HONEST, EARNEST STYLE

[Geee]

Powerline:

To rewrite history the Obama administration is toying with the devices that George Orwell depicted in 1984. The party line that Orwell attributed to Ingsoc provides this rationale: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”

 

Today’s New York Post editorial comes up with another example, this one involving the oxymoronically named White House spokesman Josh Earnest. At the May 9 press briefing, Kevin Corke asked Earnest whether he could state categorically that no senior administration official ever lied publicly about any aspect of the Iran deal. The White House transcript of Earnest’s answer reads as follows:

 

Q Can you state categorically that no senior official in this administration has ever lied publicly about any aspect of the Iran nuclear deal?

 

MR. EARNEST: Kevin, I think the facts of this agreement and the benefits of this agreement make clear that the national security of the United States of America has been enhanced, and Iran’s effort to acquire a nuclear weapon has been set back. In fact, Iran has now committed to not seeking to acquire to a nuclear weapon, and we can now verify that they’re not able to acquire a nuclear weapon.

 

It is our critics who either falsely or just wrongly suggested that Iran would never go along with the agreement. They have. They falsely or wrongly suggested that we would never be able to verify through the international community that Iran would abide by the agreement. They have. It is our critics who have suggested that Iran would experience hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits — a financial windfall from this agreement. They have not. In fact, we have seen the Iran government complain about the fact that they haven’t gotten the kind of financial benefits that they expected.