UPDATE: Should there be a separate chapter on Nate Silver’s deep dive on Comey Letter costing Trump the election? I feel like I might already have written such a chapter-I know I covered it in other chapters? find out…

Also is this chapter clear that the central crime of Trump was the breach of campaign law to conceal information from the public?

One of the central theories of this book is that the MSM has a lot to answer for in its 2016 coverage. And this case of Trump’s $130K payoff to a porn star before the election is a very fitting illustration of the media’s biased  anti Clinton coverage.

It’s ironic when you think about it how much the MSM has in common with the FBI. In both cases the GOP accuses them of anti Trump bias when the record demonstrates conclusively, the exact opposite is the case.

In the case of the FBI, the email probe was ‘maybe maybe not reopened’ on October 28, 2016 in a move that handed the election to Donald Trump. 

We subsequently learned that the FBI is known by many within as Trumpland.

And yet, the GOP has been telling this hilarious counter-narrative that, really, the bias was pro Clinton-though the actions of the FBI cost her the election.

At the same time the FBI was breaking its own rules on talking about the email probe 11 days before an election, they were totally mum over Russia.

FN: Of course it’d be funny if it weren’t so serious-the DOJ is now trying to indict Andy McCabe-for clearly political reasons despite the claim that it’s because McCabe kicked Clinton in the teeth yet again three days after the Comey letter. It ought to be remembered the reason that McCabe leaked this story-which, again, hurt Clinton not Trump on top of the Comey letter-to push back on Trump’s misleading and despicable attacks on McCabe as a partisan hack based on his wife’s campaign.

McCabe chose the wrong way to fight back it’s true but pretty rich that Trump who’s demagogic and false attacks on McCabe led him to take this action is now trying to prosecute him. If the FBI was Trumpland in 2016 what is it now? I’m guessing much worse-the IG has largely become yet another Trump political arm-how else do you explain that they still haven’t released the report on the rogue FBI agents leaking against Clinton and forcing Comey’s hand while they have time to go after Peter Strozk, Andy McCabe, and James Comey?

End of FN

And the MSM is in the same boat. They, as well, have been very unfairly accused of anti Trump bias where-like the FBI-they did everything they could during the campaign to help Donald Trump by tearing down his opponent.

We say the Comey letter won the election for Trump but should add that the media itself provided no little assist. If their coverage wasn’t so like this

The Comey letter might not have taken her down.

Meanwhile with the news of this $130K payment we now know the media knew of and yet didn’t report:

1. About the Steele Dossier-

FN: Ok so it was ‘unverified’ but do you honestly believe this would have stopped them from discussing it if the Dossier was about Hillary Clinton? If so we have some Trump diplomas for you…

2. The porn star he paid $130K to quiet her about an affair they had in 2006.

UPDATE: Or the $150,000 he paid in hush money to Karen McDougal to keep her quiet about their affair.

3. There’s also the case where a woman alleged Trump raped her as a 13 year old that the MSM also chose to go dark on.

I understand the woman refused to go public but why not admit the charges had been made?

No doubt the media folks will claim their hands were tied-ignoring their own power of discretion once again. As Ezra Klein noted, this is a defining characteristic of the media-to pretend to have no discretion in which stories they choose to amplify and which they don’t.

My hypothesis is that if the shoe were on the other foot-if any of the above three related to the Clintons it would be front page news ASAP. I say this because of how many absurd non scandals about the Clintons have been fomented by the media. They never needed smoking gun evidence when it concerned the Clintons.

FN: The particular accusation in question was from a woman who was-understandably-scared of speaking publicly. But more recently we’ve seen women come forward publicly to accuse Trump of sexual assault and the Beltway has buried the story after a few days in each case.

In one case we had a campaign staffer claim he forcibly kissed her in 2016-so the excuse that it was just so long ago so just forget it-doesn’t apply-of course even in the 1990s Whitewater happened so long ago and the MSM never lost interest in it and it ultimately led to his impeachment and many editorial pages demanding Clinton resign-compare this to the way the ‘smartset’ has treated the Mueller Report’s much more serious findings: time to move on nobody cares voters care about kitchen table issues period. 

Then a reporter publicly accused him of raping her in 2012-again the Beltway covered it for a few days-though less so on cable news-and then it was as if it never happened.

End FN.

Throughout the entire election every possible real or imagined negative  story and accusation against Hillary was trotted out no matter how big a reach. When the NY Times could find nothing nefarious at the Clinton Foundation they nevertheless published a huge article about it suggesting that ‘while nothing has been proven it just looks bad…’ Evidently Chris Cillizza was their editor on that one.

