Barack Obama told a good joke the other day.
He said he thought that the level of disinformation and misinformation online has gotten so dangerously high in the U.S. that we need to develop “digital fingerprints” so ordinary citizens can tell what’s truly true and know who’s not telling it.
We?
Did he mean “We the American people” or “We the politicians with all the power”?
The ex-president of us all didn’t specify what government agency or allegedly nonpartisan public watchdog group he thought should get to decide what is the “truth” or how or if it would be enforced.
He told his former senior advisor David Axelrod that he is most concerned about “deep fakes” that use digitally manipulated images, audio or video to spread lies and mislead people – especially voters.
But Obama said people are going to have to know how to spot misinformation that “can still be used, for example, to discourage people from voting by characterizing the system as rigged and corrupt.”
The punchline to Obama’s unintentional joke is his concern that misinformation can “oftentimes advantage the powerful.”
And, he said, “I am worried about that kind of cynicism developing even further during the course of this next election.”
Gee, President Obama, why would half the country’s voters – the red-colored half – be cynical?
Could it be that for seven years they’ve watched the president they elected in 2016 be abused by a continual disinformation campaign carried out by Democrats, the FBI, government intelligence agencies and the partisan media?
Obama and lesser pontificating phonies like my lying congressman, the recently censured Adam Schiff, don’t actually care about the spread of disinformation, conspiracy theories and lies – as long as they get to spread theirs.
For almost four years, the Democrats and their pet media pushed the Russian Collusion Hoax and other minor hoaxes and lies about Trump or his family.
The liberal media, of course, swallowed and regurgitated every claim without question while Big Tech’s biased “moderators” and “fact checkers” made sure to censor, hide or kill “disinformation” that challenged or discredited the hoaxes.
The Mueller Report found there was no Trump-Russia collusion before the 2016 election, yet we still have James Comey, the disgraced FBI head and fiction writer, pushing that Big Lie on TV.
Per usual, there are no tough questions or criticism for Comey from the liberal media. His lies are still treated as gospel and he’s treated as tenderly as the lying Bidens or Hillary Clinton, who’ll never pay for her role in using the FBI to hobble Trump before and after he was elected.
And there’ll be no harsh words from the media for the 51 former intelligence experts who knew the Hunter Biden laptop was real but still signed a statement before the 2020 election saying it looked like an act of Russian disinformation.
Meanwhile, Democrats are always trying to make the country believe that it was the Republicans who’ve been doing all the lying.
But who told the whoppers about the origin of the COVID-19 virus being from a bat cave or a wet market in Wuhan?
Who kept telling us the lies that COVID vaccines were absolutely safe and prevented infection and transmission long after they knew otherwise?
Who has been dis-informing us – for the last 60 years, at least – with the lie that Republicans are going to throw grandma over the cliff by getting rid of Social Security and Medicare?
The answer for all of the above is Democrats.
But now we’re supposed to take advice about stopping the spread of disinformation from President Obama?
Isn’t he that smooth young black guy who promised to work for a unified and colorblind society but ended up re-igniting the race war in the United States?
Yep. And you can electronically fingerprint me for saying that, Mr. Ex-president. But it’s still not disinformation.
Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to reagan@caglecartoons.comand follow @reaganworld on Twitter
