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Today is a momentous day in American history as Congress will begin its televised impeachment hearings-this is only the fourth President in our history-in Trump’s case I should say ‘President’-to go through impeachment hearings. It’s days like this that we truly need our Fourth Estate to be on their game.

And Margaret Sullivan-who’s kind of a dean of the press in her own right because of her well earned standing-has warned the media not to fall into the usual rabbit holes-false equivalence, horse race coverage-who is winning and why-, getting cynical GOP stunts to turn the process into chaos, etc. 

Stress substance, not speculation. Journalists and pundits love to ponder about how the public is reacting to news, though they aren’t much good at it.

“Avoiding that would be a public service.”

“Decline to speculate on how this is playing to voters in the swing states,” is the advice of New York University professor and press critic Jay Rosen.

“A related issue: The extreme likelihood that the media will be focusing on the partisan fight, rather than the substance of what is being proved or not proved in the hearings themselves.”

“Journalists can focus less on combat and more on clarity,” is how Rosen puts it.

This is excellent, crucial advice that has, indeed, been totally unheeded as far as I can tell. Certainly in watching yesterday’s cable coverage there was an awful lot of punditry over who’s winning or going to win the optics. We kept hearing that Democrats had to put on a show so as not to bore the public with talk about how the alleged POTUS extorted a foreign power prosecute his political opponent in order to rig 2020 just as he did 2016. Indeed the MSM pundits keep warning the Democrats not to make the same mistakes this time they made with Mueller’s testimony.

This is a pretty sore point as they seem not to realize that it was their own coverage of Mueller’s testimony that was truly a fiasco-as was their initial coverage of Barr’s fake exoneration letter. Indeed, Ms. Sullivan warns them not to repeat the Barr Letter Syndrome.

Avoid Barr-Letter Syndrome. It was a little over six months ago that Attorney General William P. Barr took it upon himself to summarize the Mueller report in a misleading letter that the news media — pretty much en masse — represented as an accurate summation of the 448-page report about Russian interference in the 2016 election and its aftermath.

You might remember some headlines and news reports that said, essentially, “no collusion, no obstruction.”

“Of course, that’s not what the report said, as Mueller himself later tried to set straight.”

But there’s no sign the media has learned anything from the Barr Letter fiasco-heck they still haven’t learned from the Comey Letter fiasco-which is why I chose Dean Baquet’s picture as the featured image of this chapter. Indeed, the Barr Letter’s central contention ‘No Obstruction No Collusion’ remains the central tenet of the MSM’s conventional wisdom to this day. It’s why every time Trump and the co-conspirators lie and say Mueller showed there was no collusion they don’t even try to pushback. The pundits actually believe this lie-which kinds of proves they didn’t read the Mueller Report whatever they claim-or it utterly went over their savvy heads.

But it’s even worse than that. Honestly you can’t expect too much of the daily  punditry-including MSNBC-which is full of the usual cant pre Nicole Wallace at 4-what makes her show so much better than the daily shows is that she actually cares about the moral dimension of impeachment not just the kind of rank horse race speculation the punditry so prefers-yet as Sully points out-is so mediocre at. This has always been insult to injury-not only do they make everything about ‘who’s winning and who’s losing?-they are notoriously bad guessers. Their ‘savvy takes’ tend to be spectacularly wrong-it’s almost like to pass their mustard as a savvy take it has to be totally counterintuitive and unlikely-remember the conventional wisdom for this entire year has been that getting impeached helps Trump and hurts the Democrats.

But I admit I expect better of Chris Hayes. Yet last night he argued to a guest that Roger Stone’s trial doesn’t establish wether or not Stone actually had a back channel.

So here we are eight months after the Barr Letter, 7 months after the Mueller Report, three and a half months after Mueller testifies and ‘even a liberal like Chris Hayes’ thinks there was no collusion. He doesn’t seem to realize that the Mueller Report had loads of evidence of collusion-Mueller didn’t feel it was enough for beyond reasonable doubt; though Mueller’s judgment in itself remains open to question.

It always strained credulity unless you’re part of the MSM punditry complex and then it somehow makes perfect sense-yes, ‘even liberals like Chris Hayes.’

