And now the same people who claimed I was lying about what happened to me in 2016 are standing behind these ludicrous White House accusations.

Read: Jim Acosta’s dangerous brand of performance journalism

In fact, it’s some of the exact same people. The seemingly doctored video was first shared by Paul Joseph Watson, a contributor to the far-right site Infowars who in 2016 repeatedly claimed that I was nothing more than a hoaxer.



I’m not a psychologist, but I’m pretty sure that the term used for this phenomenon is projection. I was accused of doing something I would never even think of doing by people who thought I might have done it precisely because they themselves were capable of doing it. Acosta-gate is the perfect example of this.



But it isn’t the only example. The president labels the media “fake news” but is happy to promote fake news for political purposes. Just look at his Twitter feed.

Even if the president’s team really believed that Acosta had assaulted a White House intern, their outrage would be hypocritical at best; just weeks ago at a rally in Montana, the president joked about the time the state’s congressman had body slammed a reporter.

If you go to the White House press shop expecting sincerity, you haven’t been paying attention.

The president has been wanting to escalate his war with the media for some time by revoking a journalist’s press pass, according to news reports. This was a political move by a president who sees the press as a useful political foil.

Adam Serwer: Trump will only get more dangerous.

But it is also a dangerous move. It’s dangerous because it is a further assault on objective truth. It’s dangerous because we live in a time when political radicals on all sides seem willing to act violently, whether it is by sending pipe bombs to the president’s perceived enemies, including CNN, or threatening to break into Tucker Carlson’s house.

What’s more, it’s unfair to the young female intern who is being thrust into this political maelstrom. As far as we know, she hasn’t accused anybody of anything. It appears that the White House is using her for its own political ends.



Like I said, I’m no psychologist. But it seems to me that none of this leads anywhere healthy.

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