this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2025
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“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a week attempt at distraction,” read the statement attributed to Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesperson for Obama. “Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”

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[–] nthavoc@lemmy.today 2 points 1 hour ago

Can he just say "Bring it" or something to where he can actually start getting into King Moron's head? Stop being nice. Let the gloves come off. Enough is enough!

[–] aramova@infosec.pub 49 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a week attempt at distraction," read the statement attributed to Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesperson for Obama.

Please tell me he actually said "weak" and didn't typo that on an actual press release.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

Isn't starting a sentence with "But..." also bad grammar?

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It seems to just be the article, the linked Twitter post has it as "weak"

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 24 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Who in their right mind quotes a former president on a serious matter and makes a typo instead of just... copy-pasting that part of the statement to ensure accuracy lol

[–] L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Do you honestly believe, based on the quality of writing and also webpage design, that anyone working at a journal is capable of highlighting text, copying it, and then also pasting?

Lol, well played.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 60 points 21 hours ago

Loooooool, I looooove the Marco call-out. That's hilarious.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 24 points 18 hours ago (2 children)
[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 22 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Journalist decided to re-type the statement instead of copy-pasting. You'll notice the distinct lack of a [sic] tag.

[–] MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.works 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I have questions about the legitimacy of this statement

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 2 points 13 hours ago

I have questions about the legitimacy of this entire administration.

[–] cabron_offsets@lemmy.world 125 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

BREAKING: TRUMP RAPED KIDS

[–] Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world 18 points 17 hours ago

Are you still talking about raping children?? That's unbelievable. The Washington Commanders need to change their name now!!

[–] Frozengyro@lemmy.world 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Breaking? Anyone laying attention has known this for a long time.

[–] womjunru@lemmy.cafe 2 points 20 hours ago

Nearly a decade by now.

[–] Iamsqueegee@sh.itjust.works 5 points 22 hours ago (2 children)
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[–] simplejack@lemmy.world 113 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

I love that they reminded everyone that this investigation was chaired by a key member of Trump’s cabinet.

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 5 points 10 hours ago

This happens all the time.

A couple members of the committee putting on the farcical investigation into Biden's actions in pushing out the corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor... Had previously signed the public congressional letter urging Biden to take that exact action.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 26 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

Marco always looks like he’s caught in headlights these days.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago

Let's dispel the fiction that Marco Rubio knows what he's doing. He has no clue what he's doing.

[–] obvs@lemmy.world 10 points 22 hours ago

Reek-o Rubio.

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

I mean, it's gotta be hard trying to keep up with it all. I think he may have bit off more than he can chew.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 130 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Weak* attempt at distraction

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 72 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Oh wow. The typo is in the Mediate article. Sorry for doubting you, OP.

This article correctly uses "weak". I have to imagine the error was Mediate's part and not present in the original statement Obama's office made.

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago

thanks, a.i.-bama

[–] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's like they'd deliberately need to mess it up,

That or they're transcribing from a secondary source, but why the heck do that when the original source is available?

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 3 points 20 hours ago

To know whom it was copied from. It's like when the TA finds the same mistakes in every student's assignment they are grading.

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 5 points 19 hours ago

Well, it has been about a week of active distractions

[–] Donjuanme@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I'm disappointed they didn't misuse weak in the next sentence when talking about the previous week

[–] miked@sh.itjust.works 23 points 20 hours ago
[–] Noite_Etion@lemmy.world 36 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

All that was missing here was a request for the Epstein list.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 26 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

if that were in there, MAGA would probably reverse course and decide it should be kept secret because obama wants it public

[–] tea@lemmy.today 16 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Basically this, haha.

Obama meets with the GOP from Key and Peele

He's gotta just say it should be kept secret and they'll have to release it.

[–] Noite_Etion@lemmy.world 13 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Life must be so easy when you just do what the orange man tells you to, and believe what he tells you to believe.

