Not that I want to defend this ridiculous White House, but I think this is more a lack of understanding the difference between campaigning and governing than malevolence. Their claim is that they want to know what arguments are being made so they can rebut them. Fine. Normally you hire researchers to do that, but if you have an army of lemmings to do it for free then all the better for you, I suppose.

A reading of the post makes clear that they define anything that reaches a different conclusion than the president’s statements (which have proved quite suspect so far) as “misinformation,” no matter how well constructed the argument. Essentially they expect us to believe that any statement the president makes is incontrovertible fact, while anything else is misinformation. For instance, because the President says you’ll get to keep your plan if you like it, then it is fact and anything else is wrong, and never mind that the  current legislation (which the president admits not having read and not knowing the details of) makes that statement dubious.

The problem is that the request was made not by the DNC but by the White House. What would have merely been a dishonest tactic of trying to paint any opposing views as “misleading” if done by the former instead raises eyebrows as a possible government suppression of speech when done by the latter. This fits with this White House’s pattern of fighting its political battles as if in a perpetual campaign. They never revved down from the election, and this time it’s got them into a bit of trouble for their carelessness.

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