Lied. Made up. Never existed. False.

But when it comes to the media’s favorite agendas that turned out to be lies, they turn to a weasel phrase like “cannot be substantiated”. Here’s the Washington Post with a lie that it could not substantiate.

“WNBA says probe did not substantiate alleged racist fan comments” – Washington Post

“Did not substantiate”. That’s such an odd turn of phrase. It implies that maybe it happened, but it just couldn’t be proven. It’s like something a more serious UFO researcher would say. “We could not substantiate the existence of that UFO over Seattle.”

Except this is something that happened in front of a whole lot of people. (Okay, maybe not that many people, it was a WNBA game after all.) And not a single piece of evidence turned up to support its existence. So maybe another word would be shorter and more to the point than “did not substantiate”.

Saying it looked into “the report of racist fan behavior in the vicinity of the court” during the high-profile contest, the WNBA stated: “Based on information gathered to date, including from relevant fans, team and arena staff, as well as audio and video review of the game, we have not substantiated it.”

Audio, video, mind readers, brain probes, a DEI session and a team of headhunters dressed in Elvis costumes could not substantiate what did not happen. But since we’ll assume that everyone is racist, it probably did happen.