Trump is one step away from his own religion at this point.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 points 9 hours ago

Rebranding him as a religious prophet was the plan during the Biden administration. Traitor General Michael Flynn was operating a traveling roadshow of evangelical preachers and conservative celebrities for which the overriding theme was HitlerPig's mission from God.

He was never very fond of his daughter-in-law Lara, until she started speaking on the tour, saying that she speaks directly with God regularly, and he had told her directly that HitlerPig was His chosen emissary to represent Him and lead America into its new White Christian future. HitlerPig was so pleased with this that he made her chairman of the RNC.

They were really cranking up the religious rhetoric at the time, and I fully expected that they'd start attributing miracles to him, when he hooked up with The Goblin, and they rigged the election. Now that he's president again, nobody is bringing up the religious stuff anymore. If he gets kicked out again, he'll pivot back to being a Prophet again.

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 6 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Which is what? Asking for tax exemption?

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[–] womjunru@lemmy.cafe 14 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] ebolapie@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

Lemmy User Eviscerates This Annoying Trend In Headlines

[–] rhvg@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Trump very hard to create distractions, but does it even matter if he’s a pedo? We all knew, but that’s not changing anyone’s positions, right?

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The alt right movement has been largely built on conspiracy theories - the idea that there is a shadowy cabal of very rich people who traffic and sexually abuse children. Many of them literally believed that Wayfair was selling children online with identification numbers for like chairs and sofas being secret codes for children; that children were being sold in the basement of a pizza shop, that lines in Hillary Clinton emails referring to getting pizza were references to child sex abuse, that there exists a video of Hillary Clinton ripping off a child’s face and eating it for gratification/getting high on “adrenochrome,” that their hero Trump was going to expose all of this. Even the “normal” ones had a belief that “The Left” is after their children - making them gay or trans. Donald Trump was supposed to expose all of this, and a big part of why he “won” is the conspiracy insanity.

Now, it has indeed turned out that there was a shadowy cabal of rich people sexually abusing children - with Trump being a very active participant. This is the equivalent of a doomsday cult reaching the day that the world was supposed to end and it not; the leader being revealed as a fraud the entire time. This exemplifies the way that the MAGA movement is a cult. They are experiencing massive amounts of cognitive dissonance, and choosing to double down in their cultic beliefs. This is terrifying to watch.

The narrative is starting to become that Epstein was an agent of Mossad that was intended to blackmail Trump. Genuine antisemitism (ie, not criticism of Israel for genociding Palestinians, but actual Nazi Jew hating) is common in those spaces, so this ties into their conspiracy theories very well already. (There’s also enough pieces to draw connections there - Ghislaine Maxwell’s dad was possibly murdered by Mossad. He also destroyed scientific publishing, so he can rest in piss regardless.)

We have an extremely dangerous cult that worships Trump based on the idea that he was going to “drain the swamp” and jail the pedophiles. This extremely dangerous cult is in a very desperate spot right now, and while the hope is that it will fall apart due to the clear fact that Donald Trump did rape children on Epstein’s island, cults do not operate on basic reason.

[–] j0ester@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

That pos cult are starting to say, “kids should be molested” or “if Donald raped me, I’ll be happy”.

This is why Donald loves the poorly uneducated. They’ll be the first to clean that shitty ass with their tongue.

[–] blattrules@lemmy.world 12 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I can’t imagine it’ll change the cult’s opinion of him at all, but at least it makes it glaringly obvious that they’ve always been raging hypocrites and that makes me feel a little better. Also, Trump seems to want the story to be buried, so I’m ok with people shouting it from the rooftops.

[–] Furbag@lemmy.world 8 points 20 hours ago

This is probably the most damaging story about him since the Access Hollywood tape was leaked. He wanted that one gone so badly, he actually owned up to it and issued an apology for it (before then famously downplaying it as "locker room talk") and tried to steer the conversation away from it, which worked for the most part.

But just like with the pussy grabbing tape, I expect his base to fall in line with whatever narrative the Trump team eventually crafts to counteract the stream of negative press surrounding it. It just seems like his normal tactic of fire hosing a bunch of outrageous nonsense isn't working this time.

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