Similarly, note that for NBC, “The issue is not Bernie’s support for dictatorships. The issue is Republicans pointing out Bernie’s support for dictatorships,” Natalie Johnson, Senate press secretary tweets.
In the hours and days after Gregory Timm plowed his vehicle into a tent of Republican Party volunteers registering voters in the parking lot of Kernan Village Shopping Center in Jacksonville, Florida, national coverage of the event has been alarmingly lacking.
Local news channel WJXT reported days later on the arrest report, which showed Timm telling the sheriff’s office his “disapproval of Trump” was the motivating factor for the attack. He showed the sheriff’s office a self-recorded video of him driving straight at the volunteers, expressing frustration that the video cut out before “the good part.” Even then, as I write this, the best the New York Times could muster was wire coverage.
No teams of reporters were sent to uncover his dark motivations, upbringing, or political leanings. No psychological profiles have been written up, nor have any experts weighed in on how this is a growing threat. These are all tools that would have been used by an army of reporters if Timm had been a Trump supporter plowing into Democratic Party volunteers registering voters.
The problem isn’t that Timm’s attack on the GOP wasn’t covered by most of the media. It’s that it wasn’t covered with the same voracious appetite news organizations have whenever someone who is even peripherally associated with the Right does something to a Democrat.
This isn’t whataboutism; this is realism. . . . There would have been a week’s worth of cable news coverage, several nationwide protests, and someone calling for a national conversation by now had the victims of Timm’s attack been supporting anyone but Trump.
It’s simply a fact that the journalistic class for the most part sees Republicans as deplorables whose death, silencing, or oppression is largely to be approved of, or at least not made a big deal of. This is why the deplorable class, in turn, regards the press as enemies of the people. Because they’re the people the press is inimical to.
The suspect allegedly said that he was motivated to ram the tent because of his distaste for Trump and because ’it’s like someone shitting on your grave’, whatever that means. He also took several videos of the incident, but told police that he did not capture the ‘good part’ where he drove at the volunteers.
Thankfully no one was hurt or killed, but this is just the latest example of a deranged Trump-loather targeting political opponents with violence. The most infamous example, of course, was the GOP baseball shooting carried out by a former Sen. Bernie Sanders volunteer in Alexandria, Va., which nearly killed then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. A GOP office in North Carolina was firebombed. Virginia GOP Rep. Tom Garrett required a police presence at a town hall event because of credible threats to his family and dog. Independent journalist Andy Ngo was beaten over the head while covering an Antifa rally in Portland. A Trump supporter got attacked with a crowbar in New Jersey because he wore a shirt featuring the president. The list goes on.
Yet none of these events leads to suggestions by establishment media outlets that the Democratic party or cable news anchors and pundits might . [sic — Ed] Instead, much ado has been made about Trump referring to the media as ‘fake news’ or the ‘enemy of the people,’ statements the media claims make them less safe.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and this bias by omission makes perfect sense.
Curiously, as Jim Treacher notes, CNN’s Jake Tapper “sat there like a big dope while Scott Israel blamed Dana Loesch for the failures of his own department. That was less shocking to you than a senator calling one of your pals a hack.”
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jan 16, 2020 at 5:15 pm Link
The Star Tribune is [Ilhan] Omar’s hometown newspaper. It has failed to follow up on its most-read story of 2019. It has failed to note that Omar’s 2009 “marriage” was performed by a Christian minister — yet one more sign of its fraudulence. Doing the work that the Star Tribune should have done, the Daily Mail contacted the minister this year. The minister isn’t talking either.
The Star Tribune has failed to report on the fallout from the news of Omar’s affair within the Somali community. It has failed to advance the “brother angle” of the story in any respect since June 23.
The story is still out there for the asking in Minneapolis’s Somali community. The fear of Omar is great, yet I was able to interview several knowledgeable sources in the Somali community over the past six months. These sources all confirmed that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is Omar’s brother. Wouldn’t a real newspaper want to stay on this story long enough to bring it to a conclusion one way or the other?
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the Strib’s silence makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31, 2019 at 8:30 pm Link
GOOD RIDDANCE TO THE NEWSEUM: “The Newseum is officially closing its doors today after 11 years of operation in the nation’s capital and you won’t find me shedding a tear.”
I doubt most people outside of the Democratic Party operatives with bylines class will be. But it’s quite a metaphor for the industry it celebrates when “The News Mausoleum” itself is dead.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31, 2019 at 1:55 pm Link
The final jobs report released in the 2010s shows the economy is both vibrant and growing.
This may or may not come as an unwelcome surprise to those who have spent the last several months warning that a recession is right around the corner.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that employers added an astounding 266,000 jobs in November, pushing the unemployment rate down to 3.5%, its lowest point since the year astronauts first walked on the moon.
The U6 unemployment rate, which is a broader measure of real unemployment, registered at 7.2% in November, which is on par with numbers reported over the summer. The labor force participation rate meanwhile held steady at about 63.2%, while wage growth actually increased by 3.1% over the last year.
In other words, it is an excellent report that “crushes” all earlier expectations, especially in the “jobs added” category. In fact, to put Friday’s numbers in perspective, Bloomberg News’s rosiest estimates predicted 180,000 new jobs. The actual number surpasses even those expectations.
This is good news for everyone — everyone, that is, except for the people who have cheered both explicitly and implicitly for a recession as a means to oust President Trump from office.
Democracy dies in gaslighting. Exit quote from Tim Graham of NewsBusters: “Doesn’t someone in [the Post’s Outlook section] have more intellectual integrity than to publish this pratfall of an article? But this is apparently [David] Swerdlick’s modus operandi.He can defend Obama from the right, and defend Obama from the left. He really should be working for Obama.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it’s obvious that he is.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Nov 24, 2019 at 6:14 pm Link
During a press gaggle on Thursday, Biden, 77, was asked to comment on the court filing. Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked, “I’m wondering if you have a comment on this report and court filing from Arkansas that your son Hunter made you a grandfather again.”
Biden was outraged. He dismissed the question, responding, “No. That’s a private matter. You’re a good man. You’re a good man. Classy.”
Hunter Biden, 49, agreed to take a DNA test to reaffirm his denials that he fathered a child with 28-year-old Lunden Roberts. Robert’s child made Biden a father of four. His other children, Naomi, 24, Finnegan, 19, and Maisy, 18, were from his first marriage with Kathleen Buhle.
