Hillary Clinton Should Apologize for the Biggest Political Hoax Since Titus Oates
Michael Barone
Posted: Sep 24, 2021 12:01 AM
It's the biggest political hoax since Titus Oates's allegations of a "Popish Plot" to assassinate King Charles II in 1678. Oates's charge of a Jesuit conspiracy swept through London and led to the execution of four innocent men before Oates was proved a fraud.
The full consequences of the great political hoax of our time – the charge that former President Donald Trump was colluding with Russia – are not yet fully apparent.
Yet they are surely serious. We have heard from many Democrats and those in media that Trump's claims that he actually won the 2020 presidential election tend to delegitimize the government and distort the political process. They have a point.
It's a stretch to call the streaming of Trump supporters into the Capitol on Jan. 6 an "insurrection," but as I wrote at the time, Trump's words that day "were uttered with a reckless disregard for the possibility they'd provoke violence that any reasonable person could find impeachable."
But Trump is not the only losing candidate who has cast doubt on an election result recently. While he has faced the derision of most of the news media and the disagreement of some in his party, that wasn't true of the utterly baseless charges that Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
It took some time for Oates's Popish Plot to be revealed as a hoax and for many who believed it to acknowledge it as such. The Russia collusion hoax now seems to be unraveling, but we have yet to see many confessions of error from Democrats or their friends in the press.
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https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/2021/09/24/hillary-clinton-should-apologize-for-the-biggest-political-hoax-since-titus-oates-n2596404
