This is their whole playbook. Spend 3 days straight calling James Talarico a liar and spreading that hospital rumor to every Facebook group in Texas, then when the NYT pulls the time-stamped security footage that proves he was never even there, they go "well why didn't HE debunk it faster?"
They are never going to apologize. The damage is the point.
They're all control freaks, at the end of the day. They wanted to walk him around like a dog and make him respond to allegations and react to their narrative-building. Instead he went off-script and now they are crying victim, like always. Not doing what they wanted is hurtful to them, don't you know? It's rude.
Yea, I guess the whole paradigm is a little off when what should "blow your feet off" just plays to your audience. I don't think the lying is the crux, it's the lack of suffering any consequences from those to whom you are directing the lies.
Obviously he should have anticipated that right-wing sociopaths would make up this specific lie about him, so he should have been ready with evidence that it’s a lie. The first time the question came up, he should have immediately been like, “Well here’s the security footage!”
I know that whenever I go to a hospital, I make sure to get the security footage of my visit so that I can disprove claims that I was actually in a mental hospital in another state. Who wouldn’t?
So clearly, since he didn’t have the footage and the New York Times needed to investigate, he must be hiding something!
Didn't they recently get sued for billions for lying?
Technically it wasn't just for lying, but for lying while having knowledge that it was a lie.
The hurdle for defamation of a public figure is actual malice, meaning either that you have to know the statements you're making are false, or that you made them with reckless disregard for the truth. It's a very hard suit to win. What helped Dominion is the many internal e-mails where people at Fox acknowledged that they knew what they were saying was false.
judge that isn't a corrupt Trump-appointed piece of shit
This would be a state claim, so no Trump-appointed judge. Still Texas, though.
The problem is a retraction, apology or fact check does nothing. Once a conspiracy theory is out there, you can't go back from it. MAGAs are too dumb and lazy to actually do research.
They see something on Facebook, share it immediately as a way to own the libs and it floods the platform.
They are even directly tied to Trump's administration with employees switching between White House and job at Fox. How that is not a problem is beyond me.
I could maybe laugh at it if it was a one way street. Someone losses a job in the WH and goes to Fox or something. But they're trading employees like they're damned Pokémon at this point. It's disgusting.
Yeah, why didn't Talarico blow up the story even further with a bunch of frantic Streisand-effect denials (instead of being all cool and collected and methodical and letting the lawyers handle it with some well-placed lawsuit threats)?
"You idiots are supposedly the journalists", but meanwhile Fox News has stated multiple times in a court of law that they are an Entertainment channel and that "no reasonable person would view their statements as factual".
Fox News is "News" like WWE is "Sports". It's very entertaining, but ultimately just that, not real.
"Never believe that fascists are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. They have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
Jean-Paul Sartre
"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense."
Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
This is not accurate. They argued in court that some of their commentary shows such as Tucker Carlson are not news and are entertainment. Fox News is a regsitered news agency and they are supposed to hold to journalistic standards.
remember fox told the judge and jury they are only entertainment and nobody should really believe them when it comes to news. that is what fox said about fox. so maga jackoffs go to fox for echo chamber bullshit.
in some ways fox has fucked american society worse than a full russia china campaign. fox isnt bombs but paper cuts. radicalizing america...
Ive said one of the acts a dem president should do is shut down Fox News. Like economically kill them because they are poison to the body politic. Worst of all they know it and don’t give a damn
“He knew we were fucking liars and didn’t instantly trot out the evidence to prove it, which is proof that he has something to hide!”
Jesus Christ, it’s one thing to be shameless enough to type this utter nonsense, but it’s another to be stupid enough to believe it hook line and sinker. Not a single critical thought happening on that side.
The bigger scandal is why it took him so long to prove we were lying? Oh these people can go jolly fug themselves.
Also, the viral rumor started on Sunday and they debunked it on Monday. That's one fugging day!
Meanwhile, Donald Trump always needs two weeks to execute every plan of his. And those two weeks last about ten years and counting when it comes to his infrastructure and healthcare and every other thing he promised he could get done in two weeks.
They gotta lotta damn gall to criticize Talarico for taking a week off, considering Mitch McConnell was mia for months with no updates and came back brain dead. At least he doesn't have "psychological issues"
The mouth-breathers who consume Faux News were never going to vote for Talarico anyway. They’d be wiser spending time trying to motivate their base to vote by spinning why it was so great and patriotic for the TX AG to hang in Dubai with his mistress and fugitive healthcare fraudsters
Fox news arent the morons, they know what they're doing. They make billions selling racism and lies. The morons are the ones who watch it and take it seriously
I miss the days where conspiracy theories weren't something people expected to be treated as credible and thoroughly debunked. If you're too uninformed to see why a conspiracy theory is wrong, you're too far behind for me to take the time to teach you. Go read some books.
We landed on the moon
The earth is an oblate spheroid
Flouride does more good than harm
The covid vaccine saved tens of millions of lives and was damn near a modern miracle.