UPDATE: “You know what the saddest part of this video is?”, asks Benny Johnson of Turning Point USA. “The reaction of the other reporters. Not a single journo has the slightest curiosity about Hunter Biden — one of the most consequential people in politics today. The same cowards who covered up Epstein.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and both their reaction and Biden’s makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Nov 21, 2019 at 4:45 pm Link
As Tim Graham of NewsBusters adds, “NPR’s online story was headlined ‘Skeptics Urge Bevin To Show Proof Of Fraud Claims, Warning Of Corrosive Effects’…NPR’s online headline last year on this story was ‘Georgia’s Stacey Abrams Admits Defeat, Says Kemp Used ‘Deliberate’ Suppression To Win.’”
I know I’m getting way over my skis for saying this, but just think of NPR as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Nov 17, 2019 at 8:44 pm Link
On and on it goes: NPR fired a movie critic, David Edelstein, for making a joke about an infamous movie scene (that butter in “Last Tango in Paris”). ESPN hired the controversial commentator Rush Limbaugh and then fired the controversial commentator for producing controversial commentary, i.e. that a black quarterback had been overestimated for reasons of racial politics.
The strange thing is that while doing real journalism will get you fired or produce a groveling apology, inept journalism generally will not: Nobody actually got fired when Rolling Stone published a hard-hitting story in 2014 about a horrifying rape at the University of Virginia that turned out to be an utter fiction; managing editor Will Dana was permitted to make a graceful exit some months later without the stigma of being given the boot. The New York Times published a hit piece during the 2008 presidential campaign suggesting John McCain was having an affair with a lobbyist based on precisely squat (the paper’s own ombudsman confessed as much) and later published an absurd non-retraction retraction — after the election, in the face of litigation. Jim Rutenberg, the lead author on that article, still writes for the Times.
Read the whole thing, as needless to say, Kevin knows a thing or two firsthand about “professional” journalism’s cowardice in the face of the mob. Thinking of the MSM as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, does help to make a bit more sense of it all, however.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Nov 17, 2019 at 4:44 pm Link
EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: The Associated Press asks, “The Democratic presidential race started with a record six female candidates, but only one is polling in the top tier. Is it sexism or just politics?”
Why are Democratic Party operatives with social media accounts asking why the Democratic Party is a cesspit of sexism? (Perhaps it’s progress of a sort, since in 2008, Democratic Party operatives with bylines believed that the Democratic Party was a cesspit of racism.)
As I wrote a few hours before Beto kick-turned his skateboard out of the race, this is why a media that largely consists of Democratic Party operatives with bylines hurts their candidates. In the mid-1920s, H.L. Mencken wrote, “It is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics.” And a decent politician knew how to rise above that coverage. Today, anything less than glowing 5,000 word profiles to accompany Reagan-esque Vanity Fair covers by Annie Leibovitz (as Jon Gabriel noted last week at Ricochet, the source of our headline) is considered “punitive” media coverage.
Related: ABC’s Joy Behar Says Beto Shouldn’t Have Warned Americans He Was Going To Take Their Guns. “‘They should not tell everything they’re going to do,’ Behar jumped in then, suggesting that candidates shouldn’t warn Americans the gun confiscation was coming. ‘If you are going to take people’s guns away, wait until you get elected and then take them away. Don’t tell them ahead of time.’ [Meghan] McCain pushed back, adding, ‘By the way, that’s what people like me think you’re going to do, so I appreciate his honesty.’”
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Nov 04, 2019 at 2:19 pm Link
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Nov 02, 2019 at 8:45 am Link
SEE, THIS IS WHERE THE MEDIA BEING DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES HURTS THEIR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES: The “Bonfire of the Democratic Party’s Once-Rising Stars,” with forensic analysis by Jim Geraghty:
But the other lesson is that running for president is really hard, and a lot of these candidates have spent most of their careers in heavily Democratic areas and states where the political wind was always at their back. Gillibrand certainly wasn’t going to sweat Senate races in New York. Booker’s Newark and statewide races never had that much tension. Despite the redness of Texas overall, San Antonio and El Paso were dots of blue, meaning O’Rourke and Castro never faced tough general elections. (Credit O’Rourke for coming close against Cruz, but in the end all of that glowing coverage wasn’t because the media expected him to just “come close.”)
In a way, getting good press is just not that difficult for a young-ish Democratic lawmaker with decent public speaking skills. Just invite a big newspaper or magazine reporter to hang around for a few days, let them marvel as you charm little old ladies and speak some eighth-grade Spanish to a local Latino organization, offer some trite observations that “technology changes everything” and “government can do so much more if we only have the will,” and then roll up your sleeves and pose for your looking-off-in-the-distance photo shoot. Presto! Instant presidential “buzz.”
In contrast, when it comes to conservatives and Republicans, as Moe Lane wrote in 2011 before abandoning political blogging, “The Media hates you, and wants you to die in a fire.” That’s the first of his “Ten Media Truths for Conservative/Republican Legislators,” which remain valid to this day. As does this 2014 CNN article headlined: “Inside the GOP’s secret school,” on the Obama-era GOP’s disciplined approach to dealing with the media. Although at least one quote sounds remarkably dated post-2016:
Spicer and Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman, embarked on an overhaul of the organization’s media operations, hiring web-fluent staffers, streamlining their surrogate database and stepping up their media-training operations to instill discipline over candidates. The latter move, Priebus said, became essential after witnessing Republican candidates up and down the ballot in 2012 ruin news cycles with offensive or tone-deaf comments on issues like abortion or rape.
“I’d rather have candidates being careful to a fault than, you know, having a fountain of blabber coming out of their mouth that’s not disciplined,” Priebus says. “We are training candidates, training state parties, training operatives to appreciate that communicating isn’t just a free-for-all, natural-born type of activity. People need to be trained and disciplined.”
If you’re not Donald Trump, that’s still excellent advice for a Republican politician dealing with a media that, unlike when reporting on youngish Democratic lawmakers with decent public speaking skills, hates you, and wants you to die in a fire.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Nov 01, 2019 at 10:14 am Link
After the 2016 election, the left quickly launched a new talking point, proclaiming “this is not normal” and in a way, they were right. It’s not normal for the losing party, in partnership with the media, to attempt to negate the results of a free and fair election because they didn’t like the outcome.
When the Washington Post and The New York Times treat the death of an ISIS leader with more sensitivity than they would for a group of innocent Catholic school students in MAGA hats or the president of the United States, we have crossed a line as a culture and a country.
The Democrats are still trying to undo the results of the 2016 election three years later, and the media is openly trying to assist them by going negative on Trump every single day.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their daily freakouts all make sense.
Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA), who resigned Sunday following allegations that she had an affair with a congressional staffer, was reportedly told to resign by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Radio host Joe Messina reported on his Monday program “The Real Side,” that Hill’s resignation was demanded by Pelosi after the speaker learned that staffers in Hill’s office confirmed her affair with Legislative Director Graham Kelly. The staffers reportedly acknowledged the affair to the House Ethics Committee, which opened an investigation into the allegations.
