Billy Corgan Defends Donald Trump, Blasts Moscow Hotel Report as “Fake News”
The co-opting of the term “fake news” by the right of late to be synonymous with “anything that paints us unfavorably” is disgusting and upsetting.
“Fake news” refers to stories constructed entirely of lies, concocted out of thin air by Macedonian teens with the express purpose of publishing misinformation that’s shocking enough to garner clicks, and hence ad revenue. “Fake news” does NOT refer to the reports, gathered by respected intelligence officials, that allege Donald Trump hired Russian prostitutes in a hotel in Moscow. Are those reports dubious? Sure, I’ll give you that, even as the unabashed lefty commie that I am; the claims haven’t been proven. But that is hardly “fake news” the way that term was intended to read.
That distinction hasn’t stopped Billy Corgan from calling out the above Moscow report as “fake news.” The Smashing Pumpkins singer just embarked on a 30-day trip of America, which he’s filming for a series called Thirty Days, in which he sets out to “see if the American culture that I recognized as being a part of was still there.” He elaborates in an interview with 97.9 The Loop’s Mancow Morning Show (Chicago): “If I just filter what I read through the media, which obviously yesterday was a watershed day with the media, if I just filter what I read through the media, I’m not really in touch with the world I grew up in. I know there’s a gap there.”
And, look: that’s one thing Corgan is right about. As we learned in November, there is absolutely a gap between what we see in the media and what’s going on in America as a whole.
But that’s hardly enough to make the knowledge jump that anything reported in said media that’s unfavorable to Trump is “fake news.” Corgan’s gone on record as a Trump supporter before, disparaging Bernie Sanders and comparing “social justice warriors” to the KKK, so his stance on the Moscow hotel revelation should hardly be surprising, but he’s terribly, terribly misguided with the conclusion he’s reached. He’s doing the exact same thing he’s accusing the other side of: swallowing whole the media pill he’s been given.
Watch the clip below via Consequence of Sound.
[via Metal Insider]