But putting aside Mueller’s rank timidity-would he have been so timid if the subject were Hillary Clinton? it’s fair to ask-he did document a ton of collusion and how Chris Hayes and Friends still don’t know this you might say is a mystery trapped inside an enigma-a la the Warren Report-if it weren’t for media  expert Jay Rosen who explains it all too well-

In any case the punditry’s dismal performance the last few days post Ms. Sullivan’s imploring them to do better is disappointing though totally unsurprising it’s true. They are failing in their coverage of impeachment just as they failed on the Barr Letter, the Mueller Report, and Mueller’s testimony.

She had warned them before Mueller’s testimony and they again failed spectacularly. To this day they wrongly insist that Mueller was a dud-the dud was their own coverage and failure to learn anything.

Mueller’s style was admittedly not the most compelling but when you put together his entire testimony-particularly before Adam Schiff’s HSPCI it was awfully compelling. But this goes back to something Ezra Klein pointed out about his colleagues in 2016-the media sees it’s role not as telling Americans what’s going on but repeating back their mistaken impressions to them.

When the media isn’t informing but misinforming the public how Trump happened becomes a lot clearer. Because on the other side of the hapless punditry you have the cynical Trump GOP co-conspirator lie machine. The GOP can repeat the lie that Mueller found nothing all day because the punditry also believes this lie. And indeed, listening to many of the House Democrats, you worry that even they believe the lie-that Mueller was a dud.

Indeed the GOP will enter today’s hearing armed with it’s glittering disinformation machine. How well can the Dems neutralize it if they buy into so many of the GOP’s false premises-like that the Mueller Report was a dud? To be sure, this goes to framing-the Democrats should be linking Ukraine if you’re listening to Russia if you’re listening.

They should be making the case that Ukrainian Extortion is no surprise after Russian Collusion and that it’s all one story-after all who benefits if Ukraine is denied military aid and if the US-Ukraine relationship is reduced to a purely transactional one? Russia.

But apparently they’re not-you hear a lot of talk about how ‘Americans are tired of 2016’-another savvy MSM take no actual evidence has been shown to support but they clearly like believing it and want the public to believe it too

-and many Dems seem to buy it. If you’re daughter was raped in 2016 would your attitude today be ‘Yawnsville dude! That was like three whole years ago! Can we just look forward not backwards?’

Of course not-you’d still want to bring the rapist to justice if he hadn’t been yet. And that’s what Trump and the GOP co-conspirators-the GOP is up to it’s neck in Russian Collusion as is clear from what we’ve learned from Roger Stone’s trial; the RNC itself was involved in coordinating Wikileaks stolen email dumps.

Yet we keep hearing all this whining about how ‘the President deserves his due process.’ Uh, if he weren’t ‘President’ he’d be in the prison cell next to Michael Cohen-is that not due process enough for you?

I mean if any regular person had the evidence we already have on Trump they’d be in prison three times over-Hillary Clinton would be impeached with about .00002 of the evidence Trump-evidence that even Chris Hayes dismisses as ‘Gee we don’t know if Stone actually had his back channel. Heck for Hillary maybe Mueller would have told the truth-that this DOJ precedent is just that it’s no law and a badly argued one at that-she might very well not be just impeached but in prison. Certainly if she called for Russia, Ukraine, and now China to investigate her GOP political opponents that’d be enough for her to go to jail-heck many thing she should have gone to jail for the fake Emailgate scandal where she did nothing wrong-thanks to the MSM’s awful coverage after Comey declined to prosecute her-in his very inappropriate and indefensible presser-a poll showed that 60% of Americans nevertheless believe she should have been indicted. Yep-disinformation is a thing and it’s effective.

Talk of due process in relation to the impeachment process is a total canard-however thanks to GOP brazenness, MSM savviness, and Dem fecklessness, it’s a thing.

We even have leading Intel Committee Democrats like Eric Swalwell talking about how ‘the President needs to be treated fairly and get his due process.’

How is it possible that Swalwell doesn’t know that impeachment isn’t a criminal trial it’s more like a Grand Jury-where there is no due process?

The GOP disinformation machine will be amped up today-and the MSM seems a lost cause and it’s not clear where the Dems are-there are many positive signs coming from them too I should add and Schiff is clearly the one you want running this.

