QOTD -- White House Correspondents Association Fiasco

 

"... Just imagine if the reporters gathered in that room had gotten out of their seats and walked out on that maddening address to the nation. Millions of Americans would have been cheering in their living rooms. Instead the wide shots and cutaways of the crowd on hand told a far more depressing story, revealing not just the stunned and tortured looks of some of the finest journalists in the world, who missed a golden opportunity to stand up for what is arguably our most precious right guaranteed under the Constitution. People sat in their seats, defeated and depressed. It was agonizing to watch from home. But it was also clarifying. The event itself was an indictment of our news media. Our system of delivering information to the American people is badly broken.  [snip]

"The correct response, and I’m sorry to report that some of my friends in the press will never get this, was to take a stand - something, yes, most journalists are trained to avoid at all costs. That training, unfortunately, has led many of us, as a profession, down the wrong path. We are not supposed to take sides in a story, reporters say. We are here to report the news, they insist. My reply to that is, and always will be: there are not two sides to a story when it’s a matter of right versus wrong. And to put it mildly, a different kind of president calls for a different kind of playbook. Do we continue to just report on the destruction of our profession? Our democracy? Or could we try a new approach? A kind of journalism that understands the assignment - in an age of rising autocracy. Without journalism, there is no democracy. And without democracy, well… you see where I’m going here.

"Our democracy is only as strong as those willing to defend it. That includes the press. When courage could have been summoned at the White House correspondents dinner, a dangerous complicity took its place. Yes, democracy dies in darkness, but also in cowardice."  --  former CNN anchor Jim Acosta in his Substack piece "Democracy Dies In Cowardice Too," on the recent White House Correspondents Association dinner featuring the unhinged Malignant Fascist in full-blown anti-First Amendment rage.  Over 500 journalists had appealed to the WHCA to confront MF at the dinner, an appeal that was brushed off by outgoing WHCA president Weijia Jiang of CBS "News" (apparently angling to stay in Bari "Bad News" Weiss' good graces).  Instead, they platformed the biggest threat to press freedom in our history, and sat there stupefied and defeated. 

 

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

A high-stakes legal drama around a pregnant woman in Texas and the Supreme Court’s announcement it will consider restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone are the latest unwelcome reminders for Republicans that abortion rights will be front and center ahead of the 2024 election.

Abortion has been a calamitous political issue for the GOP since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer — and it’s been a boon for Democrats, boosting them to a string of electoral victories on the issue and lowering their losses.

At a time when President Biden’s approval ratings are down and his party is badly divided over Israel’s war in Gaza, abortion rights are seen as a major unifying and motivating issue as 2024 heats up, particularly as Republicans can be cast as seeking to curtail access to the medical service.

Across-the-aisle tensions on abortion have been on full display over the last week after the Texas Supreme Court blocked Kate Cox, a pregnant woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition, from having an abortion. Cox left the state to obtain an abortion just hours before the Texas court rejected her challenge.

Biden has already sought to wield the case as a cautionary tale against Republicans in power and against the GOP presidential front-runner, former President Trump.

“I don’t think they can escape it,” Republican strategist Liz Mair said of next year’s White House candidates, adding that the recent Texas case underscores the salience of the issue.

The forced- birth bastards won't escape their obscene record of interfering in women's reproductive rights.  Every weaseling attempt to do so (looking at you, Nikki "Windsock" Haley) must be swatted down.  And the fact that they insist on showing us who they are, and to what extent they'll go, keeps the issue at or near the top of the list for election 2024.

The bad:  

... More than a decade ago, a cadre of armed military and police personnel took an oath rooted in a conspiracy theory that a globalist cabal was working to steal Americans’ democratic birthright. That narrative was then mainstreamed on the most-watched “news” show on cable TV. And then a Republican presidential candidate exploited the narrative to mobilize a citizen army to steal back the White House after losing the election.

Now, nearly three years later, what should we expect the media establishment to have learned from missing an origin story of January 6? That much of Trump’s constituency understands violence as a central tool for achieving their political aims.

But has the media learned it?  [snip]

Forces are gathering on the Right that see their political aspirations as something worth killing for. When the likes of Mike Huckabee proudly announce the idea of bullets over ballots as an inevitability, media that omit the mounting potential for political violence from their political coverage are abdicating basic journalistic responsibility. It’s certainly as important as totting up who can be expected to caucus for whom in Iowa, or who’s winning over Virginia’s soccer moms.

Horse-race reporting has its place. But it won’t matter much if the men in the MAGA hats blow up the horse track.

That's Rick Perlstein concluding a case for how a decade of media malpractice -- from coverage of the Tea Party and the Oath Keepers by CNN, to the coverage of the Malignant Loser in 2015 /16 -- enabled the  January 6 insurrection and continues to downplay or ignore the "epidemic of right- wing terror" in this country today.

The ugly:

Former President Donald Trump is pushing anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail again as he took aim at people coming to the U.S. and “poisoning the blood of our country” during a rally on Saturday.

Trump, who has echoed the likes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in a recent speech pledging to “root out... vermin” political foes, ranted about immigrants to supporters in Durham, New Hampshire.

“They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America... but all over the world,” Trump said of immigrants.

“They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world,” he continued. “They’re pouring into our country. Nobody is even looking at them, they just come in and the crime is going to be tremendous, the terrorism is going to be.”

Trump also quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack President Joe Biden, saying: “Even Vladimir Putin … says that Biden’s, and this is a quote, politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.”

Along with name-dropping Putin, the former president also mentioned two other authoritarian figures during his rally: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. He called Kim “very nice” and Orbán “highly respected,” adding that the latter said “Trump is the man who can save the western world”...

