Fake News, courtesy of the White House and Washington Examiner.

This morning some Trumpkin yahoo sent me a link to this story.

The few reporters who chose to attend huddled under umbrellas, with ponchos over their computers. Many others chose to remain at a hotel press filing center. At one point during his 10-minute speech, Trump made light of the driving rain in a cool 55 degrees Fahrenheit, telling one guest under an overhang, "You look so comfortable up there under shelter as we are getting drenched."

The aforementioned right-wing rag provided a link to Sky News.

The Sky news video is heavily cropped, but I found the original. Better yet, I found the official White House video.

The quoted sentence is at 6:55 into the video.

There's something very off, though. Where is the driving, drenching rain? The President's hair is dry at the very beginning of the video, right through to the end. There is no water dripping off the leaves. There are a few raindrops on Trump''s coat, towards the middle of the video, but they disappeared quickly.

But best of all is the background. Yes, that's the Eiffel Tower; the White House videographer obviously wanted it in the frame. Good choice.

It's a long way away. It looks closer, because it's foreshortened by the high-power telephoto lens the videographer is using. In fact, it's 3.65 miles way, across the Seine twice, with the Bois de Boulogne in between.

But it gets better. See the dome to the right of the tower? That's the Panthéon. It's 6.15 miles, as the crow flies, from Suresnes. Yet you can see it clear as day. As little as 0.05 inches of rain per hour is enough to render something invisible at that distance, and that's even without the usual city pollution.

It wasn't driving rain. It wasn't drenching rain. It wasn't soaking rain. It probably wasn't raining at all. Trump was telling one of his usual bare-faced lies, staring his audience in the face and telling them something they could tell with their own eyes wasn't true. It was obviously a set-up, to deflect from the President's refusal to go out in the rain the previous day.

And the Washington Examiner didn't just repeat it unquestioningly. It amplified on it, like the state propaganda organ it is.

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