They even took issue with Bill Clinton for working a rescue mission for two American journalists being held in North Korea. It seems someone wanted help getting a passport. This person-Doug Band-didn’t get the help.

But the Times seemed to think it was a huge scandal that he thought he could get such help, even though he didn’t.

Matt Yglesias says it well:

The New York Times’ latest Clinton Foundation “scandal” may be the dumbest one yet.”

The Times headline was dire:

“Emails Raise New Questions About Clinton Foundation’s Ties to State Dept.”

Back to Yglesias:

“Well, beneath the huffing and puffing, here it is:

• In March 2009, two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, were arrested in North Korea.
• In June of that year, they were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.
• Around July 24-25, as a result of complex multisided negotiations, Bill Clinton agreed to travel to North Korea as a kind of official unofficial emissary who the Koreans could regard as a high-level envoy but who the Americans could say was simply a private citizen on a humanitarian mission.
• Bill Clinton, naturally, wanted to take some staff with him on the trip to Pyongyang.
• On July 27, Doug Band, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton who headed up an arm of the Clinton Foundation, emailed Huma Abedin asking if he and some other staffers could have diplomatic passports for the purposes of the trip.
• “The State Department never issued the passport,” according to Lichtblau, because “only department employees and others with diplomatic status are eligible for the special passports, which help envoys facilitate travel.”

“It’s common at this point in the Clinton Foundation pseudo-scandal cycle for the person in my position to point out that there’s no quid pro quo and no evidence of wrongdoing, and then for the skeptics to say that corruption can take more insidious forms than a quid pro quo. But honestly, what questions does this raise?”

“It certainly doesn’t raise the question of whether Clinton Foundation staff got special access to passports from the State Department. It answers the question. They didn’t, as the story says.”

“Nor does this raise any questions about conflicts of interest with donors or use of foundation resources for private gain. Bill Clinton was doing a little statesman-like work. His staff hoped that, in light of his close personal ties to the secretary of state, he could do that work with official diplomatic credentials. They were told no.”

“There is no scandal. There is no question. There’s only the presumption of guilt and the Clinton Rules.”

Indeed.

In 2016 the media had the Clinton Rules and the Trump Rules. The Trump Rules were that things that would be considered felonies for a normal politician were treated like a jaywalking offense for Trump. The Clinton Rules were that things that would be considered a jaywalking offense for most politicians were treated like felonies for Hillary Clinton.

FN: As noted in Chapter Abnormalization?

But even the elevation of the American Hitler was not enough for the MSM to reconsider it’s dangerous false equivalence.

That Trump is the beneficiary of a more gentle standard is clear from MSM reaction to this latest bombshell-the media is already telling us ‘this is no big deal.’

“Analysis: Why the latest allegations of a Trump affair are unlikely to hurt the tabloid president.”

Even amid all the increased attention to sexual assault and sexual harassment in the wake of allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and scores of other entertainers, executives, actors and politicians, the latest story about Trump doesn’t fit the pattern.”

Even if it were in this case, he has been accused many times of attempts at coercive sexual activity. This is the mistake so often made with Trump’s latest bombshell: treating them as a one off rather than seeing them in the context of a larger pattern.

That differentiates it from President Clinton’s relationship with 22-year-old intern Monica Lewinsky in 1996 — a story that exploded into the mainstream news cycle 20 years ago this week and ultimately led to Clinton’s impeachment and disbarment.”

Exactly. The Clinton example proves the point: Trump gets a much more gentle standard while anyone named ‘Clinton’ always got a much harsher standard. With Bill the fact that Lewinsky was consensual was waved away-‘But he was her boss. Could she really have turned him down if she’d wanted to?’

In Clinton’s case a consensual affair was treated like an impeachable offense and in Trump’s case it’s ‘Well this time it was consensual so it’s ok…’

And again, those dismissing this story are treating it as an isolated one off-in this case it was consensual…’

Rather than in the larger context of the various accusations of coercive sexual actions he’s been the subject of.

And this also sheds new light on the allegations of Kompromat in the Steele Dossier-ironically that it touches on the SD, another story the MSM chose to sit on for Trump but would have released if it related to Hillary prior to the election.

If nothing else this episode shows it’s not hard to blackmail Trump. Indeed, a big recent story has been that a number of women who accused him of misconduct have since be paid off.

3/ Before Trump was POTUS—in the 90 days before the election—he or his allies paid over a quarter of a million dollars to two women to keep them quiet. But when you're POTUS, your blackmailers don't ask for money. They ask for things only a president can give. This is dangerous.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 20, 2018

How much blackmail has Trump already paid the Russians?

Speaking of affairs Michael Wolff just told Bill Maher that Trump may be having an affair right now. 