Un- American.  Pure fascist.  Racist.  

The odds- on favorite to be the Christofascist Republican nominee, for the third time, is as evil and deranged a demagogue as those he echoes.  And his MAGAt cult is with him all the way. 

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

After a 12-year hiatus, the leaders of the United States’ two biggest allies in Asia have each visited the other’s home country for bilateral talks in the space of two months — breaking a diplomatic stalemate as Japan and South Korea try to continue thawing their tattered relationship.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in Seoul, reciprocating Yoon’s visit to Tokyo in March. In doing so, the two leaders marked the revival of their “shuttle diplomacy” to hold negotiations in each other’s countries and work through several thorny issues that have complicated their ties.

After years of friction, Seoul and Tokyo are trying to collaborate more closely with each other and Washington to counter the looming geopolitical threats of China’s economic and military rise and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The Biden administration has welcomed their efforts.

“The currents of good change are difficult to create at first, but once created, they often become the new trend. I think the currents of Korea-Japan relations are at that point now,” Yoon said in his opening remarks at his meeting with Kishida.

Yoon has been actively pursuing rapprochement with Japan, a key part of his foreign policy agenda. In March, he made a landmark proposal to resolve a major hurdle over wartime labor compensation issues that had bedeviled their diplomacy.

On Sunday, Kishida commended Yoon for the move — which remains politically unpopular for Yoon at home — and said Japan is also invested in improving relations: “I also share a strong will to strengthen Japan-Korea relations.”

These countries are essential U.S. allies in the Pacific.  South Korea's President Yoon is showing statesmanship in taking the lead in mending relations, even though it's not politically popular at home. If the two countries can continue to collaborate, that sentiment may turn around.

The bad:

At least eight people were killed in Brownsville, Texas on Sunday morning when a vehicle ran into a group of people at a bus stop near a shelter for migrants and homeless in the border city. It is not yet clear whether the driver intentionally ran over the victims.

ValleyCentral News reports that according to Brownsville Police Lt. Martin Sandoval, at around 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning, a motorist drove into a group of people sitting at a city bus stop across the street from the Ozanam Center homeless shelter in Brownsville. Eight people died at the scene, and another 11 victims were taken to local hospitals.

The motorist, who police have only identified as a hispanic male, was arrested and charged with reckless driving. Sandoval originally told local media that it appeared the act may have been intentional, and that more charges were likely. The driver tried to flee the scene after crashing his vehicle, but witnesses held him until police arrived, at which point he was taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries he sustained in the crash. He will also be tested to see if he was intoxicated. The Border Patrol is assisting with the police investigation.

Brownsville mayor Trey Mendez said in a statement on Sunday that “we continue to receive information on the tragic incident that occurred today,” but “we have yet to receive evidence that this was an intentional act.”

Sandoval said that some witnesses said they saw the car lose control, and that police have been unable to identify the driver, who was not being cooperative. “He will be transported to our city jail as soon as he gets released,” Sandoval said Sunday afternoon. “Then we’ll fingerprint him and [take a] mug shot, and then we can find his true identity.”

The shelter’s director, Victor Maldonado, told the Associated Press that most of the victims were Venezuelan men. He said that according to surveillance footage, “this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a hundred feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop.” The vehicle then flipped over after driving up on the curb and also struck people walking on the sidewalk apart from the group sitting by the unmarked bus stop. Maldonado also told the Washington Post that some witnesses said the motorist appeared to be driving under the influence.

The day after the mass killing at the Allen, TX, outlet mall by someone police are investigating as having a white supremacist ideology, and a week after a gunman killed 5 people that the Governor of Texas went out of his way to call "illegal immigrants," a group of migrants is run down in Brownsville.  Texass.

The ugly:

... NBC News: Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, UN ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, Small Business Association administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman, Citizens United’s David Bossie, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt, Deputy White House Press Secretary Emilie Simons, John Leguizamo, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen.

That's it. That's the Saturday end for everyone's credibility right there. It's David Bossie, a career ratfcker who has never taken a breath of air that he didn't use to befoul American politics, a man who threatened American democracy years before Donald Trump got around to it, and who, just to complete the circle, took a job in 2016 to help El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago. What respectable journalistic enterprise would invite him to anything except a long walk off a short pier? Every actual journalist in that room should have walked out as soon as he stepped across the ballroom threshold. He should have been pelted with dinner rolls before the entree was served. What the hell is the White House Communication Director doing asking this scurvy vandal to pass the salt? What the hell is the Secretary of Commerce doing swilling expense wine next to the likes of this guy?

David Bossie got his start attacking Bill Clinton by all means, fair and foul, and mostly really foul. He allegedly barged into the hospital room of a cancer-stricken man to demand to know whether or not the man's daughter had killed herself because she was pregnant with Clinton's child, some gossip he'd picked up from the poolroom liars in Little Rock who played the national media like tin whistles for nearly a decade. Clinton got elected and there was hardly a rat that Bossie left unfcked in his pursuit of the president. [snip]

Finally, when Bossie got caught doctoring jailhouse tapes of Clinton attorney Webster Hubbell, it was all too much even for the fire-eyed Republican snipe hunters, and Bossie was fired from his gig with [former Rep. Dan] Burton. But old ratfckers never die. Sometimes, they make comebacks. Sometimes, they make history. Bossie became the head of the vintage Clinton-era ratfcking outfit Citizens United. Under his leadership, CU put together a slanderous film about Hillary Rodham Clinton and, when the FEC stopped them from airing the film, CU took the FEC to court. And, in 2010, it won the landmark 5-4 decision that swamped the political system with unaccountable cash and essentially legalized influence peddling for the foreseeable future. I guarantee you that it is that dark victory that made Bossie enough of a player in the bubble-world of celebrity politics that people like the folks at NBC invite him to gala parties and nobody at the table vomits during the soup course.