When Pelosi learned of this, Messina reported, she told Hill to resign.
In other news regarding Hill, as Stephen Miller tweets, “Man, [her] current twitter feed is a better lesson in media bias then I could ever hope to accomplish in 11 years of being on Twitter. Go check it out.” The gang’s all here:
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense, to coin an Insta-phrase. And as Jim Treacher adds regarding the above lineup, “It really is amazing. And it hasn’t occurred to any of them that if Nancy Pelosi wanted Hill around, she wouldn’t have resigned.”
When your campaign can’t handle Democratic Party operatives with bylines such as CNN’s Anderson Cooper (in the above link), BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith, and sucks at Photoshop memes, it’s officially not ready for primetime. Time for an upgrade?
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Oct 20, 2019 at 8:14 am Link
Brewer was photographed poking her finger in President Barack Obama’s face when he visited Arizona in January 2012. She claimed that after giving him a written invitation to inspect the crisis on the Arizona border, the two engaged in a heated discussion about a passage in her book, Scorpions for Breakfast, which depicted Obama as condescending and dismissive.
Brewer took flak for her finger-pointing from both the media and the public, who accused her of disrespecting the presidency. More than 12,000 letters flooded her office in the ensuing days, most of which condemned her, calling her “trashy” and “tasteless.” Likening the act to belching at the president, a writer for the Washington Post scolded her, “If a thing is frowned upon in general, it’s even worse to do it to the president in particular.”
By contrast, Pelosi has met with adulation and gratitude from liberals after President Trump tweeted an image of her standing up during a meeting and wagging her finger at him.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines (and DNC talking points) and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Oct 17, 2019 at 8:30 pm Link
Jay Rosen has had it up to here with CNN moderators asking front-running Democratic Party primary candidates to explain their signature policy positions. “The ‘make Elizabeth Warren say she would raise taxes on the middle class’ question should be a credibility killer. For the journalists who keep asking it,” Rosen tweeted.
Not long ago, any person arguing that reporters should shun politically inconvenient questions of their favored candidates would be struggling to maintain credibility. Rosen, though, is a professor of journalism—it says “I teach journalism” right there on his Twitter bio.
The gist of Rosen’s case—always wrapped in a patina of academic earnestness —is that mainstream political media skews coverage towards the framing Republican desire. And so the professor busies himself browbeating outlets into adopting more ideological constructive coverage and rhetoric—use “climate emergency” or “climate crisis” to be used instead of “climate change;” that sort of Orwellian thing.
For example, on the Warren question, Rosen embraces Margaret Sullivan’s formulation: “Of course, it’s legitimate to dig into the costs [of ‘Medicare for All’], but not in a way that creates a nice GOP campaign ad, and misses the larger lens of overall costs. (Warren, notably, refused to take the bait.)”
While it would be great to still have Andrew here to call them out, old media — and those who teach future Democratic Party Operatives with bylines — have continued to do an excellent job imploding in the years since his passing.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Oct 17, 2019 at 4:45 pm Link
One example can be found in the confrontation between Indiana congressman Jim Banks and NPR’s Michel Martin this past Wednesday. Martin was fulfilling NPR’s unwritten charter of putting the wildest fringe leftist thinking into comfortable terms to make them acceptable to the denizens of the suburbs. Banks, a freshman representative who saw service in Afghanistan, wasn’t having any.
Martin was attempting to put across the accepted narrative about the Trump/Zelensky call – that Trump asked the Ukrainian president for dirt on Biden as a “favor,” that he immediately turned the conversation to Hunter Biden, that there was a “quid pro quo,” and so on, all backed up by her claim that she had the transcript “in front of her.”
Banks immediately cut to the chase on that, shutting down Martin with a single line: “…read the part of the transcript that would indict the president on high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Of course, Martin could do no such thing, and despite some further word games, that was the end of it, leaving myriads of NPR listeners clutching their worry beads in shock and alarm.
Along with Elise Stefanik’s bold defiance of the House Democratic elite, this is a serious indication that a new GOP is pecking its way out of the shell.
On Friday morning, Politico Magazine published an opinion piece from author and founding editor of Politico John Harris titled, “Just Another Day In F***nutsville.”
The outlet quickly updated the headline to read: “Trump Killed the Seriousness of Impeachment.” For a brief time, the URL of the article still included the original title.
Steve Guest, the rapid response director for the Republican National Committee, flagged the error and included a screenshot of the original headline.
They should have stuck to their guns – it’s a perfect description of Washington, and the Democratic Party operatives with bylines such as the Politico, that keep F***nutsville churning along.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Sep 27, 2019 at 12:14 pm Link
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Sep 23, 2019 at 10:42 pm Link
DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: In Which The New York Times Straight Up Lies About Ed Buck. “According to Excel, minus the returns, that’s a total of $114,900 accused serial murderer Ed Buck doled out to Democrats. I don’t think that fits most ordinary Americans’ idea of a ‘small time donor’.”
Getting gay men to overdose and sometimes die in pursuit of one’s own sexual gratification probably doesn’t fit most ordinary Americans’ idea of a victimless crime, either. Yet that’s exactly what the MSM-DNC spent so long trying to hush up.
Posted at by Stephen Green on Sep 23, 2019 at 8:12 am Link
Remember the dunking-kid meme from a couple of years ago? Little kid runs up to his tiny basketball hoop, dunks the ball, turns around to flex and holler. Meanwhile he doesn’t see that the whole backboard is wobbling and about to collapse on his head. When it does, he looks confused.
Congrats, New York Times! And Politico. And CNN. You’re all the Dunking Kids. You keep throwing down on the Trump administration. The backboard of truth keeps falling on your head. The rest of us laugh.
The New York Times just issued its most spectacular correction since my personal favorite, from Nov. 7, 2012: “An earlier version of this article misspelled the singer’s surname in a number of places. He is Bruce Springsteen, not Springstein.”
This Sunday’s correction cut the legs out from under its big Saturday scoop about a supposed new sex scandal about Brett Kavanaugh involving a woman who supposedly had Kavanaugh’s penis shoved into her hand when they were both at Yale. The Times’ gobsmacking correction noted that in the book from which its Saturday report was derived, “the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.”
Given the symbiotic relationship between the politicians of the Democratic Party and their operatives with bylines, Steve’s question earlier today takes on added meaning: Are the Democrats Committing Electoral Suicide?
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Sep 16, 2019 at 11:04 pm Link
Though to be fair, the Democratic Party operatives with bylines criticizing Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward is NBC, which promoted the idea that Sarah Palin’s clip art played a role in a madman shooting Kelly’s wife, Gabrielle Giffords in 2011, and the following year, argued that the words “golf” and “Chicago” were racist.
