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UPDATE:  Some of the below is kind of timely… OTOH I did do the update on Hur so…

To quote Reagan-the illegitimate 39th, not the 40th to correct a very common error-President: there they go again. On Reagan’s illegitimacy (see chp X).

The Times has done a great deal of damage-if not for their thoroughly irresponsible 2016 coverage we may not be in the throes of a Constitutional Crisis as we speak. Not only did they foment and way overstate Emailgate but they also closed the door on Russia three days after their coverage of Comey’s letter that was so absurd, the jokesters of the Onion could never have imagined it-see picture above.

Chapter A for more.

Then there were the ominous headlines about the Clinton Foundation in September, 2016 that were later to be shown to be pure vaporizing nonsense.

As I argued in (Chapter Z) the media has done some very good investigative work on Russia-though they’ve at every point been late to the party. This comes from the general, congenital timidity of journalists-perhaps that congenital timidity is a feature not a bug in journalists who are needed to get the story right-though there are drawbacks as well in terms of groupthink and the pack mentality-so that when the media is wrong it creates a huge negative feedback loop of inaccurate information-like that Hillary Clinton was very likely to be indicted-this was always a remote possibility as we saw in (Chp W) so much so that the FBI never had any business opening the Emailgate investigation in the first place.

As to the media’s general, congenital timidity-and how it leads them to have consistently been late to the party on Russiagate, see Seth Abramson:

UPDATE: Indeed, just last week NBC News claimed yet again that Mueller is wrapping up in very short order-despite the fact that the Roger Stone trial is going to be slow walked which means it will be still going on in the Fall of 2019

UPDATE 2.0: I’d wrote this chapter originally in 2018. No doubt the constant focus on ‘is Mueller about to wrap up?’ set them up well to being duped by Barr’s fake exoneration letter in late March, 2019. To this day they still largely accept Barr’s lies at face value-‘Mueller proved no collusion’ a la Ken Dilanian cum Erik Wemple.

UPDATE 3.0 While the media definitely did some good reporting on Russian Collusion, the recurring weakness was their failure to follow up on their own leads, the “Orphan Syndrome” where important stories were never followed up on. Many in the media quickly decided the story about Manafort-Assange had cooties leading the NYT to disavow its own reporting. Even more mysterious was what happened to Daily Beast’s article that revealed Jason Wilson asserts he spoke to George Papadopoulos in a Chicago sports bar in 2018 and the Coffee Boy admitted he told Jeff Sessions what Mifsud said.

Of course, they never worried about getting ahead of their skis on Whitewater, Emailgate, or the Clinton Foundation. Why is this? Another congenital characteristic of the Beltway media is it’s Clinton Derangement Syndrome, certainly. But, it’s also the fact that the Clinton scandals were mostly ‘scandals’-faux rather than real scandals. It was never even clear what the actual scandal was in a fake scandal like Whitewater. In an way then this insulated the press from fear of getting the story wrong-it was never clear what the actual crime was in this-or in Emailgate. It was all just about Chris Cillzza’s weasel words: it just looks bad.

It’s hard to ever be shown to be wrong when what exactly the substantial allegation was in the first place is sort of hard to say. Because these phony Clinton scandals were all about ‘optics’ they were little more than a Rorschach test. The scandal was totally subjective: it just looks bad. 

But as it was totally subjective how can it ever be debunked as it’s not about matters of fact but the irrational opinions of Cokie Roberts and Maureen Dowd?

UPDATE: In fairness there is reason for a mainstream journalist to be wary. Scott Stedman who had the big scoop on Agalarvo’s purchasing a shell company in the US around the time of Donald Jr’s Trump Tower meeting yesterday, says he’s concerned that there’s a sophisticated covert effort by the GOP to discredit journalists covering the Mueller investigation.

If someone sagely opines it just looks bad how can you prove it doesn’t? As the whole thing was an exercise in tilting at windmills in the first place it’s not clear how you ever debunk it. And so the GOP operatives and eager MSM journalists who pursued these fake scandals never felt any shame after it was finally, conclusively shown to be a nothingburger-they just moved on to the next faux scandal.

Because the Clinton scandals were fake, journalists were less timid than the very real scandals of fake ‘President Trump.’

FN: Indeed as we saw in Chapter A Dean Baquet refused to do an in depth piece about ping action between Alpha Bank and Trump Tower before the election because they didn’t know the motive!

UPDATE: The fake Biden scandal Trump was trying to foment when he attempted to extort Ukraine to investigate Biden’s son is very much of this nature. You’ve seen some pundits attempt to defend the story by saying-‘Yes but Hunter Biden did do business with a company in the Ukraine which is part of a larger system of families of the powerful enjoying perks’-this pundits then try to draw an equivalence between Hunter Biden and Don Jr and Ivanka. Both sides do it… 

 

Speaking of weasel words here’s the NYTimes engaging in full Clinton Derangement Syndrome two years after it facilitated the rigging of the 2016 election for Trump. By the way, kudos to Amy Choznick  who as we saw in chapter (X)  has been the one MSM journalist willing to admit the media’s complicity with Russian interference.

These are weasel words. As I pointed out in (Chapter A), the media gives with one hand and takes back with the other when it talks about Trump’s despicable insults about women and their looks but then adds but will it matter for November? 

Those are also weasel words as they suggest that nothing is wrong unless it hurts your election chances. What a blatant apology for the GOP’s sociopathy-it was a smart political strategy calling these women names as Hey-I won, we won! 

Similarly the Times engages in weasel words. Hillary Clinton has earned her right to share her views on anything she wants. Great-I’m sure she appreciates the permission after all her years of public service. But then the Times takes it back-she has the right to give her opinion unless we deem it too close to the election. 