That was one vignette from the recent White House Correspondents Association dinner, the annual "We Don't Give A Fck About Actual Journalism soiree and hootenanny" that Charlie Pierce is describing here. Media organizations like NBC News and, unfortunately, every Administration official who sat at this table normalizing Bossie are sleepwalking into the post- democracy apocalypse that people like Bossie are working feverishly to birth.

QOTD -- The Biggest Losers

 

 

"So what happened? Political journalists were suckered by a wave of Republican junk polls in the closing weeks of the campaign. They were also swayed by some reputable polling organizations that, burned by past failures to capture MAGA voters, overweighted their polls to account for that in ways that simply didn’t make sense. And reporters fell for Republican feints and misdirection, as Republican operatives successfully created an artificial sense of momentum by talking about how they were spending money in reliably blue areas.  [snip]

"The news media took the faulty assumption that Republicans would enjoy a red wave and plugged in explanations for the imagined outcome. Democrats blew it because they spoke too much about abortion and democracy, and too little about the economy and crime. (In fact, crime and the economy figured prominently in many Democratic campaigns.)" -- Dana Milbank, Washington Post, writing about how the  media largely fell for the Republican narrative of a "red wave," becoming the biggest loser of the election cycle.  Milbank offers much more evidence of the media's enchantment with the Republican narrative and their highly dubious polls.  We're old enough to remember that this is not a new phenomenon, which is why "Republican- wired media" is a phrase that has a history going back decades.  The most charitable explanation would be that political reporters are simply not good at their jobs;  another would be they dread showing any bias that could paint them as "liberal media."  Of course, both explanations could be true (and likely are) at the same time.  And don't worry, they'll be back -- in 2024.

BONUS:  See also here, here, here, and here.

BONUS II:  Perfect example.  The New York Effing Times stuck with the "red wave" narrative even into Wednesday morning (and despite its own polling!):

 

lol you do you, @nytimes pic.twitter.com/1g5aNjz35J

— Anil Kalhan • @kalhan@mastodon.social (@kalhan) November 9, 2022

(Cartoon: Al Goodwyn, gocomics.com)

A Conservative's Review Of The Media At Biden's Press Conference

 

Conservative Jennifer Rubin writes about how "Biden excels at his first news conference. The media embarrass themselves."  Here's an excerpt:

One reporter [Cecilia Vega/ ABC News] mentioned a 9-year-old she had seen at the border and asked if Biden’s messaging was contributing to the problem. No, he responded, again offering a detailed answer about the problems refugees face in their home countries that create the outflow. Prodded with a question about whether overcrowding was “acceptable,” he responded, “C’mon.” Of course it was unacceptable, he said, listing steps he is taking to find more beds for unaccompanied minors. The repeated questions on the same topic were tiresome and a poor use of precious time.

Try as they might to seem “tough,” the media did not succeed in knocking Biden off message. Biden spoke in great detail and length to show not only his mastery of the issues but also to suck tension and conflict out of the room. He simply would not be lured into accepting a false premise devised by Republicans (i.e., that his nice demeanor prompts parents to send kids thousands of miles under deadly conditions). “I’m going to send him on a thousand-mile journey across a desert and up to the United States because I know Joe Biden is a nice guy and he’ll take care of him? What a desperate act to take," he said. "The circumstances must be horrible.” [snip]

The media did not distinguish themselves. By asking about immigration multiple times and echoing the false narrative that Biden had created a “surge," they showed they were more interested in sound bites than actual news. Their failure to ask about the pandemic, the recession, anti-Asian violence, climate change or even infrastructure (Biden had to bring it up himself) was nothing short of irresponsible. They pleaded for a news conference and then showed themselves to be unserious. They never laid a glove on Biden; they did, however, make the case for why these events are an utter waste of the president’s time.

Our reaction was quite similar.  As we expected, many of the assembled paladins of the "public's right to know" came armed with their loaded questions of the "when did you stop beating your wife" sort.  Many of the prima donnas asked follow-up after follow- up after follow- up, soaking up time that other reporters could have used for their questions (though we're quite happy and amused that Fox's White House troll Peter "Deuce" Doocy was "snubbed" -- see post below).

"Unserious" is the precise descriptor of these ego- trippers, who've already moved on from our democracy's still unfolding existential crisis to manufacture one around a humanitarian problem that was largely the doing of the former guy, and which will take more than the two months the Administration has been in office to address and solve -- to which anyone who has worked in government or a large corporate bureaucracy can attest (in the process dealing with the legal red tape and having to work with foreign governments). 

But the need is now! -- to boost sagging readership, increase clicks and traffic, and keep the advertising bucks flowing in!!  Maybe we got the media we deserve, but it's certainly not the media we want or need in these times.

BONUS:  Critiques from other perspectives here, here, and here.

Media Desperate To Give Trump Credit For Vaccine Rollout

 

The "mainstream media" is back to its old tricks, having learned nothing from 4 years of dystopia ending in a botched coup attempt:

With the COVID-19 vaccines starting to bring the pandemic to an end, former President Trump has stepped in to take credit for the feat. 

What’s surprising is that he’s been aided in this by the Washington Post and New York Times, both of which have run articles this week arguing that the speed-up in the vaccine rollout under President Biden only builds off of a plan put into place by Trump. In short, they contend that Trump is right: he had a plan to distribute the vaccine that Biden was lucky enough to inherit.  

