The limelight where he seeks and thrives on attention,
chaos, and turmoil
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 phrase – a 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment