Gaddis: Recent Opinion on candidate options ‘misleading’

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Since when is it the role of a true journalist to deliberately mislead the readers?

When said writer uses “exact quotes” from a candidate’s speeches in support of that person, one hopes he verified the truth of those words. But maybe the journalist is willing to print falsehoods because they suit what he himself wants people to believe. In either case, such an article doesn’t deserve respect and thus fails to achieve his goal.

In abandoning any responsibility for the veracity of what he repeated or what he himself wrote, Mr. Joe Smyth’s Feb. 28 Opinion piece under the headline, “Is the White House the world’s finest assisted living facility?” unfortunately fits that description.

Since the beginning of Nikki Haley’s campaign, the entirety of her complaint against Donald Trump was that he caused the GOP losses in the last three elections. Today, they hold the House of Representatives by less than a handful of votes; Democrats took back control of the Senate. Ms. Haley consistently promised that she would reenact and/or continue all the (Trump) “wonderful policies 100% but in a different way.” She stated many times that she would pardon him. Anyone can find these quotes online.

But all other contenders dropped out, and she suffered three definitive primary defeats. Now, rumors are rampant that the No Labels group will approach her to run under its banner, Joe Manchin having removed himself from consideration. Ms. Haley quickly developed a rhythmic delivery of new talking points and stump speech describing Mr. Trump and President Joe Biden as old and confused, on the verge of having dementia problems that she, as a younger person, won’t have. To her credit, she has finally admitted that Mr. Trump viciously tries to divide Americans by goading the “Make America Great Again” supporters into hating his rival and all Dems.

In setting up this false equivalency, she must deliberately twist Mr. Biden into Mr. Trump’s mirror image. Accordingly, she tells brutal lies about the president, wrongly insisting that he called his fellow Americans “fascists” because he correctly described Trump’s Project 2025 as a blueprint for such a government. She doesn’t credit the good and fair laws Mr. Biden passed, yet ignores Mr. Trump breaking Congress by trashing the latest bipartisan immigration bill (mostly written by a GOP senator!) because “Joe Biden must not succeed.” Most outrageously, Ms. Haley’s final pitch is about disagreeing without hating each other and working together for a shared national purpose. She uses words that Joe Biden has spoken in virtually every speech he has given for the last 51 years. No wonder Mr. Smyth calls this speech “presidential!”

President Biden is not perfect, but he has believed in and practiced those principles his entire career in government and in his life. And everyone has heard him say that there is nothing the United States of America can’t do if we do it together — there’s no chance Mr. Smyth hasn’t heard this.

Why is he so pleased to print every single distortion and lie Ms. Haley tells? Frankly, it’s because he has been a proponent for the No Labels group in every Daily State News Opinion piece he has written in this election cycle. That group’s own polling has told them that a third party will hurt the president far more than Mr. Trump. To me, that sounds cynical.

I believe that calm discussions of disagreements help the body politic. I don’t want a clandestine organization with secret megadonors to present any candidate, especially one only willing to acknowledge Mr. Trump’s despicable past behavior and words or the cause of the Civil War to stay in the running. That is not being hopeful about our election; it has nothing to do with humility.

Janis Gaddis

Dover

Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.

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