As Rick Moran writes, “There’s a simple way to stop it: stop responding as if the argument is legitimate. Instead of complaining about the attack, ignore it. Better yet, make fun of it. Call the perpetrators out for being monumentally stupid. It will take a while. But there are a lot of fair-minded people in America who recognize the idiocy for what it is: rabid, extreme ideology run amok.”
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Sep 07, 2019 at 6:52 pm Link
On August 12, conservative lawyer Leif Olson began work in the Trump administration’s Department of Labor. On September 3, he resigned, after Bloomberg Law published what seemed to be a shocking expose of his anti-Semitism. The only problem: the entire allegation was false. Simply put, poor reporting took Olson’s clear mockery of Breitbart and the alt-right and recast it as support. Here’s how.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. Read the whole thing.
I assume Olson’s resignation will be belatedly unaccepted as this becomes a conservative cause celebre online today. Maybe even you-know-who will weigh in with a tweet or two; a case of the media falsely accusing someone on his side as bigoted to serve its own agenda is political gold for him, a smoking gun that they’re cutthroat and can’t be trusted in their commentary on Trump himself. Coincidentally, this episode is playing out on the same day that Axios is reporting that allies of Trump are raising money to investigate the social-media (and personal?) histories of members of the media, a process that’s already resulted in embarrassment for the New York Times.
“Good luck finding anyone in conservative activism who has a problem with those tactics after episodes like this. Turnabout is fair play,” he concludes.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Sep 03, 2019 at 1:44 pm Link
I think this week is a harbinger of things to come. Why? Because the Mueller report didn’t work out as Democrats and the media hoped. There’s no public appetite for impeachment. Progressives are getting nervous and the NY Times has signaled privately and publicly, through its 1619 Project, that the 2020 election will be all about racism because that’s the best chance Democrats have to activate their base.
So what’s coming next? A lot more careless mistakes by the usual suspects looking to drag Trump and the GOP down. What this week demonstrates is that many of them care less about their credibility than ensuring the desired outcome. This isn’t really new of course. In fact, some version of this happens every four years. See dog-abusing-vampire-capitalist-with-80s-foreign-policy Mitt Romney for a previous example.
Which dovetails well with Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel’s look at how things went this week with the Democratic Party operatives without bylines, aka the politicians: Crackup in the Democratic Party.
Imagine you’re Biden’s political director, sitting offstage. All of a sudden, Biden wanders into the unscripted territory and says, “Imagine the assassination of Obama.” This is not an attack on Biden, but he’s not going to be the nominee. So the actual race comes down to Warren’s and Sanders’ competing visions of how to achieve the same socialist fantasy. Warren is promising reparations based on skin color. That’s popular. Sanders wants a government takeover of the entire energy sector. They will be working to out-crazy each other for the next six months. That is a dynamic guaranteed to produce even more extremism. And it has some Democratic leaders worried. The Democratic National Committee voted on a proposal to hold a debate focused exclusively on climate change. Why wouldn’t they? Well, because the solutions the candidates would promise live on television are insane: spend $16 trillion, ban airplanes, seize control of the entire U.S. economy.
The Trustafarians love stuff like that. Normal people find it terrifying. Even the party hacks here in D.C. don’t like it, and that’s probably a compliment. Do you really think Nancy Pelosi believes climate change is an existential crisis? Of course, she doesn’t think that. Plus, she flies private. Obama can say whatever he wants about carbon emissions. He can shake his chin and be concerned, but when you’re spending 15 million of your own dollars on a beachfront estate on Martha’s Vineyard, you’re not too worried about the oceans rising. But the Democratic base doesn’t get the joke. Democratic primary voters believe the talking points. And very soon, they will be powerful enough to nominate their own presidential candidate. And when that happens, it’s going to be a very different party.
Nobody should be getting cocky in this election cycle.
The opinion pages of the nation’s major newspapers never cease to disappoint. Just a couple of weeks ago, the New York Times announced that it has suddenly discovered that everything to do with everything in American history was a direct result of slavery. Now some twit writing at the Washington Post reveals that the whole call for civility by people on the right triggers her because it is exactly like the rhetoric of defenders of slavery in the antebellum South.
In January of 2011, the New York Times reported, “In Tucson, Obama Urges Americans to New Era of Civility.” Yes, Obama’s a Democrat. But I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that’s he’s not a closet neo-Confederate.
In fairness to the Washington Post, it has been more than twenty-four hours since it had to correct an op-ed falsely claiming that J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, had lamented a decline in white births. Perhaps its editors regret the error. But what’s truly regrettable is the impulse to publish any and every article, no matter how wrong or foul, postulating that anyone who crosses the left is a racist.
“Vote for us, you bigots,” is quite an interesting argument for Democratic Party operatives with bylines to be making during in the early innings of a presidential election cycle.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Aug 29, 2019 at 6:14 pm Link
If Sarah Palin or Donald Trump had said this, it would lead the 6:30 PM news broadcasts. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines to understand how Pelosi can say this with impunity.
● John Dickerson, the host of Face the Nation and the “political director” for CBS, wrote an article for Slate in 2013 charmingly titled “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.”
It was recently announced that Major League Baseball will be playing a regular season game at the famed Field Of Dreams stadium, in Dubuque Iowa. This is the now famous landmark location where the titular baseball motion picture was filmed, and the Sanders campaign officials were struck with an idea to hold a softball game at the location. Not much of a problem so far; these are just the kind of photo-ops campaigns stage to get publicity, and to raise more money.
* * * * * * * *
It is that last detail that emerged, much to the surprise of the journalists covering the Sanders campaign. See, it turned out the game being played for the Sanders campaign was a contest between his staffers, and members of the media on the opposing team. It was only “at the last minute”, according to Politico, that members off the CNN and ABC News organizations who were going to play in the game backed out. This was due to a fundraising email the Sanders team sent out regarding the game.
For the writers at the Baltimore Sun, Presler’s visit simply “reinforces the tired image of our failing urban cores. That the poor people in this dilapidated city can’t take care of their own neighborhoods and all the public officials around them have failed as well.”
“The bureaucratic, all-talk Democrats strike again. If a crowd of volunteers could clean up 12 tons of trash in 12 hours, how incompetent and helpless must Baltimoreans be if they can’t manage it in decades, right?”
One would point out to the editorial board that this isn’t just a “tired image” but a reality of the fact that Democratic policies and politicians have failed.
