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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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Chris Wallace is an exceptional interviewer, and Shepard Smith and Bret Baier are reality-based news anchors.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about the overall problem of Fox News, which started out with bad intentions in 1996 and has swiftly devolved into what often amounts to a propaganda network for a dishonest president and his allies.
The network, which attracts more viewers than its two major competitors, specializes in fearmongering and unrelenting alarmism. Remember “the caravan”?
At crucial times, it does not observe basic standards of journalistic practice: as with its eventually retracted, false reporting in 2017 on Seth Rich, which fueled conspiracy theories that Hillary Clinton had the former Democratic National Committee staffer killed because he was a source of campaign leaks.
Fox, you might recall, was a welcoming haven for “birtherism” — the racist lies about President Barack Obama’s birthplace. For years, it has constantly, unfairly and inaccurately bashed Hillary Clinton.
And its most high-profile personality, Sean Hannity, is not only a close confidant of President Trump but appeared with him onstage at a campaign rally last year.
Given First Amendment protections, Fox News can do pretty much what it wants on the air. It can shrug at Hannity’s excesses. It can allow https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/08/24/tucker-carlsons-rhetoric-on-immigrants-and-crime-is-wildly-misleading/ (Tucker Carson’s misleading rants) on immigrants and crime. It can constantly undermine special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Trump.
But for mainstream journalists to suggest that there be no consequences or even recognition is willfully blind — and smacks of an unseemly inside-the-Beltway solidarity.
What Fox News has become is destructive. To state the obvious: Democracy, if it’s going to function, needs to be based on a shared set of facts, and the news media’s role is to seek out and deliver those facts.
Most news organizations take that seriously, though they may flounder badly at times. When they do, they generally try to correct themselves — that’s why you see editor’s notes, lengthy corrections, on-air acknowledgments, suspensions and even firings of errant news people.
Not at Fox News.
The rule at Fox is to stonewall outside inquiries, and to close ranks around its rainmakers.
And, of course, to double down on its mission, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/06/boycotting-fox-news-democrats-get-one-big-thing-right/?utm_term=.286083109ff8 (described aptly) by my colleague Greg Sargent: “Fox News is fundamentally in the business of spreading disinformation, as opposed to conservative reportage.” And that disinformation “is plainly about deceiving millions into believing that core functionings of our government — whether law enforcement or congressional oversight — no longer have any legitimacy.”
So, yes, Fox News can continue to function as something close to Trump TV. It can go on spreading disinformation.
But everyone ought to see it for what it is: Not a normal news organization with inevitable screw-ups, flaws and commercial interests, which sometimes fail to serve the public interest.
But a shameless propaganda outfit, which makes billions of dollars a year as it chips away at the core democratic values we ought to hold dear: truth, accountability and the rule of law.
Despite the skills of a few journalists who should have long ago left the network in protest, Fox News has become an American plague.
I know that Bob Mueller is a saint and above reproach but amid the greatest scandal in American history, the clear betrayal of the US by a president and his team, traitorous acts, there is a growing perception nothing wrong was done.
That's because of the way this case has been made to date. That could change with shocking developments. But if the case ends up this way, we may change our view of this process.
Some of this has to do with the success the president has had in making the case that collusion--not a crime--had to be proven or this case was a witch hunt. It's preposterous and is not only a disservice to justice but it is an aid to our enemies.
We are looking at the possibility that apparently it is possible to drive a freight train of crimes on a mission to undermine democracy in American and to weaken our country through legal loopholes and blindspots in our justice system.
This travesty is compounded by the fact that the Constitutional remedy for such crimes is unlikely given the complicity of the GOP Senate. Donald Trump may be our worst president ever and the greatest threat the US faces but he will have one major achievement on his record:
He will have proven that in America in 2019 a man--if rich enough, if supported by the right men and institutions--can be above the law, far above it and can rise to the highest office in the land on the back of serial crimes, espionage and conspiracy with our enemies.
This may be an over-reaction to the shocking, absurd and unjust Manafort sentencing. But there is not only a narrative emerging that supports the above concerns but that the people advancing that narrative are growing more confident about it.
If that is how this plays out--with no comment being made about the sincerity of the effort of prosecutors--our system will have turned a corner and we will have begun an irreversible decline as a society. Those are the stakes.
If Trump and those closest to him get away with the theft of an election and their wanton disregard for the law and the interests of the American people, we should stop playing the national anthem when the flag is raised and start playing taps for what we will have lost.
Thread by @djrothkopf: "I know that Bob Mueller is a saint and above reproach but amid the greatest scandal in American history, the clear betrayal of the US by a p […]"
That's because of the way this case has been made to date. That could change with shocking developments. But if the case ends up this way, we may change our view of this process.
Some of this has to do with the success the president has had in making the case that collusion--not a crime--had to be proven or this case was a witch hunt. It's preposterous and is not only a disservice to justice but it is an aid to our enemies.
We are looking at the possibility that apparently it is possible to drive a freight train of crimes on a mission to undermine democracy in American and to weaken our country through legal loopholes and blindspots in our justice system.
This travesty is compounded by the fact that the Constitutional remedy for such crimes is unlikely given the complicity of the GOP Senate. Donald Trump may be our worst president ever and the greatest threat the US faces but he will have one major achievement on his record:
He will have proven that in America in 2019 a man--if rich enough, if supported by the right men and institutions--can be above the law, far above it and can rise to the highest office in the land on the back of serial crimes, espionage and conspiracy with our enemies.
This may be an over-reaction to the shocking, absurd and unjust Manafort sentencing. But there is not only a narrative emerging that supports the above concerns but that the people advancing that narrative are growing more confident about it.
If that is how this plays out--with no comment being made about the sincerity of the effort of prosecutors--our system will have turned a corner and we will have begun an irreversible decline as a society. Those are the stakes.
If Trump and those closest to him get away with the theft of an election and their wanton disregard for the law and the interests of the American people, we should stop playing the national anthem when the flag is raised and start playing taps for what we will have lost.
Thread by @djrothkopf: "I know that Bob Mueller is a saint and above reproach but amid the greatest scandal in American history, the clear betrayal of the US by a p […]"
The documents leaked to the Oversight Committee provide detailed information on the timeline for how Kushner's and Trump's security clearances were approved and who the people were involved in processing and the final decision.
- One document, obtained by Axios, provides some details about why Kushner's security clearance was changed to "interim" in September 2017: "Per conversation with WH counsel the clearance was changed to interim Top Secret until we can confirm that the DOJ or someone else actually granted a final clearance. This action was taken out of an abundance of caution because the background investigation has not been completed."
- Feb. 23, 2018: "Clearance downgraded to Interim Secret per COS direction" — then-chief of staff John Kelly.
"When you are no longer needed to build wealth and power for the capitalist oligarchs, your numbers will be systematically reduced through healthcare policy, food scarcity, drug addiction, war, unheralded mass sterilization, and justified despair, as we all know."
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