But there are so many GOP canards that will be repeated today. What about Hunter Biden? Who is the whistleblower? If the whistleblower doesn’t testify the whole process can’t be trusted and will deny ‘the President’ his fake ‘due process.’ This was all done in secret so the process can’t be saved. Zelensky himself says he didn’t feel pressure-he said he didn’t that doesn’t mean he didn’t and much of the testimony shows that he did-he kind of has to go along with Trump’s canards.

The military aid wasn’t ultimately held back so where’s the crime? None of these GOP canards are very hard to refute if you are armed with the facts. Hopefully the Dems are. Regarding the aid it was held back for a few months but once-thanks to the whistleblower it became public the public pressure forced Trump to release the aid and even outside of the aid the relationship with Ukraine has deteriorated thanks to Trump’s carrying of Putin’s water-a dimension to this that’s been ignored.

Again the opportunity to quote Oscar Wilde: the best lack all conviction while the worst among us are full of passionate intensity. 

Regarding the politics of impeachment-again the only aspect that much of the punditry seems to care about-the savvy take is bad: indeed, there was a clear tone yesterday that Trump and the GOP co-conspirators are winning the political fight and that in any case whatever happens tomorrow won’t move the needle. Talk about self defeating-it’s as if the MSM is telling Americans-tomorrow is just a partisan foodfight that you don’t care about-which just happens to be the GOP narrative.

In truth and in fact it’s quite different: we were told for the better part of a year that impeachment is bad for the Democrats and simply awesome for ‘President Trump’ and the GOP co-conspirators and then Pelosi finally reversed herself and support for impeachment rose. Most polls since have shown plurality to majority support for the inquiry-with many showing plurality to majority support for removal itself. Yet the tone of the coverage is that the fact that ‘only 52%’ of Americans support impeachment according to polls is a real problem for Democrats!

We keep hearing that this is a much more partisan era than Watergate and so it will be much harder to move the numbers. This is based on yet more ignorance of history. When the Democrats began the Watergate impeachment hearings in 1973 only 19% of the public supported impeachment-even before Pelosi came out for it support for impeachment was on average double that.

Indeed, majority support for Nixon’s removal only materialized in the Summer of 1974 post the tapes-the number who wanted Nixon gone was 57%-next to that a poll today showing 51% support for removal doesn’t look so meager.

One last point-in the debate over the length of the proceedings-should the Dems push for a quick impeachment vs. letting it drag out I’m all for dragging it out-the longer the better. In realness of truth it’s not about artificially dragging it out-Trump’s litany of impeachable offenses extends so long it will take until the next election to enumerate all of them-and that’s what the Dems should do for matters both of politics and principle-impeachment is the only mechanism capable of putting Trump in the box.

Exactly. The GOP co-conspirators argue Democrats have wanted to impeach Trump since his fake ‘election.’ Speaking for myself and many in the #Resistance-though not necessarily in the Dem elected and leadership-guilty as charged. Considering he didn’t win his election legitimately-or to use a word he’s mad for these days fairly-of course, I believed he should be impeached-obtaining the Office through illegitimate means is not only an impeachable it’s in truth the most impeachable, most foundational reason for impeachment.

Since the day after Trump and the GOP stole that election-November 10-I’ve argued the Dems ought to impeach him 11 days before the election a la the Comey Letter.

This was always something of a joke-or at least an overstatement. Indeed, Richard Burr reportedly told his GOPers that a Senate impeachment trial will go on for six to eight weeks. So the Dems clearly would want to impeach a little before 11 days-to allow this six to eight week trial to run its course. So perhaps the Dems should impeach Trump towards the end of the Summer of 2020.

FN: This is an excellent piece on the real effects of Clinton’s impeachment-if it helped Clinton this was only in the very short term. 

In the long term it hurt him and even more his wife’s political career-which is another case of how unfair the double standards around sexism are in our politics-he did the crime as it were that she was the victim of yet she’s been the one to pay the price-I certainly think it’s very arguable that if he weren’t impeached Hillary would have won-impeachment sullied the Clinton brand even if it didn’t knock him out of Office.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/13/mcconnell-cut-short-impeachment-trial-070667

Oops the MSM does it again

 

 

 

 

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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