The first night of the Democratic National Convention was most noteworthy for the dull tedium that made a semi-annual PBS fundraising telethon seem like the pinnacle of entertainment.
Call now and we’ll throw in the Springsteen CD, the “Desperate Housewives” season 1 boxed set and a massive tax hike.
— Headline USA (@HeadlineUSA) August 18, 2020
Coming in second, though, was a massive gaslighting effort to gloss over the party’s growing radicalism and ignore their own policy stances.
But in order to fill the time between calls from emcee Eva Longoria to donate $5, several radical blue state governors offered fantastic lies about issues including the coronavirus response and mail-in vote fraud to deceive casual viewers who had the misfortune of tuning in just as their remote battery died.
It is significant that nearly all of the speakers touted Biden as a man of integrity, glossing over some of the serious character flaws that have been raised.
But the omissions would be more than one article can contain in the Democrats’ effort to paint their flawed candidate in the best light.
Instead, here are the top five falsehoods from the first night:
1. Cuomo Saves New York from COVID
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo spent much of his speech touting his own leadership on making the state’s coronavirus recovery a success story—even as the state has by far witnessed the largest number of deaths in the country.
In fact, its “recovery” is predicated only on the fact that the rate is now lower than it once was, although that offers little consolation.
Cuomo went so far as to call the state’s response “beautiful.”
And he said that the coronavirus was, in fact, a metaphor for the country.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo: “COVID is the symptom, not the illness.”
“A virus attacks when the body is weak and when it cannot defend itself. Over these past few years, America’s body politic has been weakened…Only a strong body can fight off the virus.” https://t.co/rZszrWoObu pic.twitter.com/kHpaKR9pkZ
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) August 18, 2020
2. Gov. Whitmer Credits Obama Admin for Ventilator Production
Like Cuomo, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer‘s response to the virus was disastrous on many levels.
Both governors forced nursing homes to accept infected patients, despite the fact that more than 40 percent of COVID deaths have occurred in nursing homes.
And yet, she claimed, “From the jump, we took this pandemic seriously. … We saved thousands of lives.”
Whitmer also faced severe criticism for her lockdown policies, including bans on allowing people to visit family members while allowing marijuana dispensaries to remain open.
And her administration faced a black mark last week when the director of Michigan’s health department admitted that state officials had consulted partisan Democrat operatives when seeking input on a contact-tracing no-bid contract.
The contract was offered to a Democrat canvassing operation, but the governor quickly backpedaled once it came to light.
On Monday, she claimed, “It will be science not politics or ego that drive our decisions.”
But the most objectively false statement was suggesting that a 2009 bailout of Detroit, which temporarily spared the city from declaring bankruptcy, had enabled the city’s auto industry to voluntarily leap into action when the pandemic hit.
“Autoworkers in Michigan sprang into action… These workers did their part to save American lives,” she said.
In fact, companies like General Motors were deeply reluctant until President Donald Trump invoked the wartime Defense Production Act to force their compliance in manufacturing ventilators and other equipment.
As a coup de grace, Whitmer claimed that Obama and Biden had never sought to scapegoat the George W. Bush administration for the problems they inherited and failed to fix.
However, that statement could easily be read a different way.
“President Obama and Vice president Biden didn’t waste any time blaming anyone else,” Whitmer admitted.
3. Nevada Gov. Misleads about State’s Mail-In Ballot Effort
While not a household name like Cuomo and Whitmer, Nevada Gov. Catherine Cortez Masto earned her place on the wall of shame with a lie about recent efforts to enable Democrat voter fraud.
Despite recent reports that the county surrounding Las Vegas had sent thousands of votes to the wrong address during recent primaries, the state’s Democrat legislature passed a twilight measure to send ballots to every registered voter for the November election.
In response, Trump, who narrowly lost Nevada to Hillary Clinton, with only two counties backing her, pressed a lawsuit to stop the shenanigans from undermining election confidence.
But Masto made no mention of what the law was actually attempting to do, suggesting instead that she was merely trying to provide greater access to voters and give them a choice.
“My state… put in place a vote by mail system,” she claimed. “… He [Trump] has challenged us in court with a meritless lawsuit.”
Picking up on the lie, celebrity “Desperate Housewives” actress Eva Longoria falsely suggested that Trump’s threats to take funding from the Postal Service if blue states continue their vote-fraud efforts would take away seniors’ Social Security checks.
“Seniors won’t be able to get their prescriptions because he wants to win an election,” she claimed.
But in fact, those check have not been mailed via the postal service since the Obama administration.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar Sounds Like a Terrorist Hostage Video
Waiting for @amyklobuchar to flash the coercion symbol…
Campaign failure was “a day of great joy, because the day I ended my presidential campaign was also the day I endorsed Joe Biden…”
— Headline USA (@HeadlineUSA) August 18, 2020
Like her presidential campaign, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar‘s DNC speech was mostly unremarkable.
But she made one eye-popping and highly dubious remark calling the end of her campaign shortly before Super Tuesday “a day of great joy because the day I ended my presidential campaign was also the day I endorsed Joe Biden.”
Another also-ran in the Democrat senator, New Jersey’s Cory Booker, meanwhile, raised eyebrows with a bizarre remark that “We’ve got one shot to make Donald Trump a one-term president, and that shot is right now.”
But that ignores the possibility of Trump running again should he be unseated, leaving open the possibility of another face-off and another term for Trump.
Trump, himself, left open the possibility of another run, perhaps hinting tongue-in-cheek at a third term, during a speech in Minnesota earlier in the day: “If I don’t win this time, I’m not coming back,” he joked.
Bernie Sanders Contradicts John Kasich About Party Hijacking
The DNC took considerable pains to woo disaffected Republicans during the first night and give them permission to vote against party.
That strategy will likely amount to a lot of nothing if polls about GOP support for the president are correct.
Even so, it deployed both everyday Americans and high-profile NeverTrumpers in deference to the fact that the Electoral College cannot be won without the flyover states.
The centerpiece of the initiative was a segment from former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a longtime Trump nemesis who has all but disavowed his former party.
“I’m a lifelong Republican, but that attachment holds second place to my responsibility to my country.” – 2016 GOP presidential candidate John Kasich endorsed Joe Biden during the Democratic National Convention. https://t.co/dEMpSHRxlF
— Twitter Moments (@TwitterMoments) August 18, 2020
He reassured conservatives that the narrative about radical progressive Democrats controlling the soon-to-be-78-year-old Biden as a puppet would be greatly overstated.
“They fear Joe may turn sharp left and leave them behind … and you know no one pushes Joe around,” Kasich claimed.
But the DNC also had another group to court: disaffected voters on the Left.
It presented former Biden primary challenger Bernie Sanders to give his supporters permission to back Biden.
Instead of falling in line, however, the contrarian Sanders candidly acknowledged that his far-left acolytes were gaining in influence, undermining the night’s attempts to be mainstream.
“Our campaign ended several months ago but our movement continues and is getting stronger every day,” he confessed.
Sen. @BernieSanders: “To the millions of people who supported my campaign this year and in 2016 … If Donald Trump is reelected, all the progress we’ve made will be in jeopardy. At its most basic, this election is about preserving our democracy.” #DemConvention @Newsy pic.twitter.com/FwDzZDs382
— Lauren Stephenson (@StephensonNews) August 18, 2020