That’s flat wrong. A look at what actually happened in the Trump administration’s last months shows that the White House lacked a plan for the “last mile” of distribution, leaving that to the states while lobbying Congress not to pass much-needed funding that would spur state and local governments to get the vaccine into arms. 

On its own terms, the Trump administration did not have a plan to distribute the vaccine to Americans en masse beyond “let the states figure it out.”  (our emphasis)

Here's NBC's Peter Alexander whining that President Biden didn't give credit to the former guy, basically providing laudatory words to put in the President's mouth:

 

 

For his tone deaf, ahistorical kumbaya efforts, Alexander gets rightfully dunked:

 

In the long history of dumb media dynamics, “why won’t Biden give more credit to the bleach drinking insurrectionist for his management of the pandemic that killed 500k people” may be the dumbest to date https://t.co/4Tdh7rYQKf

— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) March 12, 2021

 

Then, we have the media "factcheckers":

 

Which doesn't sound like much of a plan---> https://t.co/mwocfi63de

— Ann Telnaes (@AnnTelnaes) March 12, 2021

There's more that could be dug up, but we're tired and it would just be redundant.

We expect (and are seeing) this revisionist history from the likes of Fox "News" and the various frothing right- wing Trumpist outlets.  But when "mainstream media" seems to be taking its cues from them, it's deeply disheartening to say the least.  The vaccine rollout has been botched in many states, thanks to the Trump "plan" noted above -- "let the states figure it out."   It's causing delays and potentially unnecessary death. That's not cause for praise.

But at least it's a pause in their whining about Biden not holding a press conference yet.

Twit Tweet, Thwap -- Optical Illusion

Twit tweet:

On substance, Democrats got what they wanted: that Mueller didn't charge Pres. Trump because of the OLC guidance, that he could be indicted after he leaves office, among other things. But on optics, this was a disaster. #MuellerHearings

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) July 24, 2019

Thwap:

"On substance, it was clear the Ted Bundy violently murdered 30 people and deserves to rot in jail. But on optics, he looked good on TV so who knows what should happen?"

— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) July 24, 2019

Yes, Chuck with democracy on the line we wouldn’t want you to do something crazy like focus on the actual substance. What a departure that would be from your entire life in politics of being a glorified theater critic

— Cliff Schecter (@cliffschecter) July 24, 2019

And really who cares about substance, right? Surely not the media’s job to try to focus on that instead of optics, right?

— Michelangelo Signorile (@MSignorile) July 24, 2019

Trump currently screaming like a maniac at reporters who will all later say that Democrats have an optics problem.

— Tom Watson (@tomwatson) July 24, 2019

Today the media decided it’s ok to question someone’s mental acuity based on their demeanor on TV. So we can expect the same when donald trump speaks — right?

Because every time he opens his mouth he barfs up a myriad of symptoms of Neurosyphilis, NPD, dementia & chronic idiocy.

— Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) July 24, 2019

Terrible optics for the Democrats. https://t.co/RxSBZqWDDN

— Crabby Tom Hilton (@TVHilton) July 24, 2019

if an optics win is when you spend three hours shouting conspiracy theories at someone who politely refuses to engage, i should have had a lot more success dating

— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) July 24, 2019

BONUS:  It's not just poor Chuckie.  It's print media hot takers and the execrable Brian Williams, too. We saw something like this coming, but were hoping for better.  No more.

BONUS II:  No More Mister Nice Blog has more on- point commentary here and here. Amanda Marcotte bemoans the media's bizarre distortions.  Susie Madrak has more reaction from the twitterverse.

QOTD -- Telling The Truth About Trump

Margaret Sullivan, media columnist, in today's Washington Post:

It makes good sense for media organizations to be careful and noninflammatory in their news coverage. That kind of caution continues to be a virtue.

But a crucial part of being careful is being accurate, clear and direct. When confronted with racism and lying, we can’t run and hide in the name of neutrality and impartiality. To do that is a dereliction of duty. [snip]

Journalists don’t need to see themselves as political advocates when they say obvious things in plain terms. And doing so doesn’t make them Democratic operatives as their pro-Trump critics are sure to charge.

It just means they are doing the most fundamental job they have: telling the truth as plainly and directly as possible.

Her own paper is (finally) getting the message, both in its reportage and its editorial page, clearly labeling malignant dimbulb Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump's recent racist outbursts for what they are.  Other media outlets are finally reaching the point where they can't avoid the obvious, but far too many are still using euphemisms or couching his racist remarks as "some are calling" or other weaselly crutches.  We see you, and history will judge you harshly.

BONUS: The Daily Show has a humorous take on the not-so-humorous weaselly euphemisms.

Tweets Of The Day -- Media, Do Your Damn Job! (UPDATED)

A real problem is that politics in Trump’s era has taken on a moral dimension that news outlets either aren’t equipped to cover, or think it’s their duty to avoid. And if they avoid it, they avoid their job, which is to accurately represent to their audience what’s happening.

— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) July 15, 2019

NBC News is far from alone.  Here's word artisan Peter Baker, access journalist, New York Effing Times:

Racial fire. Racially infused. Racially tinged. Racially charged. Racial animus.

Does the NYT pay by the euphemism these days holy shithttps://t.co/kbZs291bFc pic.twitter.com/wj2peN2ue4

— Ari Schwartz (@arischwartz) July 15, 2019

NY Times: "racially infused" 🧐 pic.twitter.com/wosBr94jw8

— Barry Malone (@malonebarry) July 15, 2019

LOL, everyone made fun of @nytimes for using "racially charged" too much in their copy so they switched to "racially infused" instead. https://t.co/53VnPUdGiH

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 15, 2019

Here's a round- up of more spineless stenographers.

