As my esteemed colleague Stephen Green noted yesterday, billionaire presidential candidate and Fisher-Price person Mike Bloomberg has finally posted something on the Internet that’s funny on purpose. After a disastrous performance at his first debate of the 2020 campaign, where even a hapless failure like Elizabeth Warren was able to tear him to shreds while he stood(?) there helplessly, Bloomie’s highly paid campaign staff whipped up this little gem to ease the burn a bit:
Anyone? pic.twitter.com/xqhq5qFYVk
— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) February 20, 2020
I respect your intelligence, Dear Reader, so I assume you recognize that this is a joke. If you’ve ever watched Adult Swim or The Daily Show, or if you’ve ever heard of Vic Berger, you might recognize the style of humor here. Cringey. Awkward. People being made to look even dumber than they really are. And if you’re still confused, they even added the sound of crickets. They stopped short of flashing the word “SATIRE” on the screen in big green letters, like in Monty Python’s “Architects Sketch,” but it’s obviously a joke. Nobody on that debate stage was able to answer Bloomberg’s question, but obviously it wasn’t really followed by 20 solid seconds of silence broken only by the sound of crickets and Liz Warren’s hesitant muttering.
You may or may not think it’s a good joke, but it’s a joke. You might not like it, but you’re smart enough to get it.
Guess who’s not smart enough to get it? Our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the press, and their comrades in the Democratic Party. They are upset and outraged, and this isn’t funny, and somebody needs to do something, and so on, and so forth.
ICYMI –> Bloomberg’s manipulated debate video earns Four Pinocchios https://t.co/1f5Ohr5xQw
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) February 21, 2020
Bloomberg spokesperson to us, on the below video: “It’s tongue in cheek. There were obviously no crickets on the debate stage.” https://t.co/xTXIiZFXfU
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) February 20, 2020
This is pretty wild: After Mike Bloomberg bombed at the debate last night, his campaign cut a deceptive video to make it look like he did well.
The video already has nearly 200K views on Twitter and 31K on Instagram. https://t.co/Pfw7OWpqGa
— Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) February 20, 2020
Well – this is not what we saw on TV last night https://t.co/0jaxoztYqy
— John Santucci (@Santucci) February 20, 2020
this isn’t how this exchange happened https://t.co/7nHfcHqHNT
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) February 20, 2020
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
-Hannah Arendt https://t.co/MxMNLLml67
— Matt Duss (@mattduss) February 20, 2020
between this deceptively edited video, the TV & radio ads that imply Obama endorsed him, the paid social media/texting that’s designed to seem organic…
Bloomberg is weaponizing disinfo in ways that fundamentally undermine democracy. https://t.co/nmSyEC82qB
— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) February 20, 2020
this is trouble. edited without plainly being satire. has the effect of dishonest propaganda https://t.co/7wDIx0H2Cw
— Tim Dickinson (@7im) February 20, 2020
This is pure disinformation. https://t.co/29Smbria9w
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) February 20, 2020
NEW: Twitter says @MikeBloomberg‘s deceptively edited debate video would likely be labeled as manipulated media under its new rules, which go into effect next month https://t.co/ByerSr35nX https://t.co/bEFopu9NiC
— Jesselyn Cook (@JessReports) February 20, 2020
Doctoring videos in this manner would be career-ending in journalism. https://t.co/K7FyWC1Hhh
— Pedro da Costa (@pdacosta) February 20, 2020
Here, I made the clip of what actually happened when Bloomberg asked who else had started a business. It was not 20 seconds of dumbfounded silence. pic.twitter.com/cpUAH5mkNJ
— Dominic Holden (@dominicholden) February 20, 2020
NBC’s Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) on Bloomberg’s “doctored video”: Twitter’s new policy flagging “disinformation” will include videos like this.
“If nobody will stop [disinfo], it can change narratives or change the outcome of the election.” pic.twitter.com/4aINQNjWxH
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 21, 2020
“Deceptively edited.” “Doctored.” “Faked.” “Disinformation.” “Dishonest propaganda.” “Career-ending.” Wow, that sounds really dangerous, doesn’t it? Next they’ll tell us those dogs aren’t really voting for Bloomberg!
Dog people get me. Dogs too. #DogsFurMike pic.twitter.com/gGejm10vZQ
— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) January 29, 2020
If nobody had flipped out over an obvious joke, it’d be forgotten already. Even more people have seen this dumb joke now because of all the journos freaking out about it. They’re working for Bloomberg, even though he isn’t paying them.
Free advertising for a billionaire. They really haven’t learned anything from 2016.
As for whether it should be “career-ending,” somebody should ask Katie Couric. A few years back she did the exact same thing, except it wasn’t presented as a joke:
And the actual footage wasn’t broadcast to a live TV audience of 20 million people:
That was deceptive editing. That was a straight-up lie. And while Couric’s career is on the decline, she still has one. Her colleagues don’t care that she’s a liar, because her lies serve the correct agenda.
Whereas obvious jokes, which nobody in their right mind would ever think are real, are treated like high crimes. Like this Trump tweet from 2017:
#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017
Did anybody watch that and think Trump actually beat up the CNN logo, and then rewound time and beat it up again? That was what purported journalist Andrew “KFILE” Kaczynski thought. CNN actually paid KFILE to track down the Reddit user (nicknamed HanA**holeSolo) who created that silly, humorous video. KFILE was magnanimous enough not to divulge the culprit’s identity, but only after coercing him into making a statement of remorse for being a bad boy and angering his betters. As Kaczynski noted: “CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.”
In other words: You’d better not make fun of CNN, you deplorables, or they’ll dox you.
I don’t like Mike Bloomberg and I don’t understand why he’s running for president, but I’ve seen this phenomenon before. It’s the same thing that gave us Trump. Instead of focusing on Trump’s flaws, which even his staunchest supporters will admit he has in abundance, journos instead decided to freak out about every single little thing imaginable. They made fools of themselves trying to destroy Trump. Some voters pushed back, and the rest just ignored the static.
Hillary lost, and rather than admit she was a bad candidate, they blamed Facebook memes and jokey videos. So now Facebook memes and jokey videos are bad, unless our self-imposed gatekeepers are the ones in control. If someone outside their tribe forgets his place and talks back, he must be stopped.
That’s the spot Bloomberg is in right now. They loved him when he was funding gun-confiscation efforts and other liberal agenda items, but now he poses a threat to their power and must be destroyed. But unlike most of their victims, he has a virtually bottomless well of cash and will continue to do whatever he wants.
And we’re over 250 days out from the election. These clowns are only going to get worse. Their humorless nitpicking and obsessive fault-finding are only going to get crazier.
I can’t wait!