And the Baltimore Sun is running cover for those policies and politicians. Well, think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and you’ll realize that they neither possess nor desire decency. It might get in the way of their job.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 08, 2019 at 7:00 am Link
A CASTRO, GINNING UP A MOB AGAINST HIS POLITICAL OPPONENTS: This Is Highly Irresponsible. Why Are Some in the Media Defending It? “It appears our national politics has reached a breaking point. Fellow members of Congress and members of the press are cheering on Joaquin Castro’s stunt because they want harm to befall Trump donors. Again, they can say they just want the knowledge out there, but that is a lie. We all know it is a lie. It is disingenuous to say otherwise, but members of Congress and the press are defending the lie because they too want harm done to Trump supporters.”
Well, think of the press as Democratic operatives with bylines and it all makes sense. And remember this the next time they go on about decency.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 07, 2019 at 12:23 pm Link
Hey, WaPo editorial board — remember how you pushed Northam as some sort of racial healer, while gleefully spreading the bullshit claims that longtime milquetoast GOP pol Ed Gillespie was some sort of Stormfront stalking horse? Maybe you should resign, too, hacks. Don’t try to pretend this is just about the rottenness of Virginia’s Democratic Party. You’re part of the rot yourselves.
Indeed, to coin an Insta-phrase. How much so? That brings us to:
The Post, which also once held itself out as a newspaper, didn’t simply take the pressure off Northam, they’re letting him contribute columns to their newspaper. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines (and with bylines available to the right left people), and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jul 12, 2019 at 7:15 am Link
On a Wednesday morning in late May, emissaries of two of the strongest political voices on climate change convened at a coffee shop a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), was there to meet Sam Ricketts, climate director for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who is running for president almost exclusively on a platform of combating global warming. A newly released plank of Inslee’s climate change agenda had caught the attention of Chakrabarti and his boss, who had tweeted that Inslee’s “climate plan is the most serious + comprehensive one to address our crisis in the 2020 field.” Pleased by the positive reception from the demanding Green New Deal wing of the climate struggle, Ricketts had set up this meeting with Chakrabarti to establish a personal connection and share approaches to climate advocacy.
“Congrats on the rollout,” Chakrabarti told him as they sat down. “That was pretty great.”
“Thank you again for the kudos you guys offered,” said Ricketts. “We wanted to be pace-setting for the field, and I think we’re there now. … I want to ask you for input … in addition to hearing what you guys are working on.”
Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
As conservative national security commentator John Noonan tweets in response, “One of the central tenets of Climate Change skepticism is that the threat is exaggerated to achieve political ends that are divorced from environmental health. Here’s an outward admission that the issue is used as a stalking horse for ambitious economic restructuring.”
Mr. Epstein is back in a holding cell, under indictment by a U.S. attorney in New York. He will have his day in court. Presumably we will find out whether the evidence against the hedge-fund impresario for sexually abusing numerous underage girls in the early 2000s is as strong as it seems.
But one element of the story should give us pause, and that’s the seemingly concerted effort by the press to make a secondary villain out of the only prosecutor who succeeded in holding Mr. Epstein accountable till now because, 12 years later, that prosecutor is Donald Trump’s labor secretary.
A much-cited story in the Miami Herald last November is headlined “How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime.” The paper thereby invokes a previously unknown form of retroactive quantum action at a distance, since Alexander Acosta’s actions as a U.S. attorney in Florida in 2007 could not have been premised on Mr. Trump being president a decade later.
The headline is also misleading. In fact, the Herald’s 5,000-word exposé tells us very little about the reasons and circumstances behind the 2008 plea deal in which Mr. Epstein agreed to plead guilty to two felonies, serve an 18-month jail sentence, pay restitution to certain victims, and accept designation for life as a registered sex offender.
Instead, the paper tells us what its own sources are willing to say now about Mr. Epstein more than a decade after the prosecution. What a newspaper can report in 2018 and what a prosecutor can prove in 2007 are two very different things. A fact the Herald also should have made plain: It was precisely Mr. Epstein’s conviction at the hands of Mr. Acosta that helped fuel the filing of civil lawsuits and emergence of newly declared victims that became the basis for the Herald’s own reporting.
Making an even bigger joke of the paper’s positioning of Mr. Acosta as Mr. Epstein’s protector is this glaring fact: It wasn’t Mr. Acosta but New York County’s district attorney—a member of the city’s ruling Democratic elite, with the illustrious name of Cyrus Vance Jr.—who in 2011 sought to undo Mr. Acosta’s work by relieving Mr. Epstein of his Level 3 sex offender status in New York state.
But then Mr. Vance is not a member of the Trump administration. . . .
It also bears asking: Would the Herald even have invested in reporting the Epstein story if it couldn’t also have flounced up an anti-Trump angle?
Yes, it’s been rough couple of decades for the newspaper business. At the kindest, the Herald should have had the confidence to rest its claim to public attention on what it had to reveal about Mr. Epstein’s behavior rather than trying so pathetically to annex its reporting to an au courant anti-Trump narrative.
Think of the press as Democratic Party operatives with bylines — and Democratic Party operative editors — and you won’t go far wrong.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 10, 2019 at 6:30 pm Link
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jul 06, 2019 at 1:14 pm Link
CATHY YOUNG: Antifa, Quillette, and Media Bias. It’s pretty obvious that the press is covering for Antifa, rather than covering it, as befits Democratic Party operatives with bylines.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 05, 2019 at 1:30 pm Link
Did Team Obama, at least, do that investigation? Vice presidents are normally vetted within an inch of their lives before being selected. Presumably O and his team knew all about Biden’s view of busing, the crime bill, and so on and determined that they were collectively not so problematic that they should look elsewhere for a running mate. But the media was free to render a different verdict, as it’s now in the process of doing, and to challenge Obama aggressively on it. They didn’t. And it’s no mystery why.
I think the most charitable explanation for this oversight is simple laziness. They didn’t give Biden the kid-gloves treatment in 2008 because they were in the tank and determined not to make trouble for a historic Democratic nominee, one might say. They gave him the kid-gloves treatment because they don’t do much investigating themselves, even of their own archives. Even this year, it may be the case that most of the media reports about Biden’s history with busing have been spoonfed to them by rival campaigns like Sanders’s or Harris’s. The reason Uncle Joe didn’t get dinged for this a decade ago might be as simple as the RNC’s oppo team having either dropped the ball or concluded that there was little to be gained by feeding the press stories about Biden’s opposition to busing (a position overwhelmingly shared by Republicans). But again: If you prefer this theory, you’re stuck believing that the press is uninterested in doing the basics of its own job, even when there are potentially high-stakes consequences in a national election.