If you disagree with any of the above facts, I'm not wasting time teaching you things you should have learned as a child/teenager. Go read some books.
So now it's his fault that they made up a totally fabricated lie about him? The sad part is even if he were in Ohio getting treatment for something why would that even be a problem? People get sick and go to hospitals to get better. As long as it wasn't something that made it impossible for him to serve than why would it even freaking matter? This dude could breathe air and they'd complain about that. Anything to just have him be wrong / bad no matter what.
Fox fake news, that is true actual name. They were literally caught making up entire stories and keeping the "stolen election" crap alive for ratings because they knew the dumb gullible morons that drool watching that crappy channel eat it up.
Fox has also admitted in open court filings that they are not a news organization and are an editorial opinion organization with the word “news” in their name and that nobody should view their broadcasts as factual news but should remember it’s all opinion
"I'm here to publicly state that on Monday, October 12, 2026, I was not in China. Nor was I in France. I also was not in Madagascar. I understand that it is my responsibility to prove where I have not been in case any accusation is made that I was somewhere I was not. I apologize to every news outlet and entertainment agency out there for not letting you know where I have not been for the past several days versus stating quite plainly where I have been."
Unbelievable that one of the largest media networks is blathering propaganda (some of it aligned with foreign interference) all day, every day, in Americans' homes and military installations
Conspiracy theories are for people who want to maintain an overly simplified, static understanding of the world. Their theory is never wrong, it's just deep state actors making them look wrong.
Fox news really ain’t shit.. it does anything but deliver true and accurate information.. it’s always some
Bullshit and it should really stop or held accountable.
Remember when Obama told Congress they shouldn't pass the justice against sponsors of terrorism act because it would open our service members up to retaliatory legislation in other countries?
Remember when they passed it anyway? And then he voted it? And then they overrode his veto? And the McConnel BLAMED OBAMA FOR NOT WARNING THEM?
The entire right wing ecosystem is completely unmoored from reality. They only standard they maintain is hypocrisy and delusion.
They stated plainly after their lawsuit a few years ago they are strictly entertainment only. The problem is we collectively are too stupid to stop watching them.
There's is nothing more conservative than doing something incredibly wrong and then blaming the other side for not stopping you. "If you had stopped me, this bad thing wouldn't have happened! Why didn't you stop me, James? What did you gain from letting me tell that lie????"
Here's the whole point... Capitalism works on the economic model of 'what the market will bear'. That's code for the capital class can take as much as we will let them. The capital class owns the major news outlets, so they will spin for their masters as long as we let them.
We have let this go on long enough. Time to demand better. It's painfully obvious that the 4th branch of government has become corporations.
to be clear on the friday he was in public, talking to people and attending a concert either on the friday or the saturday.
On Sunday night or sometime monday they started spreading a rumour that he'd been discharged from a mental health facility TWO DAYS after he had been in public again after the flu. This was fake from the start, with zero credibility and every news station that ran it knew it was fake from the get go.
If the story had been spread on the thursday or something it's one thing, but they started this story over two days after he was out in public and they still went live with that story.
Normal people have learned to disengage in debate with Maga because it's utterly pointless anyway, but I have a couple Maga friends who genuinely get upset when I refuse to engage for the above reason.
This is the "reporting" I expect. Unverified lies. Those travel around the world while the truth is still putting its pants on. Finding the truth takes patience, effort and personal commitment by a news organization to verify same and report it. Or, the news organization's employees and scroll social media and highlight the stuff that serves an agenda. I report, you decide on what you think "news" is.
Among the Tiktok smoothbrains this is how it went:
Initially: "Talarico is in a mental hospital going crazy and we have every staff member confirming this!"
After the fact: "The fact that the facility said he's not a patient is a major HIPAA infraction and for some reason, we should blame Talarico for it."
And remember - this is the messaging not because the talking heads are stupid...this is the messaging because the talking heads know that no one bothers to question anything they say.
I wasn’t even aware he had been gone from the campaign trail until he came back and suddenly the media was talking about a “mysterious absence”. I don’t think even the media took notice until they were told to bring attention to it.
Because reporters arent actually reporters anymore...
You get information... you investigate the information... you shredded with the public the information AND what your investigation discovered...
Lately it been one thing... a convicted fraudster and habitual lying POS said something AND you share it as if it was verified facts... do your damn jobs and you wont be surprised
"We were spreading a conspiracy theory and they didn't stop us!"
Jesus Christ.
The 40% of the country that's terminally braindead will buy it all anyway. It's so depressing knowing those people breath our oxygen and use our medicine and eat our food. Waste of life, all of them.
Until the country kicks these Republican assholes out of society and shames them into silence, America will always have a group of people that are misinformed and fed propaganda nonsense by Fox News.
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u/Im40PercentUsername 14h ago
Why would Talarico let us mess up so badly? What is he hiding?