Masha Gessen was right:  our institutions will not save us.

UPDATE: Credit where due -- The Washington Post's reporters finally get it right.

Not Fade Away: The Crimes Of Donald Trump

Has the certainty over time that we have a serial sexual predator/ rapist in the White (Supremacist) House deadened us to new revelations criminal behavior?  Is that one reason why E. Jean Carroll's account of child concentration camp landlord Donald "Rump" Trump's raping her 20 years ago faded so quickly?

Melinda Henneberger

"Joe Biden accused of standing too close" is apparently a way bigger story than "Donald Trump accused of raping a public person in a public place." Unlike most women, men and children who are sexually assaulted, Carroll told two friends at the time, and they back her up.

Why then is White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband so lonely in noting the credibility of this 16th sexual assault allegation against the 45th president of the United States?

Yes, we’re exhausted by the sheer volume of Trump scandals, and yes, we’re bored with rape, too, because that is so last year.

Maybe if he had been accused of swiping a sweater from Bergdorf’s, that would be new and different? Because allegations of slamming a woman against a wall and penetrating her is same old, same old at this point. [snip]

To Trump’s faithful, his denials and claims that “I’ve never met this person in my life” are in no way undercut by a photo of them chatting at a party. But for those who know better but can’t be bothered, I’m sorry to see the extent to which this man and this topic have worn us down and worn us out.

And to those who purport to support women but wish this particular woman had said something sooner, later or not at all, I say: What else is new?  (our emphasis)

Megan Garber

... The sheer number of women who have accused the president of misconduct seems to have helped diminish the impact of her accusation. The notion of a president who is a sexual predator is profoundly familiar at this point, in part because Trump himself has been caught bragging on tape about the predation. (I moved on her like a bitch. Grab ’em by the pussy. When you’re a star, they let you do it.)

That explains, in part, how a famous woman could make, it is worth reiterating, a credible claim that the president of the United States raped her and see that claim dissolved within a weekend’s news cycle: A news media that is so efficiently calibrated to report that which is new isn’t fully sure how to report on that which is manifestly not new. The numbers give way to a numbness. He said and she said and she said and so did she, and the many, many shes, rather than amounting at least to the sum of their parts, end up canceling one another out. Defeatism sets in. The women’s stories tell us what we already know, and so they fade away.  (our emphasis)

This effect also has worked in Trump's favor in the exposés of his financial corruption and ineptitude, his repeated efforts to do Putin's bidding, the multiple and public efforts to obstruct justice during the Mueller investigation and, of course, just the firehose of lies that come from him every moment of every day.  As much as many in the media would like to portray it otherwise, there is no equivalence to this supernova of criminality, immorality, ignorance, and treasonous behavior.

Yes, he's worn us down over the past 2 1/2 years (it seems much longer).  And we have no words of wisdom on how to deal with this vicious malignancy, other than to redouble our resolve to see to it that this will end through our common efforts, our voices and our votes.

BONUS:  Totally in (rotted out) character, as a "defense," Trump says Ms. Carroll is "not my type." So, he has a "type" in mind when he goes out to rape and assault?  Good to know.

(Photo:  Trump's  "grab 'em by the pussy" moment.)

Tweets Of The Day

I keep trying to formulate a joke contrasting the level of media interest in a credible allegation that the president raped someone with a credible allegation that a former Secretary violated State Department email handling guidelines but I have nothing.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 22, 2019

So was the latest credible rape accusation against the President discussed on any of the Sunday shows or are we continuing to pretend that didn't happen?

— Schooley (@Rschooley) June 23, 2019

The Trump campaign will still have the absolute gall to jump on any old statement by their opponent that's open to a negative interpretation as a fatal character flaw. And the press will then fall in line. How much more coverage did Warren's DNA test get than the rape accusation?

— Schooley (@Rschooley) June 23, 2019

Imagine believing, "Two dozen different women decided to accuse him of the thing he's on tape bragging he can do with impunity, but they're all liars because he'd never do anything like that thing he bragged he could do."

That's what being a Republican now requires.

— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) June 22, 2019

One more:

The allegations of sexual assault and misconduct against the president are a classic case of he said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said-she said

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) June 22, 2019

Washington Post Buys What Trump Is Selling

The lede in today's Washington Post story on the Extremely Stable Genius' agreement with Mexico could have been written at the Republican National Committee:

President Trump and his allies on Sunday declared victory in the tariffs standoff with Mexico after the administration appeared to have secured significant commitments from the Mexican government to stem the flow of Central American migrants at the U.S. border.

The agreement gave Trump fresh ammunition against his critics, who have pointed out that his controversial negotiating tactics have yielded far fewer results than promised on multiple issues during his time in office.

Whether the deal will greatly reduce the number of migrants entering the United States remains to be seen. But it nonetheless represents a serious effort by Mexico to do more on an issue central to Trump’s reelection campaign after he threatened to impose a 5 percent across-the-board tariff on one of the United States’ top trading partners. (our emphasis)

 Buried in the 15th paragraph:

“These are agreements that Mexico had already made, in some cases months ago,” former congressman Beto O’Rourke, who is running for president, said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “They might have accelerated the timetable, but by and large the president achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has.”  (our emphasis)

That paragraph is followed by a lot of "he said/ she said" discussion that only serves the interests of the White Supremacist House con man by largely ignoring the seminal fact that an artificial crisis was created followed by an artificial solution, not coincidentally at the same time attention was being focused on the Mueller report and the onset of Congressional hearings.  That's what's called "taking the bait," Washington Post!

