In an interview with CNBC, GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz expressed anger towards the “left-wing editorial writers” who liked to call him out for making “non-factual statements.”
Cruz, speaking to John Harwood during a ten-question interview, dismissed the tendency of people to do things like fact-check his claims supporting his argument that the IRS should be abolished:
HARWOOD: You’ve said a few things that don’t necessarily comport with the facts, like, “125,000 I.R.S. agents, send ‘em to the border.” They’ve only got 25,000 agents or something like. You’ve talked about the job-killing nature of Obamacare. We’re adding jobs at a very healthy clip right now. Why shouldn’t somebody listen to you and say, “The guy’ll just say anything – doesn’t have to be true”?
CRUZ: There is a game that is played by left-wing editorial writers. It’s this new species of yellow journalism called PolitiFact. Colloquially I was referring to all the employees as agents. That particular stat is in a joke I used. So, they’re literally fact-checking a joke. I say that explicitly tongue in cheek.
Get it? Any time Ted Cruz says something ridiculously non factual, it's stupid liberals fact-checking a joke and anyone who looks to fact-check his statements are "yellow journalists."
Dear political journalists: you are the enemy to any Republican. They would see you destroyed as much as they would want to even look at you. Why treat them as anything other than a cancer on our body politic?
Q. How can one tell when Sen. Cruz is lying?
ReplyDeleteA. His lips are moving.
OK, that was repurposed.
Q. How can one tell when Sen. Cruz is joking?
A. The lies are obvious.
I'm sure you can come up with better. ;-)
True fact, as of 9:35 on 4/10/15: if you type "not inten" into google it autocompletes to "not intended to be a factual statement," which takes you to the story of Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl, who made a false claim during the
ReplyDeletecongressional debate on 2011 budget that “well over 90%” of Planned
Parenthood’s activity is devoted to performing abortion."
So "not intended" has in its way become the new santorum, which stuck to failed Pennsylvania Senator and Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum like - well - santorum and contributed to his embarrassingly rapid withdrawal from the campaign.
Also, too, "santorum" is latin for "asshole."
So, while ridicule is not an intellectual process and has no place in the search for Reliable Knowledge, this is politics not rocket science and if we can get Cruz laughed off the stage by the 90% of Americans who don't actually care about politics... well, then, that's one less santorum we have to worry about.