Predictably, the vast majority of the people and the outlets that shared this exchange failed to note that the violations being discussed had occurred during the previous administration, while those who did know failed to ask themselves (and others) why the violations didn’t receive similar coverage when they were first exposed. Instead, they jumped straight to the conclusion that the federal government, headed up by President Trump, was deliberately inflicting pain on babies. This isn’t true.
It wasn’t true during the Obama administration either. Then, as now, the violations weren’t part of an intentional or evil ploy, but were the product of the system’s being overloaded. Then, as now, the intended care at these facilities was humane, and consistent within the requirement under Flores. In 2014, the Obama administration was dealing with a serious crisis: a large influx of unaccompanied minors that strained the facilities. In 2019, the Trump administration is dealing with a serious crisis: a large influx of unaccompanied minors that strains the facilities.
The absence of coverage back in 2014 makes perfect sense. After all:
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 24, 2019 at 5:30 pm Link
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Power Line takes a deep dive into “the mixed-up files of Rep. Ilhan Omar.” The above link takes you to all of their recent posts on Omar, but you can drill down into a couple of the highlights by following the links included in the excerpts below:
Omar’s 2014 and 2015 tax returns reflect her wayward way with the truth, her penchant for shortcuts, and her treatment of the marriage to Elmi as a sham (which I believe it to have been). They also raise obvious questions that the Star Tribune appears so far to have failed to ask.
* * * * * * * * *
In their Ilhan Omar story today, Patrick Coolican and Stephen Montemayor refer repeatedly to Power Line as conservative. Let it be noted, however, that their story tacitly reveals the Star Tribune to be a pillar of Minnesota’s leftist/progressive establishment. Coolican and Montemayor note in passing (italics added): “Campaign e-mails disclosed by the campaign finance board also show a concerted effort to quash the Elmi story. An August 2016 internal e-mail written by campaign spokesman Ben Goldfarb, a veteran DFL operative, suggested reaching out to political newsletter writer Blois Olson ‘and shut it down with him as we do with the Strib.’”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and that last paragraph makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23, 2019 at 4:30 pm Link
It’s indeed strange to hear a leftist who champions anti-Israel causes and anti-Semitic politicians using this phrase, since the Jewish state is the most successful and enduring manifestation of Never Again.
The appearance of “Never Again” also undermines her later contention that she wasn’t talking about the Nazi camps.
We’re forced to take someone seriously who believes vegetables are a tool of colonial oppression because Ocasio-Cortez is both a charismatic elected official with many impressionable fans, and a person bestowed with a huge media platform. Only last weekend, she appeared on “Meet the Press” praising socialism—the other scourge of the 20th century.* Yet when we need our media to ask her to explain her profoundly childish and destructive statements, they are nowhere to be found.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Regarding AOC’s disastrous roll-out of her Green New Deal fantasies at the start of the year, ultimately, they would be enforced with the barrel of a gun. As Virginia Postrel noted about 20 years ago when discussing The Future and its Enemies with Brian Lamb on C-Span:
The Khmer Rouge sought to start over at year zero, and to sort of create the kind of society that very civilized, humane greens write about as though it were an ideal. I mean, people who would never consider genocide. But I argue that if you want to know what that would take, look at Cambodia–to empty the cities and turn everyone into peasants again. Even in a less developed country, let alone in someplace like the United States, that these sort of static utopian fantasies are just that.
Although socialist North Korea begs to differ:
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 18, 2019 at 8:45 pm Link
Propelled by her “I’ve got a plan for that” motto, Warren has improved as a retail politician since her first successful U.S. Senate bid in 2012. Proposals like the wealth tax, to go along with her drumbeat of ideas on issues on issues like canceling student debt and breaking up big tech companies, have flipped the media narrative on her presidential campaign. Here is just a short list of recent headlines:
Washington Post: Warren’s nonstop ideas reshape the Democratic presidential race — and give her new momentum
New York Times: Elizabeth Warren Gains Ground in 2020 Field, One Plan at a Time
The Guardian: Elizabeth Warren gains momentum in the 2020 race plan by plan
Bloomberg: Elizabeth Warren Rises in 2020 Race as Policy Focus Catches Fire
CNN: Elizabeth Warren Breaks Through Crowded 2020 Field — With A Plan
Politico: How ‘I got a plan’ became a thing: Warren nerds out and the crowds go crazy
Media members and liberal pundits have touted her as having a “plan for everything.”
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and their marching in lockstep all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 12, 2019 at 12:35 pm Link
Infuriated by headlines about a Harris speech declaring that she is defending her record as a prosecutor, Stephen Robinson writes:
Is Harris on trial here? Why is she “defending her record”? Did she lose all her cases like the prosecutor who faced off against Perry Mason each week? That guy needed to explain himself. Harris put [bad words] in prison. She imprisoned [bad words] so well she was the first woman elected district attorney of San Francisco and the first black woman to become attorney general of California. She’s the Serena Williams of law and order.
What is interesting here isn’t Harris’s record, or not-so-surprising development that a left-of-center web site wrote a piece fervently defending Harris’s record. (Whatever else you think of Robinson’s argument, he’s absolutely right when he declares, “it’s insulting to claim that black people can only have an adversarial relationship with the criminal justice system or that a black woman can’t prosecute crimes without betraying her community.”)
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their sycophancy makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 12, 2019 at 7:45 am Link
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Related: Kevin Poulsen is the symptom, not the disease. “Excuse me, but… what? A reporter from the Daily Beast can just pick up the phone, call up Facebook, and have an official there reveal one of their user’s personal information? How does that work? One might expect that they wouldn’t be doing that for anyone other than a law enforcement official with a warrant.”
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 03, 2019 at 12:14 pm Link
Let’s assume, hypothetically, that an independent journalist working in Washington somehow obtained a confidential FBI report on the death of a prominent Trump administration official that described its lurid circumstances, including the presence of a woman not his wife and the use of illegal drugs that caused, or at least contributed to, his demise.
Let’s also assume that the Justice Department responded to the disclosure by raiding the journalist’s home and confiscating computers and other tools of his trade, hoping to learn who leaked the report.
Democratic politicians and civil libertarians would erupt in outrage at a heavy-handed government act intended to discourage journalists from delving into areas that officialdom considered off-limits.
So where is that outrage about the San Francisco Police Department’s May 10 assault on journalist Bryan Carmody, who had obtained a police report about the death of San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi under exactly those unbecoming circumstances?
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their silence makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 23, 2019 at 8:44 pm Link
Imagine an older, powerful male politician belittling and questioning the intelligence and credibility of a female reporter for the New York Times. If the politician in question were a Republican, the media outrage machine would have kicked in immediately, with angry pieces about the perils of toxic masculinity and journalists under siege in abundance.
