Sunday, February 11, 2018

Great Read With Caveat: For Open-Minded Who Trust Facts Not GOP — FOX Spin

The limelight where he seeks and thrives on attention, 
chaos, and turmoil

Ezra Klein’s VOX.com article with this headline is stunningly great:

“Donald Trump, Fox News, and the logic of alternative facts”

Sub title: “The Nunes’ memo and the FBI texts gave Trump the alternative story he needed.”

My Introduction: This Vox article to date is probably the best analysis about the current domestic political shenanigans in the Trump administration that I have ever seen or read. I would would consider it “a must read.” 

It gives a clear and coherent understanding in a fact-proven format that is easy to follow. It lays out all the wrong we see today in this White House and with this president and those like FOX who pad and prod and prop him up (even proven by Trump’s own words about how Great Fox and Friends is) and of course from the actors around Mr. Trump who fluff him daily to keep him content – all in the end undermine of our values, rights, freedoms, and trust we hold dearly about our government and our time-proven system even with all the warts and scars.

This administration is by far the worse I have ever seen in my lifetime – and I have seen plenty. I'm also pretty certain that millions like me hold that same view.

Here a few highlights from the article (boxed with my emphasis) that I favor and cherry picked that are excellent, but you will have to read the whole article, top to bottom, to get the full whole flavor, and believe me, you’ll enjoy every drop of it.

First there was the memo from Rep. Devin Nunes, which Sean Hannity hyped would reveal a scandal “worse than Watergate” but proved a dud upon release.

Instead of corroborating a conservative line that the case against President Donald Trump was politically motivated, it instead confirmed the New York Times’s reporting that the FBI’s inquiry began with Trump adviser George Papadopoulos’s loose talk.

Then there were new text messages between FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her lover Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who later served on, and was then fired from, Robert Mueller’s probe. Page and Strzok’s past personal texts showed they hoped Trump would lose the election. The new set included a provocative line: Then-President Obama wants “to know everything we’re doing,” Page said.

Conservative reaction was instantaneous. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said the texts revealed “Obama’s personal involvement in the Clinton email scandal and the FBI investigation of it.”

House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said  “It means the president [Obama] wants to know what they’re doing to stop Trump.”

Trump himself tweeted: “NEW FBI TEXTS ARE BOMBSHELLS!”

All of this proved wrong.

Cite: 

Think Progress’s Judd Legum noted, the date of the texts — September 2, 2016 was after the initial investigation into Clinton’s emails was closed and before the discovery of emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop (which happened on September 28, 2016, and briefly led to the Clinton investigation being reopened).

The Wall Street Journal then reported that the texts referred “to preparation to brief Mr. Obama about Russian interference in that year’s election.” That aligns with the public timeline: We know Obama confronted Vladimir Putin about Russia’s election meddling on September 4, during the September 2016 G20 meeting, so it makes sense that he was being briefed a few days before that.


Then Fox News dropped a report on February 8 showing that in March 2017, Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who has been helping lead the Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, texted with a Russian oligarch in order to get information on, and potentially meet with, Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous Russia dossier. It isn’t clear what wrongdoing this is supposed to show it’s reasonable enough that a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee would have wanted to interview Steele, given that his work was influential — but it elicited a predictable Trump tweet:

Wow! - Senator Mark Warner got caught having extensive contact with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch. Warner did not want a “paper trail” on a “private” meeting (in London) he requested with Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame. All tied into Crooked Hillary.”  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2018

But, less predictable was Sen. Marco Rubio’s sharp response, accusing both Trump and Fox News of trying to spin a scandal out of nothing, and noting that Warner didn’t “get caught.” 

He’d told the Intelligence Committee exactly what he was doing. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweet: “Sen. Warner fully disclosed this to the committee four months ago. Has had zero impact on our work.”



Fox News knew that Warner had disclosed the texts to the committee but didn’t mention it until the seventh paragraph of the story, and didn’t explain that Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chair of the Intelligence Committee, was aware of Warner’s efforts until the very end of the story.

One way of looking at this past week is as a failure for the conservative spin machine. All three stories crumbled upon contact with the barest scrutiny, embarrassing the outlets and politicians that credulously or cynically promoted them.  The other way of looking at it is as a stunning success, one that gave Trump and his defenders exactly what they wanted.

Their logic of alternative facts.

And, we all know who the Queen of Alternative Facts is, right? (Recall this clip when Conway introduced that phrasea moment in history for sure):


Finally, as I said this is a super article from Vox – please continue from top to bottom to get the full flavor and thanks for stopping by.

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