UPDATE: As so often is the case the alleged smart take of the Savvy MSM was anything but-the Dems went on to the biggest landslide win in history-by percentage, bigger than the Watergate Dems of 1974. Contrary to the handwringing of the punditry Clinton’s voicing her opinion so close to an election wasn’t a factor.

The media has done some very good investigative work on Russia the last few years.

FN: Though as we argued above and in more depth in Chapters A and B what’s been lacking is any effort to put the 200 bombshell stories on Trump Russia collusion together-every story is treated as a stanadlone that ignores the previous 199 stories.

But as documented in (Chapter B) for some reason they started to regress during the Kavanaugh fight. They picked up the GOP framing and ran with it: this was a he said she said and so there’s really no way to prove or disprove it and so you just have to plow Kavanaugh through because anything less violates his ‘due process’-in truth, of course, this had nothing to do with due process it was a job interview for a lifetime appointment to the highest Court in the land.

FN: Is the Kavanaugh discussion below “timely” and misplaced in this chapter?

But the media ditched subtlety and context in the Kavanaugh fight-it was he said-she said, never mind all the other witnesses and Mitch McConnell sure has a good point-why did Diane Feinstein ‘hide’ these allegations until September? That’s an outrage. As noted in (Chapter B) they failed to note either than Kavanaugh himself had hidden the fact he knew about Debbie Ramirez’s allegations against him before Trump nominated him in July or that Mitch McConnell has permanently forfeited his right to indignation on any issue of process after what he did to Obama and Merrick Garland.

Since then the media has been mostly on a triumphalist jaunt about how great the GOP’s November chances are post Kavanaugh- apparently they don’t look at generic polls-as well as acting like we’re back to slow news days.

This is why the last two years of constant bombshells has actually been salutary in effect-the thing you never want to give the Beltway press is a few slow news days-the absence of real scandal enables them to work in concocting fake scandals.

Yes, as we saw in (Chapter B) the media has been roused by Warren daring to fight back. As noted in the chapter (is the Democratic party a girl?) the media tends to get very cool when the Democrats show any sign of playing hardball-from the GOP it’s expected but darn it the Democrats are supposed to be better than that. 

FN: This FN could also go in either the ‘is the Democratic Party a Girl? Chapter or the Northam chapter.

Post Warren’s apology-ironic that Warren but not Trump was felt to owe Native Americans an apology; evidently the media doesn’t consider ‘Pocohantas’ something Trump should apologize for but rather ‘a smart political strategy.’  I was struck watching Don Lemon’s CNN show last night-he had four guests on discussing Ralph Northam.

FN: Warren was able to transcend this fake scandal and then some. No one remembers it now and if the futures markets are to be believed she has as high as a 50% chance at being the Dem nominee.

This sort of jibes with Michelle Goldberg’s idea I discussed Chapter A that the Democratic party is a girl and while it’s politicians behave badly far less often when they do they are condemned much more harshly. Indeed, even April Ryan-who often seems to me a little reserved in speaking personally about racism declared that after 400 years of slavery Northam just needs to resign. 

I’m not saying Ryan’s wrong  to raise the bloody shirt of 400 years of slavery but I’ve never seen her speak anywhere near that vehemently about it before-in the too many to count times Trump has said/done something racist. But again, if she feels that strongly about it why doesn’t say the same thing about ‘President Trump?’ who was endorsed by the KKK and when questioned about it pretended to never have heard of ‘any white supremacists’ before?

Like with the new media meme of demanding Clinton demand her husband resign 20 years after the fact, the different standard for the parties couldn’t be clearer-if simply having a consensual affair with a subordinate is enough to demand a President’s resignation, well Trump has been accused of far worse-20 allegations of harassment and assault; these are just the women willing to publicly. Yet April Ryan and friends keep cooing ‘President Trump.’

So the narrative was that somehow Warren’s troll of Trump somehow endangered the Dems chances next month. I personally as a charter member of the Blue Wave who regularly speaks with other charter members have not come across anyone saying ‘I was so fired up to end Trump’s legitimacy crisis and hold him accountable but after what Elizabeth Warren did that I’m staying home…’

Now the allegedly post gender media is going after another strong, redoubtable female-Hillary Clinton for having the temerity to tell the truth-the GOP does understand nothing but strength. If you doubt this you must have missed the entire Kavanaugh fight. This is why in (Chapter C) where I discuss this in more detail, I argue that the one thing the Dems must not do again is Obama’s decision to let Trump and his GOP co-conspirators off the hook-no prosecutions, no investigations, no hearings.

The Democrats got no credit for being such nice guys-or per (Chapter B)-perhaps we should say nice girls. Quite to the contrary, all the Dems did was enable the GOP to quickly regroup and recover their reputation in time to obstruct him at every turn, deliberately slowing the recovery by not supporting stimulus measures. Then the GOP totally took back the government over the next 10 years.

The last 18 years-going back to the rigged election of George W. Bush has has GOP domination of the House with the Dems having just the four years from 2006 to 2010.

Regarding Obama, obviously the GOP had zero gratification for his gesture, to the contrary they saw his charitableness as weakness-ie, Hillary is right, they respect only strength; this is true of all bullies. The Dems must not make the same mistake again.

UPDATE: The recent Robert Hur fiasco drives this point home once again. This is the result of the Biden-Garland Miss Congeniality offensive-their institutionalist fallacy. That Robert Hur’s absurd 260 page report coming to the conclusion that-Biden is 81!-was always going to be the logical conclusion of Biden’s congenital inability to play procedural and institutional hardball-this same inability is behind his failure to put stronger conditions with Netanyahu’s Israel.

Chapter A for more…

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