Obama Disappoints with Rant Against “Disinformation”

CLAY: I think we’ve got audio from Obama. One of the challenges — and Obama should know this, right, because whatever you want to say about Joe Biden, he’s not a very smart man, period. He’s also not in control of his mental faculties. But any lawyer who has been trained at a decent law school understands that one of the most difficult things to do is define what speech is appropriate and what speech is inappropriate.

So I’m disappointed that Obama would try to now jump on the misinformation/disinformation train as he just did. You asked, Buck — and we’ve been talking about — “Hey, what is the theme of the midterms going to be for the Democrats as they try and avoid this red wave?”

One of the arguments they’re gonna make is elections aren’t fair because there’s so much disinformation in our country. What is disinformation? Well, it’s facts that make the other side uncomfortable frequently is how that’s defined. Here’s Obama talking about this.

BUCK: We have lost faith in these institutions for two reasons — and first, let me say it’s right to lose faith in many of the institutions that Obama’s bemoaning right now, right? The two reasons are they’ve failed us, and there are essentially provinces of the left. So it is the right thing to lose faith in many of these.

Whether it’s public health apparatus or social media companies as entities that promote free speech, or corporations as neutral entities that are just trying to get their bottom line to be as strong as possible, that’s just not true. Journalism as somehow nonpartisan, unbiased? You look at these things, the loss of faith in an institution is a result of truth, not disinformation.

Barack Obama, at some level, I think must know that. This is really, though, just about trying to shape the narrative so that it doesn’t affect their power in a negative way. They are going into an election where they know they got nothing, and all the results that are traceable to Democrat decision-making have not just been poor; they’ve been misery inducing for people.

CLAY: And what we can’t control, Buck, is what anybody else says, right? Democrats, Republicans, independents, governors, senators, Congresspeople, what we can control on this as though is we are going to come to you every day for three hours, 15 hours every week, and we’re gonna share lots of opinions.

But what we have pledged from the get-go is, we’re gonna get our facts right. So I understand… You mentioned the fact that people have kids and they’ve got serious jobs and they got responsibilities and they got health-related concerns to take care of. It’s hard to be well informed. I think harder to be well-informed as a citizen than ever before.

Because there’s so much noise and it’s hard to know what matters and it’s hard to know why it matters. That’s our job. That’s what we’re trying to do for three hours every single day. So if you’re out there and you just feel frustrated and you feel like you want to throw your hands up — and I know a lot of you do — we understand you.

We feel that. And that is why we are trying every single day to be as honest and transparent and truthful with you as we can, sharing our opinions — and we’re not always gonna agree on opinions. We understand that. But what we’re gonna do is get our facts right and understand that the marketplace of ideas is important. So that is what we’re pledging to do for you guys, and I hope we’re delivering as we come up on a full year taking over for Rush Limbaugh, who obviously was a legend.