
Likewise, the “97% of scientists” trope has frequently been invoked to quell debate on “climate change,” but it obviously oversimplifies a complex and nuanced discussion about the causes, urgency, scope and severity—not to mention the appropriate solutions.
And all of those ignore the even more fundamental questions of who gets to define “scientist” and what sort of “science” it entails.
Perhaps asking “climate scientists” to give a professional consensus automatically introduces confirmation bias, since anyone who enters professionally into the field of climate scientology has an inherent motivation to prevent the discipline from becoming obsolete, unprofitable or otherwise a laughing stock in the academic circles from which they derive their prestige and validation.
Thus it becomes like a career Ponzi scheme, passed from one generation to the next, with each new cycle more deeply invested in the lie told by its predecessors.
FOURTH ESTATE SALE
Sadly, the same is true of journalism, a field rooted in the noblest of intentions that has been co-opted by corporate and other institutional demands to do the exact opposite of what it was designed for—and for which it was granted extraordinary protections under the First Amendment.
The Fourth Estate is no longer a pillar of democracy but a bludgeon used to batter it into submission.
During the Biden administration, we have seen the mainstream media increasingly begin to embrace demonstrably false lies as part of an attempt to launder reality through the leftist echo chamber.
They continue, for example, to take out of context President-elect Donald Trump’s statement that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Va.
Your left this part out
Trump didn’t call neo-Nazis or white supremacists ‘fine people’ in Charlottesville speech. In fact, he condemned them.pic.twitter.com/V9gy4x9vZk
— American.357 (@ASimplePatriot) March 18, 2024
By doing so, and putting Trump on the defensive, they are thus able to deflect from the fact that the leftists who largely fomented the violence were not fine people at all. Many were likely paid Antifa operatives who were bused in for the occasion, escalating what should have been an affirmation of free-speech rights into a clash of ideological extremists.
It also papers over the questions as to who was behind it, although Headline USA has confirmed that the intelligence community itself had a sizeable role.
INSURRECTION OR INCORRECTION?
Not surprisingly, the same tactic was rolled out following the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising at the U.S. Capitol.
In this case, leftists, aided and abetted by fake-news reporters, continue to push the brazen and demonstrably false lie that members of law enforcement with the U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police died as a result of that day’s events—all while ignoring the fact that police themselves had a large role in instigating and fomenting the violence.
PSA: If you’re currently twisting yourself into some sort of false equivalency “abuse of power” pretzel in order to make Joe Biden pardoning his son the same as Trump pardoning those who killed our Capitol police in his name, please stop.
You look stupid.
— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) December 2, 2024
Headline USA emailed left-wing influencer “JoJoFromJerz”—aka Joanne Carducci—seeking clarity on who the police were who died as a result of Jan. 6 and what their causes of death were. She did not reply.
In reality, none did. Only Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died at his home hours later, might reasonably have been considered a Jan. 6 casualty—until his death was formally ruled a stroke due to natural causes.
But the talking points Carducci uses undoubtedly are working their way up the chain so that they eventually can be cited by President Joe Biden to justify one of the most outrageously unethical acts of his presidency—which says a lot.
Bookmark this.
Biden will issue blanket preemptive pardons. pic.twitter.com/sIN5ZceoZK
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) December 12, 2024
AN UNPARDONABLE OFFENSE
From JoJo and her nearly 1 million “followers” on X, the lie has already graduated to the op-ed section of The Hill where Jonathan Jeffress, a former Obama operative and longtime Democrat donor sought on Monday to make a case—or, rather, a plausible rationalization—for Biden’s norm-violating preemptive pardons.
“Pardons would not stop congressional investigations or administrative harassment, but they would neutralize the most devastating weapon in Trump’s arsenal: federal criminal prosecutions,” Jeffress wrote. “With a stroke of the pen, Biden could provide immediate relief to those under threat and send a clear message that justice is not a tool for personal vendettas.”
To be clear, if this were an acceptable use of power, Trump himself would have used it in his first term to spare a lot of aggravation, not to mention a lot of wasted tax dollars that the Biden administration squandered on political persecution of its enemies.
Indeed, it is some of those very people who targeted Trump with spurious, politically motivated lawfare attacks, bending the law to fit their own agenda in the most egregious of ways, who must now be held accountable.
The distinction between Trump and his corrupt-prosecutor/persecutors, as even Jeffress acknowledges, is an understanding that in order to receive a pardon, one must implicitly admit guilt—something that Trump himself was unable to do since all of his actions, at worst, followed earlier precedent set by Democrats who had faced no consequences whatsoever.
Biden, Clinton and Obama have gotten away with every crime Trump has been accused of pic.twitter.com/oFjMMqkVPT
— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) August 14, 2023
“Critics may argue that pardons could be seen as admissions of guilt or trigger political backlash,” Jeffress wrote. “But failure to act carries far greater risks. Allowing Trump to normalize political retribution would set a precedent that undermines public trust in the rule of law and invites future abuses of power.”
Sadly, that ship has already sailed, but the precedent Biden threatens to set may still come back to haunt Democrats, just as all of their past acts of short-term indulgence have.
