Anyone coming out in support of US President Donald Trump at the moment – or indeed anyone reporting on the chaos engulfing the country at all – needs to make sure they have their facts straight.
So Miranda Devine’s impassioned defence of Trump in today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph may want to go back and check the history books.
“After Americans voted in the first black president in 2004 you would think that racial division might have been put to rest,” she posits. “But it only grew worse under Obama, who fanned the flames of black grievance at every opportunity.”
Quick fact check from Dr Mumbo. Obama announced his candidacy in 2007, won the election in 2008 and was inaugurated in 2009.
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In 2004 – a time before we said “practice social distancing”, when we didn’t know the name George Floyd and COVID-19 sounded like the name of a spacecraft we’d perhaps learned about in school and then forgotten – it was George W Bush who was president.
It’s time for law and order, but maybe not for facts
Devine though, seems to be a fan of facts, criticising mayor Bill de Blasio for commenting on police brutality “even though he didn’t know the facts of the incident”.
Arr yes, imagine that.