"Martha, Do You Hear Yourself?

jd vance tangles with the palace guard

The tests came back negative — you don’t have cancer. It’s spreading fast, and we’ll start chemotherapy immediately.

In September, no Venezuelan street gangs had ever taken over apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado — no gangs, no apartment complexes. The whole thing was just another one of those bizarre far-right conspiracy theories, a complete invention. The Nazi Orange Devil was widely invoked.

Local newspaper headline: “Police, residents say Venezuelan gang allegation a dangerous fabrication.”

NPR: “Aurora police chief says there's no evidence that Venezuelan gang took over apartment.”

New York Times: “How the False Story of a Gang ‘Takeover’ in Colorado Reached Trump.”

This morning on the ABC News Sunday morning show, the unaccountably prominent Martha Raddatz had a tough question for vice-presidential candidate JD Vance. You can find this exchange in the transcript, or watch video on I-still-call-it-Twitter:

RADDATZ: Senator Vance, I’m going to stop you because I know exactly what happened. I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complex — apartment complexes and the mayor said our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns. A handful of problems.

VANCE: Only — Martha, do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem, and not Kamala Harris's open border?

So, you see, it’s a complete myth, an absolute conspiracy theory, it flatly never happened at all, and also…they only took over a handful of apartment complexes. There were no gang takeovers, and the police are working to address them. Honey, I swear, I never even met her, except for that week down in Cabo and the thing in Vegas and the couple times at the motel around the corner and the one time out behind your sister’s garage.

As Vance suggests, Raddatz and her peers are so far gone with Trump derangement that they’ve completely lost the scale. They can’t measure or weigh. Trump said X, and HOW DARE HE SAY X THAT’S A DISGUSTING FASCIST LIE

…..

…..

…..

(it actually did happen)

They do this over and over and over and over again, and the performance needs a ringmaster to direct your attention through the traffic jam of clown cars. Vance:

Americans are so fed up with what's going on and they have every right to be and I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs.

That’s exactly right. “Five square miles of Indianapolis destroyed by nuclear bomb, Trump spreads dangerous conspiracy theory that bomb destroyed six square miles. Stand by for panel discussion about Trump’s lie.” They can’t see anything else. They can’t have a discussion about physical reality — there’s a Great Orange Whale between them and the world, and they can’t turn their eyes away.

Starbuck and Ahab have a conversation in Ahab’s cabin, and Ahab rants about sailing wherever it takes to achieve his vengeance on that damned white whale, and Starbuck says that hey, here’s a thought, what if we just hunted for ordinary whales and filled up our barrels with their oil and then went home and sold the oil for money. Ahab responds…poorly. We’re living in the later moments of that scene. Look, ye, all objects are but as pasteboard masks. Whatever you say, Martha.

Now, part two. If you remember the appalling “debate” between Kamala Harris and Terrifying Orange Hitler, talking hairdo David Muir said that Trump’s claims about Haitian migrants eating pets was false, because ABC News called the city manager and he said so. An official spoke, so the truth is established. People investigating the claims found good evidence for them, but the city manager said no, so that’s the answer. Raddatz performs this exact maneuver repeatedly. The truth is what officials say:

But I want to — we played some other comments about migrants and migrants including in Aurora, in Colorado, where Trump said the city had been invaded and conquered by Venezuelan gangs. The Republican mayor of the city said flatly, the city and state have not been taken over or invaded or occupied by migrant gangs.

Truth is the official statement, full stop. Statements by citizens who have no government title cannot be taken as evidence. There is no truth outside of government.

Again, look at the transcript of the discussion between Vance and Raddatz. Here’s one of their exchanges on the subject of disaster relief, and read this carefully:

VANCE: If you talk to folks on the ground, we've had — I have had friends who have been in Boone, North Carolina, helping with the cleanup.

It is an extraordinary sense of betrayal and being left behind. People are worried that their government doesn't care about them. I’m much more worried about the incompetence of Kamala Harris's administration that led to that, more than I am —

RADDATZ: Senator Vance —

VANCE: —the fact that Donald Trump —

(CROSSTALK)

RADDATZ: Senator Vance, I’m just going to say that local officials — local officials and FEMA officials say that is just flat wrong.

Two competing epistemological orientations are fully exposed in these few words.

1. I am talking to people who are on the ground, in direct contact with the thing itself, and they say X;

2. No, I am talking to government officials, and they say Not-X, so the matter is closed.

The direct experience of the uncredentialed cannot be considered. “I am cold and hungry, and my home is destroyed.” Oh yeah, what agency do you work for?

Martha Raddatz isn’t merely useless. She’s much, much, much more of an impediment than that.