PRESIDENTIAL PRECEDENT?
In other cases now being cited as precedent, most notably then-President Gerald Ford’s pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon, criminal charges were imminent.
Indeed, it was Nixon who should be credited with the noble act of stepping down, rather than putting the nation through a divisive impeachment trial—although perhaps, in retrospect, he should have.
The deep state, as it turns out, may have had a vested interest in making Watergate go away without further question after it had achieved its goal of regime change.
Some have made the convincing case that Nixon was threatening to blow the lid off the assassination of John F. Kennedy—whose cover-up Ford (the nation’s only leader never to have been elected president or vice president) had a significant role in.
Nevertheless, Nixon would have been free from prosecution if he had remained as president, and so it stands to reason that when he accepted the ultimate consequences of impeachment, that alone should have brought closure to the matter.
BALANCING THE SCALES
What the Biden administration has proposed, by contrast, would be drastically different, setting a dangerous precedent for blanket pardons to anyone, under any circumstance, in order to avoid facing accountability for their actions.
We know that corrupt prosecutors like those name-checked by Jeffress—Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis and Jack Smith—were not acting in good faith, notably because three of them literally campaigned on a “Get Trump” platform before they had any sort of “evidence” to support it. And all four openly disregarded legal protocol, shopping for sympathetic judges and juries to collude with them in their flagrant abuses of the rule of law.
Even so, they all stand a sporting chance, as Trump did, that they could skate on the charges by fighting back—or by getting elected president themselves.
Not so once Biden establishes the precedent of unlimited pardon power.
Should the legal system prove inadequate at bringing justice, Trump could simply dispatch his army of J6ers to enact vigilante justice instead. And all would come equipped with a blanket pardon for any acts past, present or future.
THE MANDATE TO INVESTIGATE
In an interview Sunday on Meet the Press, Trump reiterated his campaign pledge to pardon many of the nonviolent demonstrators convicted of Jan. 6 offenses after a sustained witch-hunt by the Biden Justice Department that has resulted in more than 1,600 arrests.
“First day. Yeah, I’m looking for these pardons,” Trump told interviewer Kristen Welker.
“Look, I know the system. The system’s a very corrupt system,” he continued. “They say to a guy, ‘You’re going to go to jail for two years or for 30 years.’ And these guys are looking—their whole lives have been destroyed.”
🤣😇 The Donald is just poking the left now with a big stick with a fresh steaming turd on the end of it 🕹️💩President Trump says he’ll pardon J6ers his first day in office during his Meet the Press Interview🤩🇺🇸#Jan6th #TopTrolling pic.twitter.com/5BtfbGP0Br
— Brutus (@BrutusMaximusX) December 8, 2024
Trump also reassured panicked left-wingers that he had no interest in retaliating against his “enemies” after the injustices wrought against him, but that he would leave it to the discretion of appointees like presumptive Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel how to proceed.
“I think that they’ll have to look at [investigations of lawbreaking Trump critics], but I’m not going to,” Trump said.
“I’m going to focus on ‘drill, baby, drill,’” he added. “… I’m not looking to go back into the past. Retribution will be through success.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: "Retribution will be through success."
🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/EsrnpgNk5s
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) December 8, 2024
While it was a politically savvy attempt to unite a divided nation, Trump cannot overlook the fact that “retribution” is part of the mandate on which he was re-elected.
The affronts committed at taxpayers’ expense in an attempt to disfranchise voters or undermine the rule of law were an attack on the very fabric of democracy, which now hangs by a single thread.
And with the threat of preemptive pardons, Biden now finds himself swinging blindly at it with a machete.
MAGA TESTED, PUBLIC APPROVED
By dangling the couterthreat of blanket preemptive pardons for Jan. 6 offenders, Trump might be able to put things back into perspective and shift the media narrative.
For brainwashed leftists who may be several layers deep into the Big Lie, and thus incapable of seeing how wicked and depraved their own side is, being immediately confronted with the implications of Biden’s actions is the only shot at deterrence.
If they truly believe Jan. 6 to have been as bad as they claim, are they willing to put it on the line to protect Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Mark Milley and Anthony Fauci from being seriously investigated—and from finally having their day in court, as countless Trump allies have?
Perhaps the 82-year-old Biden, who has nothing to lose at this point, would go through with it anyway, democracy be damned. But he also has nothing to gain from saving the hides of a few feckless bureaucrats, unless there is some sort of blackmail involved.
While his legacy will forever be tarnished, the damage he has inflicted on the nation is still reparable, for now.
But the same Democrat elites who staged the coup and prevented him from running for reelection now must pull Biden back from the precipice one last time—meaning Trump himself must offer them the necessary incentive to do so.
And what do the people have to say about Trump giving blanket pardons to Jan. 6 offenders if it means stopping Biden’s abuse of power?
Well, it seems four out of five would recommend it.
“Only about 2 in 10 Americans approve of President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter after earlier promising he would do no such thing, according to a poll from The Associated Press.”https://t.co/4yt65xMhBS pic.twitter.com/Bx7Yct4giy
— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) December 11, 2024
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