After the rival New York Times' June 8 story exposing the "agreement" as mostly a rehash of already agreed upon moves by the US and Mexico, one can only speculate about the motives behind the Post's reporting that the Extremely Stable Genius' threat to impose tariffs was the catalyst for the (already agreed- upon) "significant commitments."  Professional jealousy?  Beat sweetening?  Ethical blinders? 

Meanwhile, "Democracy Dies In Darkness" remains just above the article, at the top of the Post's front page.

Tweets Of The Day -- Normalizing The Abnormal

If the Mueller report were GOOD for Trump we would've seen it already.

— Zerlina Maxwell (@ZerlinaMaxwell) April 10, 2019

The fact that so desperately hiding his finances doesn’t get treated as a presumption of corruption in most of the press is some real normalizing bias.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) April 10, 2019

Your tweet could point out that his remarks are pure bullshit, and also that not one reporter in that room challenged him and said “sir—that is untrue”. https://t.co/vKctTOmNNC

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) April 10, 2019

how many days until Barr starts promoting Seth  Rich conspiracies? https://t.co/SPcKkLa9KK

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) April 10, 2019

Once Again: The Shutdown Isn't About "Both Sides"

Once again, in case there's any confusion at this late date over what the positions of the Democratic and Republican parties are on the Trump shutdown and border security, Steve Benen puts it as succinctly as possible:

Congressional Democrats: We just want to re-open the government. We don't have any extraneous policy demands and we're asking for no concessions. 

The Trump White House and congressional Republicans: We'll consider re-opening the government if Democrats approve billions of dollars in spending for an unpopular border wall. *

Oh, and the Trump "deal" that's supposedly a compromise?  Elie Mystal boils it down:

Donald Trump’s “major announcement” to end the government shutdown is an offer based on his belief that the American people are stupid and the media are dupes. In exchange for releasing the 800,000 federal workers Trump currently holds hostage, the president is offering to do something the courts will say he has to do anyway.

A healthy percent of the American people are stupid and will fall for it because, well, they've already fallen for a con artist.  But, so far, the American people as a whole know who to blame (including some Rump supporters).  Of more concern is the media, a healthy percentage of whom are dupes and will fall for it.  In fact, many in the media already have, and are framing Trump's "deal" as a "compromise" offer.  As journalism professor Jay Rosen notes:

My explanation: Alongside the production of news and analysis, journalists in the major media are constantly engaged in another manufacture: the production of their own innocence. They have to continually prove they are being even-handed. The shutdown is an opportunity for that. https://t.co/LtPsJgaK9L

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) January 21, 2019

Also, when you see or read a story about a "blame game" going on, recognize this as a lazy media trope intended to demonstrate their unbiased innocence.  Don't be shy about calling them on it via calls, emails, letters, etc.  It's one way we can try to keep them honest and to let them know that while they may wish to be dupes, we don't.

*BONUS:  Oh, and (surprise!) Trump and McConnell are lying about the bill they're going to bring to the floor of the Senate.

BONUS II:


(via democraticunderground.com)

It's Past Time For The Media To Step Up

We're Hackwhackers and we endorse these messages.

From Medium (h/t Mock Paper Scissors):

Politicians have always told some lies. This is different. The people running our government, and their key supporters, have launched a war on honest journalism, on facts, and on freedom of expression in general. They are using misinformation as strategy. They want the public to become so confused by what is true and what is false that people will give up even on the idea that journalism can help sort things out. This is not business as usual. You may wish otherwise — and the relentless normalizing journalists still do of this abnormal crew shows how much you wish otherwise — but at some point you have to recognize reality and react to it. 

Your job is not to uncritically “report” — that is, do stenography and call it journalism — when the people you’re covering are deceiving the public. Your job is, in part, to help the public be informed about what powerful people and institutions are doing with our money and in our names.

From Philip Bump (on a headline in The Hill, "Trump: 'There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea'"):

Most Americans don’t follow Trump on Twitter but come across his tweets on a regular basis. Many, if not most, Americans also rely heavily on headlines to convey news to them. Meaning that many Americans learn about what Trump says in his tweets through the summaries that appear in headlines. 

That’s why a headline like the Hill’s is a disservice. It provides no context for Trump’s claim, acting instead like a retweet of Trump’s false assertion across another platform. What Trump tweeted is false, and news outlets should make that as clear as possible when covering his tweets (or his statements more broadly), including in headlines.

From Greg Sargent, on the media's falling for bad faith misdirection by the Trump regime:

One of the most important but overlooked lessons in the bombshell report on the handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation is that bad-faith, right-wing ref-working, via purely instrumental attacks on institutions, works. Buried in the report by the Department of Justice’s inspector general is evidence that former FBI director James B. Comey undertook actions that damaged Clinton’s candidacy, in part, because he had been spooked by such attacks. 

Right on cue, the news media’s coverage of the inspector general’s report is also confirming the same lesson: Bad-faith ref-working is producing its desired results once again. 

The report’s core finding is that the FBI’s decision not to prosecute Clinton was untainted by bias or politics. This lays waste to one of the most important narratives pushed by President Trump and his allies in the quest to undermine special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation by claiming law enforcement is riddled with anti-Trump corruption. 

But in many of this morning’s accounts about the report, you find versions of this additional claim: The IG report nonetheless provides fodder and ammunition to Trump and his allies to discredit Mueller’s probe. 