President Trump may be having an extramarital affair in the White House, according to the latest bombshell claim from “Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff.

Wolff said Friday on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” that he was “absolutely sure” of such a tryst, but acknowledged that he lacked “ultimate proof.”

“I didn’t have the blue dress,” Wolff told Maher, referring to the key piece of evidence from Bill Clinton’s notorious Oval Office dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.

The author said he’d even planted a clue in his controversial best-seller.

“You’ll know it,” he said. “Now that I’ve told you, when you hit that paragraph, you’ll say, ‘Bingo.’”

Wolf later added that there were “back doors” at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., saying, “If I can get into the White House, porn stars can get into the White House.”

The claim took social media by storm, with viewers speculating on the identity of Trump’s alleged paramour.”

Speaking of speculation, Seth Abramson offered up some:

At this point it's mere speculation, but Michael Wolff has said that a paragraph toward the back of FIRE AND FURY reveals who Trump's current mistress is (an affair that opens the president up to blackmail) and many online are insisting that THIS is the paragraph Wolff refers to: pic.twitter.com/qVRiPjZ5yX

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 20, 2018

UPDATE: It’s amazing how wrong the Savvy’s ‘smart take’ was in this episode-Trump has been an un-indicted co-conspirator since late 2018 thanks to his hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and Michael Cohen is now serving a three year prison term for payments Trump directed him to make that benefitted Trump and not himself.

FN: Certainly the idea that Haley was his girlfriend at that time-and no further evidence on this emerged-is ironic to say the least in retrospect-according to some polls most Haley primary voters say they will vote for Biden.

As to wether Trump will ever be punished for his own crime of directing Cohen someone-probably Bill Barr-killed the potential SDNY case against Trump. That leaves Congress-impeachment is an indictment of Trump’s fake ‘Presidency’-while a criminal indictment would be of Trump as a fake ‘man’-Individual One. In that sense contrary to what many seem to think-even apparently Speaker Pelosi-impeachment is more important than criminal indictment-it’s Trump’s fake ‘Presidency’ that needs to be expunged. Throwing him out of Office is the necessary but not sufficient goal-he must also be exorcised from the Office.

The House Dems-certainly the Judiciary Dems-do seem now to be ramping up their investigations and impeachment push. Judiciary is investigating the hush money payments. However, even here there are questions. Stormy Daniels has agreed to testify yet Nadler has yet to confirm they even want to hear from her-can’t imagine why they wouldn’t yet they have yet to say that they would.

It was hard to imagine Richard Neal wouldn’t want to see the NY tax returns-especially as he blew our chance to see the federal returns before the election. But he didn’t.

FN: In retrospect while Ms. Daniels would never testify before Congress, it turns out the Judiciary Dems had composed 10 articles of impeachment in August, 2019-prior to the blowing up of a new scandal-Ukrainian Extortion. Meanwhile, for her party, Stormy Daniels has a big day coming up Monday, April 15 when she testifies in Alvin Bragg’s SDNY case.

While the MSM dismissed Stormy Daniels-a nothingburger two day story at best about a consensual affair-we’ve seen that in general the Beltway has been awful in terms of covering stories of Trump’s sexual misconduct. While the MSM dismissed Stormy Daniels ostensibly because it was consensual they also failed to cover an allegation of Trump raping a woman when she was 13. In that case the ostensible reason was she wasn’t willing to make the accusation publicly.

I was always skeptical this was the real reason rather than another convenient excuse-any story is always going to have some convenient excuse like that. And now my skepticism has been confirmed-we have seen two allegations of assault against Trump this year that the Savvy Press has covered for about a day-at least print online journalism-less so on cable news-and then dropped never to mention again-the accusation of a campaign staffer Trump kissed her on the trail in 2016 and of a journalist that Trump raped her in 2012. 

In both these cases the accuser was willing to make the accusation publicly and both were serious allegations of assault-and outright rape in the case of Jean Carrol. There was no good excuse for the MSM to ignore either of these stories so they ignored them without offering any explanation.

The MSM is just very timid regarding allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump-as opposed to their eagerness regarding Bill Clinton. One reason beyond the clear and rabid anti Clinton bias is they’re scared of Trump’s legal team that makes lots of threats of lawsuits. If only we had any journalists with even an ounce of courage they ought to call Trump’s bluff and make him go to discovery.

But just as Trump was able to bully Mueller out of not just an interview for himself but apparently his namesake son, so he has been able to bully the MSM out of covering anything regarding sexual misconduct. Meanwhile Kirsten Gillibrand is less interested in demanding Trump’s resignation than she was in demanding it for Al Franken and Bill Clinton-maybe if that weren’t the case her campaign wouldn’t have imploded before it ever started.