But when it’s an old communist senator mansplaining his longstanding anti-American sentiments, it’s just business as usual.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their reluctance to call out their bosses all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 21, 2019 at 12:44 pm Link
Mr. Trump is using the issue to rouse his base, including the crucial voting bloc of Christian conservatives for whom abortion is an overarching issue. His false statements that Democrats would “execute” newborn babies — which he has repeated on his Twitter feed, during his State of the Union address and at campaign rallies, sometimes as he mimics swaddling a baby — are being picked up and repeated by conservatives all over the country.”
Catch that description? That the President is making “false statements that Democrats would ‘execute’ newborn babies.”
And right there this story becomes a jewel of an example of left-wing journalism by omission, in this case from the New York Times.
Missing entirely from the article was the name of Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam. It was Northam, appearing on a radio show, who stirred the hornets nest by saying this about aborting babies when the mother is in labor. The direct quote was this, as reported here at National Review Online:
“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” he continued. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
The passive tense in the headline is telling. The Times can keep a story alive when it wants to, such as when the Gray Lady ran nearly 100 stories on the Augusta National Golf Club between 2001 and mid-2003. Similarly, the paper in Northam’s backyard ran approximately 100 stories in the fall of 2006 on George Allen’s “macaca” gaffe. The media’s selective amnesia on Northam’s blackface and endorsement of infanticide might lead a cynical person to conclude that they’re Democratic Party operatives with bylines, or something.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 19, 2019 at 7:44 am Link
As Rubin tweets, “My invite for @PeteButtigieg remains. If he caves to Media Matters, Vox and HuffPo that isn’t a good sign for a presidential candidate. Doing what’s right often means standing up to the mob.”
Buttigieg made the remarks when Hewitt asked him which form of Islamic extremism he thought posed the greatest overall threat.
“Do you find Iranians’ variant of Shia extremism to be more dangerous to the world than the Sunni variant that we see in the Taliban and perhaps in Hamas and some of the more radical elements of Wahhabism?” Hewitt asked.
“Well, you know, not unlike Christianity when it is motivating someone to do something extreme,” Buttigieg responded. “It can have a thousand different flavors.”
Deplorable, as Hillary would say.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 18, 2019 at 10:00 am Link
In press materials, ABC admitted the media’s culpability in taking the spotlight off of Kopechne and putting it on Kennedy, stating that “her story has largely been lost to history as the media and the public focused on the man whose career was forever damaged by the accident, rather than the bright and young woman who did not live to tell us what really happened on that mysterious night.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and Kopechne becoming a footnote makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 08, 2019 at 12:45 pm Link
I suspect that all this sudden concern about the word “spying” is because the Obama administration was in fact doing a lot of spying on a lot of political opponents, and the Democrats know it.
Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”
When we talk about third trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of the physician. More than one physician, by the way. And its done in case where there may be severe deformities, where there may be a fetus that is non-viable.
So, in this particular example, if a mother is in labor I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their amnesia makes perfect sense. Or as a New York Times headline put it at the start of the month, (with a nice use of the passive tense), ‘‘‘It Just Went Poof’: The Strange Aftermath of Virginia’s Cascade of Political Scandals.”
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Apr 28, 2019 at 9:14 pm Link
Mr. Mueller did indict 13 Russian nationals for offenses related to election meddling. We know Moscow spent money on Facebook ads designed to exploit America’s divisions, targeting voters on both sides of the aisle. And Mr. Trump and the Republicans have responded. Under legislation enacted by a Republican Congress, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs and intelligence agencies.
Beyond the meddling, Mr. Trump has slammed Russia with bold moves designed to weaken Mr. Putin on the world’s stage. This administration imposed sanctions on Russia for violating nonproliferation laws by supporting weapons programs in Iran, Syria and North Korea. The Trump administration also issued more sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and its continuing occupation of Crimea. In 2017, the administration expelled 60 Russian intelligence officers and ordered multiple Russian consulates to close after Russia used a military-grade chemical weapon in the U.K. Mr. Trump even blocked Mr. Putin’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for Russia if it goes ahead.
These tough actions have had an effect. Between January and July 2018, the Russian ruble declined 9% against the U.S. dollar. Russia’s Economic Development Ministry expects its economy to grow only 1.3% in 2019. The U.S. economy grew 2.9% in 2018 and is headed for another strong year.
In 2017, Mr. Trump supplied Ukraine with weapons so it could defend itself against Russian attacks. Remember, it was President Obama who stood idly as Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has also engaged in hard-fought battles with Russian mercenaries in Syria.
In a sense, Russia succeeded in its mission to stoke division and fear within America. Some top Democrats have played right into Moscow’s hands by pursuing endless partisan investigations. If Democrats care about thwarting Russian meddling and aggression, they will disavow their conspiracy theory that our president is Mr. Putin’s puppet, and stop wasting taxpayer money peddling disproved collusion narratives. Instead, they can support this administration’s efforts to stand tall against the consistent threat Russia poses to America’s national security.
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran
That Trump is planning to do precisely the opposite of these things may or may not be good policy for the United States, but anybody who thinks this is a Russia appeasement policy has been drinking way too much joy juice.
Obama actually did all of these things, and none of the liberal media now up in arms about Trump ever called Obama a Russian puppet; instead, they preferred to see a brave, farsighted and courageous statesman. Trump does none of these things and has embarked on a course that will inexorably weaken Russia’s position in the world, and the media, suddenly flushing eight years of Russia dovishness down the memory hole, now sounds the warning that Trump’s Russia policy is treasonously soft.
Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines, and no particular loyalty to the country’s best interests, and you won’t go far wrong.
Okay, what’s being left out is that the victim is a legal immigrant from Togo. Whether intentional or not, I’ll let y’all debate that, it’s just another example of how the Left’s narrative about the Trump coalition is wrong. People of color can and do support President Trump. They will do so again in 2020. Trump did better with black voters than Romney and I think he’ll do better with this bloc next year. The Daily Callerhas more.
“Whether intentional or not, I’ll let y’all debate that.” Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Apr 17, 2019 at 4:14 pm Link
In the space of a week in early February, the public was stunned by revelations about each of the three highest statewide elected officials, all Democrats: the racist photo in the governor’s yearbook; accusations of sexual assault against the lieutenant governor; and the attorney general’s appearance in blackface at a party in college. Protesters and news crews swarmed the Statehouse. Calls for resignations came from fellow Virginia Democrats, Republicans and even 2020 presidential candidates.
And then? “It just went poof,” said Natalie Draper, a librarian sitting in the back of a coffeehouse last week in Richmond. “It’s like it never happened.”
Remember, kids:
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Apr 02, 2019 at 12:01 pm Link
It must be noted up front that there’s no evidence that the DNC put her up to doing this. It may be that Dafna Linzer, former WaPo reporter and current managing editor of politics for NBC and MSNBC, simply took it upon herself to do the DNC a solid.