We will note, in the sh*t show pathological liar Trump provided to the media on the White (Supremacist) House grounds yesterday, several reporters tried repeatedly to call out his lies. That needs to significantly ramp up to the pace and level that the pathological liar is spreading lies (the article in Medium noted above offers some suggestions for that). Even if the effects are marginal (and they won't penetrate the cement between Trump supporters' ears), one of our last free institutions must show that they understand the gravity of the situation and can respond accordingly. Acting as though we're in normal times today must be seen as acting abnormally.

If you see this occurring, please call or write the media outlet to let them know that their job is, as noted above "to help the public be informed about what powerful people and institutions are doing with our money and in our names," not sit by and watch the lights go out all over America.

Congratulations, One And All!

We have congratulations and trophies to pass along today.

Margaret Sullivan writes about how the media continues to fail our democracy, most recently in its coverage of the Singapore "summit":

All the problems the media has in conveying a true picture of Donald Trump’s presidency were on display in Singapore on Monday night. 

They were just writ larger than usual. 

And the stakes, never low with this president, were higher than ever. 

Although every legitimate news organization made efforts, some better than others, to bring context and even a measure of skepticism into their mix of stories, the event overall was a triumph of Trumpian stagecraft. 

And the media played its accustomed role.

That is:  bending over backwards to normalize the abnormal and aggrandize the superficial. Congratulations, defenders of democracy! (The media might want to reevaluate its position after this.)

Haaretz's David Rothkopf has a warning for panderers of malignant moron Donald "Rump" Trump in the Middle East:

 A deal is only as good as it is for him as long as it is good for him. Long-standing alliances?Disposable. International agreements? Unimportant. The entire international security order and America’s investment in global peace and stability of the past century? Expendable.    

Because the Trump doctrine is, "What’s in it for me?" And the events of the past couple weeks (and from all of Trump’s personal and professional endeavors throughout his life) have shown, when that calculus changes, so too can and will the actions of the president of the United States.   

So, to Bibi Netanyahu and the leaders of the Gulf, ask not for whom the news from Donald Trump’s Washington tolls, because sooner or later it will toll for thee.

Rump's doctrine his whole shallow and sordid life has been "What's in it for me?" For supposedly smarter people here in the U.S. and abroad who thought the office would change him, or that they could use/ control him, have been proven catastrophically wrong. Well done!

Republican strategist Rick Wilson has been repeatedly asked by knuckle- dragging Rump supporters to give Rump credit for his yuuuge achievements, so Wilson obliges in the way only he can:

Good job, Mr. President. You’ve terrified our allies with your cavalier and sloppy art-of-the-moron negotiating style. You’ve told American troops who will remain on the Korean Peninsula they’re no longer going to practice with their Korean counterparts as a deterrent to the North’s long, long history of aggression. I’m sure if the balloon goes up, they’ll thank you for stopping their exercises. [snip]

So congratulations, Mr. President. You spent the week deliberately wrecking American alliances and leadership, allied yourself with one of the most egregious enemies of freedom in the world, and abandoned the shared values of our friends like Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany. 

You must be so proud.

We certainly know we are! Check out all the op/ eds;  they're keepers.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full article/ story.

Greg Sargent writes about the lazy and false pundit/ media narrative emerging about how Democrats are running in 2018:

There’s a narrative about our politics right now that you constantly encounter on social and political media. It goes like this: Democrats are too obsessed with the Russia investigation, or with Stormy Daniels, or they’re just too focused on “not being President Trump,” and as a result, they aren’t articulating an affirmative agenda and risk getting caught flat-footed by Trump’s supposedly rising popularity. 

But this narrative is entirely wrong, and two new pieces this morning help set the record straight. Taken together, they point to a much more accurate version of what’s happening: Trump’s unpopularity does in fact remain historically abysmal. This and Trump’s many scandals are in fact helping Democrats — but not in a way that is immediately apparent and not in a manner that betrays any unhealthy Democratic obsession with those things.

We've seen this movie before:  lazy, closed- loop media picks narrative based on desired outcome, obsesses on shiny object, hello "President" Trump.  Don't count on them "saving" us when it comes to the Trump- Russia scandal, either.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., on "putative Christians":

Today, we will discuss one of the most pressing threats to American Christianity. Meaning, of course, American Christians. 

Yes, that’s an overly broad statement. All those Christians whose faith requires them to live the Good News, to feed the hungry, to house the homeless, speak for the voiceless and welcome the stranger, surely do not threaten the faith. To the contrary, they empower it. They are what Christianity is supposed to be. 

But we’re here to contend with what Christianity too often is. Having seen putative Christians excuse the liar, rationalize the alleged pedophile, justify the sexual assaulter and cheer as walls are raised against the most vulnerable, it’s obvious that many of those who claim that name embody a niggardly, cowardly, selfish and situational “faith” that has little to do with Jesus.

Pitts provides the case of North Bend High School in rural Oregon as a prime example of how this "religion" is practiced by its faithful pharisees.

Charles Blow on what we must do in every election until we weed out the coin- operated Republican gun fondler caucus:

People seeking common sense gun control must become single-issue voters on gun control. Support for more restrictions may not be the only reason to vote for a candidate, but it must be sufficient to vote against one. 

We have to stop waiting for politicians to display courage and instead start to instill fear in them. 

As an individual voter, you don’t need to have a slate of reforms in mind, you only have to vote consistently for candidates who are committed to reviewing the issue and advancing smart, effective policy.

