Friday, September 27, 2019

The phone call memo between Trump and the Ukraine

One of the most overlooked factors in Donald Trump's unexpected win in 2016 was the role of the American media. The media went so far over the top in trying to hand the election to Hillary Clinton that many voters stopped trusting them, even when they were telling the truth. The recently released memo reflecting a phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, could very well feed distrust in the media.


Before I go any further, there are two things that I want to clarify. The first is that I am well aware of the fact that the memo was not a full transcript. I don't know all the details of what was in this conversation. Neither does the media. Their commentary is based off this memo, and I intend to discuss their portrayal of what was in that memo.

I also want to mention that a lot of people embrace an us-versus-them mindset that skews perspectives. What I intend to discuss is absolutely not meant as a defense of Trump. Instead, I want to address how the memo has exposed the media's dishonesty.

There are three outright lies that I have caught from multiple mainstream media outlets relating to this memo. The first is that Trump initiated talks about investigating Biden's son immediately after Zelensky asked about aid. This is false. After Zelensky asked about aid, Trump asked Zelensky to look into CrowdStrike. This had nothing to do with Biden.

Another lie was that Trump referred to the investigation into Biden's son as a favor. Again, this is false. And again, this was related to CrowdStrike.

The final lie that I wanted to mention is that Trump repeatedly pressed or pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden's son. Wrong again. Trump only brought up Biden's son once in this memo. Once does not meet anyone's definition of repeatedly.

Releasing this memo might have been among Trump's smartest moves. There might be reasons for concerns in the content, but he has allowed us to compare the media's interpretation of the memo to the actual memo. Many sources that Americans inexplicably trust have proven their dishonesty. All you have to do is read the memo and the media's commentary.

I will help you out with this one. Here is a link to the memo:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf

Now, I will provide links to some of the dishonest articles I have found, and you will likely see that these sources are not obscure. I tried to keep this list to just major outlets. I also didn't pursue a thorough check. Feel free to check out CNN, ABC, or NBC for me. There are definitely more dishonest articles than what you can find below.
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