But even if so, that’s news too. Since when does the head of an allegedly independent news organization do a favor for a political party?
Early and often — just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. NBC’s PR flack is apparently going with “no comment” at the moment, as NBC coordinates damage control. I wonder if Linzer’s fellow former and current Democratic Party operative Chuck Todd, who famously compared old media to sports referees in 2015, will be asked to spin his way out of this one?
Perhaps he meant pro wrestling refs, which would explain the surprise political success in 2016 by a former host of WrestleMania events who knows how to work them properly?
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Mar 29, 2019 at 5:14 pm Link
Trump allies see Barr’s letter as a kind of Swiss Army knife—a tool useful in all kinds of situations. Not only is it exculpatory, they say, but it also implicitly rebukes the press for its coverage of the Russia investigation, inoculating Trump from any future scandal that reporters might unearth. According to a source familiar with internal discussions at the Republican National Committee and the pro-Trump super PAC America First, both organizations are “geared up for any nonsense to come.”
They’re already prepared to attack reporters. “Any reporter who tries that will be hit with 30-second spots of all their ridiculous claims about collusion,” said the source, who, like others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity to describe private conversations. “Their tweets have all been screencapped. It’s all ready to go.” (“It’s the same thing we’ve been doing the last two years. We’re going to hold the media accountable when we see fit,” an RNC official clarified, adding that this would include digital clips shared on social media.)
Earlier this week, Trump’s campaign previewed the in-your-face tactics they have in mind. A campaign official sent a letter to TV producers cautioning them against booking certain guests who had alleged that Trump colluded with Russia, including Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff of California, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.
“It’s not hard to figure where we’re going to go with this,” a current campaign official told The Atlantic. “We’re still in victory-lap mode, but it will turn into a message that [Democrats] will say or do anything to stop us from making America great again, including making up lies about the president and ruining a lot of people’s lives.”
Well, the nice thing about that argument is that it’s true. And Trump will treat the press like it’s made up of Democratic operatives with bylines, which is also true.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 28, 2019 at 9:16 pm Link
I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN CNN STILL PRETENDED TO BE OBJECTIVE:
Last October, during the Kavanaugh hearings, when the Journolist decided that calling the violent left a mob was not permissible on DNC-MSM airwaves, the Daily Caller noted that “CNN host Don Lemon lost his cool with [right-leaning] network commentator Matt Lewis while discussing the ‘mob behavior’ of liberals versus conservatives Tuesday, telling him to ‘shut up’ while he made his point:”
Lewis tried to respond but Lemon wasn’t having it. “Will you let me finish, Matt, please, before you jump in? I’m making a point. Okay?,” he said. “I’m making a point. I can’t make it if you keep interrupting me.”
“You’re making a point. Are you the moderator or the host or arguing a liberal talking point,” Lewis shot back.
It’s the latter. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28, 2019 at 12:48 pm Link
Predicting what will be coming, the MRC President [told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney], “I don’t know how CNN undoes the damage, because they not going to stop. They’re going to continue this. Are they going to say, ‘Oops! For two years we were wrong in our slandering of the President?’ They’re never going to do it.”
Exit quote:
“Half of me wants to burst out laughing. The other half of me wants to look seriously at American journalism and look at the damage these people have done to that institution. I don’t know how they repair it. I don’t know how some networks ever come back. I don’t know how Jim Acosta can ever be seen on television without people laughing at them. He’s ruined. Brian Stelter at CNN, Chuck Todd of NBC. These people are never going to be believed again.”
Mr. Mueller did indict 13 Russian nationals for offenses related to election meddling. We know Moscow spent money on Facebook ads designed to exploit America’s divisions, targeting voters on both sides of the aisle. And Mr. Trump and the Republicans have responded. Under legislation enacted by a Republican Congress, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs and intelligence agencies.
Beyond the meddling, Mr. Trump has slammed Russia with bold moves designed to weaken Mr. Putin on the world’s stage. This administration imposed sanctions on Russia for violating nonproliferation laws by supporting weapons programs in Iran, Syria and North Korea. The Trump administration also issued more sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and its continuing occupation of Crimea. In 2017, the administration expelled 60 Russian intelligence officers and ordered multiple Russian consulates to close after Russia used a military-grade chemical weapon in the U.K. Mr. Trump even blocked Mr. Putin’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for Russia if it goes ahead.
These tough actions have had an effect. Between January and July 2018, the Russian ruble declined 9% against the U.S. dollar. Russia’s Economic Development Ministry expects its economy to grow only 1.3% in 2019. The U.S. economy grew 2.9% in 2018 and is headed for another strong year.
In 2017, Mr. Trump supplied Ukraine with weapons so it could defend itself against Russian attacks. Remember, it was President Obama who stood idly as Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has also engaged in hard-fought battles with Russian mercenaries in Syria.
In a sense, Russia succeeded in its mission to stoke division and fear within America. Some top Democrats have played right into Moscow’s hands by pursuing endless partisan investigations. If Democrats care about thwarting Russian meddling and aggression, they will disavow their conspiracy theory that our president is Mr. Putin’s puppet, and stop wasting taxpayer money peddling disproved collusion narratives. Instead, they can support this administration’s efforts to stand tall against the consistent threat Russia poses to America’s national security.
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran
That Trump is planning to do precisely the opposite of these things may or may not be good policy for the United States, but anybody who thinks this is a Russia appeasement policy has been drinking way too much joy juice.
Obama actually did all of these things, and none of the liberal media now up in arms about Trump ever called Obama a Russian puppet; instead, they preferred to see a brave, farsighted and courageous statesman. Trump does none of these things and has embarked on a course that will inexorably weaken Russia’s position in the world, and the media, suddenly flushing eight years of Russia dovishness down the memory hole, now sounds the warning that Trump’s Russia policy is treasonously soft.
Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines, and no particular loyalty to the country’s best interests, and you won’t go far wrong.
Think of them as Democratic party operatives with bylines — and no concern for the welfare of their country — and you won’t go far wrong.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 24, 2019 at 8:25 pm Link
ANN ALTHOUSE ON JOURNALISM’S TRUMP/CHARLOTTESVILLE LIE: “I suspect that they keep repeating the falsehood because they are so clearly wrong that they can’t find any way to back down. And I also think they’ve seen the effectiveness of this attack on Trump. It has worked as propaganda, so why stop now? The hit to their credibility has already occurred, so why not keep manipulating minds?”
Think of them as Democratic Party political operatives with bylines and you won’t be far wrong.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 22, 2019 at 2:44 pm Link