Silver Spring Bureau Chief Brian clued us in on a fascinating website, livingnewdeal.org, that tracks the thousands of ongoing projects begun in FDR's New Deal, and how those projects are living all around us today.  From high schools to national parks to libraries to dams to the National Institutes of Health, find examples in your state and across the nation of how progressive government yields fruits for the benefit of generations to come.

Lastly, please check out Infidel 753's link round-up of "various interesting stuff [he] ran across on the net over the last week."  Lots of humor and serious stuff, too, as usual.

Trump's "Downright Scary And Disturbing" Rally In Phoenix

After his big boy teleprompter speech Monday outlining his (non)strategy in Afghanistan, deranged narcissist Donald "Rump" Trump was praised by the usual suspects because, as Charles Pierce noted, "he did not strangle himself with his own shoelaces and, thus, has been determined by various smart people to have been minimally presidential at the very least." One such ninny works for the Washington Post, who had this hot take after Monday's written- by- someone- else, teleprompter speech:

Tonight is a new President Trump: Acknowledging a flip-flop and talking about gravity of office, history & substance.

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) August 22, 2017

New! Improved!

Oh well.  But (surprise!) what a difference 24 hours makes!

Placed in front of an adoring audience of mouth- breathers, knuckle- draggers and all forms of fauna in between last night in Phoenix, AZ, Rump was himself again. For 77 minutes. Of lies, paranoia, malignant narcissism -- basically Real Rump, not Teleprompter Rump. Here's a decent summary of the lying narcissist's rally.

Former Director of National Intelligence and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper had a sober assessment of the Nuremberg- comes- to- Phoenix rally and Rump's "scary and disturbing" performance (h/t Crooks & Liars):



BONUS: Here's a picture of the narcissist in front of his very white and "poorly educated" base --

(Getty Images)

BONUS II:  He couldn't even fill the hall. Sad!

Here's the full crowd as #TrumpinAZ finishes up. pic.twitter.com/iUGVUmppGZ

— David Catanese (@davecatanese) August 23, 2017

Democracy Also Dies In Indecency

Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, yesterday on certain foul reptilians' politicizing the death of Seth Rich:

... On Sunday, former House speaker and Trump insider Newt Gingrich used Fox’s national platform to spread the lies, squandering what remains of his own credibility to make respectable people think it might be so. (Police think it may have been a robbery gone wrong.) 

Decent people should shun both Hannity and Gingrich. (our emphasis)

The Washington Post op/ ed page this morning:

The president just made a titanic foreign policy shift. The media missed it. By Newt Gingrich

That would be the same newspaper that adopted the post- election slogan, "Democracy dies in darkness."  Good to know the Post has such high, immutable standards.

More On Media Malpractice

The people who are supposed to be the watchdogs of our democracy? The fearless truth tellers? Those centurions of our values who are "indispensable to democracy?" Yeah those guys:

Even I didn't believe they could lower the bar far enough that an otherwise sensible fellow like Van Jones would take the indecent exploitation of a war widow's fresh sorrow and turn it into Lincoln's Second Inaugural. Even I didn't believe they could sink the bar far enough into Middle Earth that otherwise critical observers would look at a pile of deceptive leaves and see a coherent tree... [snip]

When one calls that speech "presidential," whose presidency are you summoning? Pierce? Buchanan? Rufus T. Firefly? Jesus, people, at least try to sound like you graduated middle school. 

Hard to believe, but the second day punditry, after otherwise sensible folks had a night to sleep on it, is even worse than the instant analysis on Tuesday night. What Trump did with Carryn Owens was bad enough on the merits, coming as it did after he spent 48 hours fobbing off the blame of the botched raid into Yemen on everybody who walked past the White House in the past three months. But to hear it now described as a powerful, emotional evocation of the unifying power of the presidency, instead of one more rank attempt at deflecting the moral responsibility for the death of the person being mourned, is to abandon critical thinking and give your responsibility to the truth over to unthinking slobber.

The speech was chock-full of barefaced non-facts regarding crime, immigrants, crime committed by immigrants, the accomplishments of the current administration, and the condition of the country when it handed itself over to his half-baked stewardship last November. I don't care if you sell your mendacity in perfect iambic pentameter in the voice of Laurence Olivier. It's still bullshit, and dangerous bullshit at that. And it will sell. That's the heart and start of it. The people who bought this when it was poured out to them straight up during the campaign certainly will buy it now that it's mixed with some sweetener lifted whole from every middle-school graduation speech ever given. 

While we always knew that, despite being called the "enemy of the people" by neo- fascist shitgibbon Donald "Rump" Trump, there would still be enough frightened, delusional, cynical or all of the above media folks who would ultimately fall back into the same role they played in the recent deplorable campaign -- that of Trump normalizers and pivot pundits. We just didn't think it would be so soon after the recent provocations. Silly us.

BONUS:  Josh Alvarez nails it, too --

This hasty normalization of Trump’s vision reveals just how deeply uncomfortable our press is in its rediscovered role as a critically-minded adversary to power. Getting journalists to go along with the creation of Trump’s America appears to be a simulacrum of the man himself—it’s merely a matter of the wrapping in which it’s presented.

BONUS II:  Here's a stat for you - out of 61 statements made by Rump, 51 were lies.  But tone!

BONUS III:  Brian Beutler takes a whack --

There is apparently less capacity for living and learning in political journalism than there is in elementary school; less object permanence than in nursery school. 

Trump’s shows of relative restraint on the campaign trail were always temporary, and generally served as memory holes for offenses against Gold Star parents, beauty show contestants, and sexual assault victims. He rode temporary bouts of “discipline,” celebrated by a political media that failed to raise their bar for his conduct, all the way to the White House, where his erratic and unseemly behavior continues. (our emphasis)