Gloria Borger, in a CNN panel this morning about how Democrats should work with President Trump, once again stated as fact that Mitch McConnell vowed to make President Barack Obama a “one term President” from “day one.”

There are a few persistent lies that I have vowed to flag every time I read or hear them. One is that “women earn only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns for equivalent jobs.” This is another. Borger’s myth has been trotted out again and again to prove that Republicans set out to sabotage Obama’s administration, and never gave him a chance. It is absolutely false.

I am no fan of Mitch McConnell, who is just a GOP version of  the horrible Harry Reid, and approximately as unethical. But McConnell’s comment was not made on “day one,” but on October 23, 2010. as he tried to rally Republican voters to give the party more power in Congress, which it did. Moreover, he did not vow obstructionism, but opened the door to bipartisanship if the President would compromise. Here is the quote and its context. Remember that Republicans had been rolled-over in the contentious Affordable Care Act passing.

McConnell: We need to be honest with the public. This election is about them, not us. And we need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government. We need to say to everyone on Election Day, “Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job.”

National Journal: What’s the job?

McConnell: The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

National Journal: Does that mean endless, or at least frequent, confrontation with the president?

McConnell: If President Obama does a Clintonian backflip, if he’s willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues, it’s not inappropriate for us to do business with him.

National Journal: What are the big issues?

McConnell: It is possible the president’s advisers will tell him he has to do something to get right with the public on his levels of spending and [on] lowering the national debt. If he were to heed that advice, he would, I imagine, find more support among our conference than he would among some in the Senate in his own party. I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change. So, we’ll see. The next move is going to be up to him.

“I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change.” Somehow that part always gets left out, as well as the fact that McConnell had two years of Obama before he made this statement. If he had decided that Obama needed to be defeated after two years, that is a long way from not giving him a chance. Yet this lie, and it is a lie, gets repeated again and again, by Democrats, by partisans, and on blogs. It should never, however, be repeated by journalists, who should be aware of the facts, and not misrepresent them, spreading and embedding misinformation in the process. But so many of them are biased, you see. They want this story to be true, and so to them it is.

The news media is dissipating its power as well as its credibility and trustworthiness with incompetent stunts like Borger’s.  Doing this so soon after last night’s thunderclap makes one wonder if they are capable of learning.