Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Trump Has Driven CNN Stark, Raving Mad
CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski replaced beach-goer Chris Christie as the internet’s goat of the week.
While the rest of America was celebrating Independence Day, CNN kept digging its own grave.
Furious over a silly video President Donald Trump posted Sunday, the flailing network sicced Senior Editor Andrew Kaczynski on its creator. He tracked down an anonymous Reddit user who first posted the GIF of Trump tackling a wrestler whose head was replaced with a CNN logo. Kaczynski then found out the person’s real name and threatened to release it if he misbehaved again:
After posting his apology, “HanA**holeSolo” called CNN’s KFile and confirmed his identity. In the interview, “HanA**holeSolo” sounded nervous about his identity being revealed and asked to not be named out of fear for his personal safety and for the public embarrassment it would bring to him and his family.
CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s” name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.
CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.
That’s right: a Senior Editor for CNN is blackmailing an American citizen for daring to criticize them.
This isn’t Kaczynski’s first attempt at destroying a private citizen’s life. As a BuzzFeed reporter, he gained notoriety for publicizing a lame joke Tweeted by a 30-year-old PR director named Justine Sacco. As Sacco was boarding a plane from London to Cape Town, South Africa, she poked fun at many people’s poor understanding of the continent. Kaczynski decided the joke was racist and helped gin up a digital lynch mob while she was in the air for 11 hours sans internet. By the time Sacco landed, she was mobbed by reporters, was fired from her job, and had to go into hiding. [Update: Another link demonstrating Kaczynski’s role is here.]
Kaczynski’s insanity was just the latest in CNN’s string of horrible decisions related to Trump. Last week, CNN accepted the resignations of three star journalists over their retracted story falsely connecting a Trump associate to a Russian bank. Before that, CNN’s parent company helped fund a performance of Julius Caesar, in which a Trump stand-in is assassinated. In the past month, the network retracted another anti-Trump story proved false by James Comey’s testimony, fired Kathy Griffin for posing with an effigy of Trump’s decapitated head, and censured host Reza Aslan for wishing rape on a Republican congressman. Not to mention the Project Veritas videos catching CNN employees mocking Americans and admitting that the endless Russia allegations are a big nothing-burger.
For all the criticism of Trump’s self-defeating tweets, his steady attacks on CNN have provoked the network to reveal how awful they truly are. Perhaps the President can Tweet a new video in which CNN body-slams itself.
Published in General, Politics
Your point is valid, well, except for pity. They made that bed by telling lies for seven months and deserve every body-slam they get.
You got me thinking, though. What if CNN just dropped the whole Trump-Hate thing immediately and just started reporting actual news? I was watching OAN last night – Thank YOU @jon – and I realized, I am watching The News again! Not some bloviating about a fat guy sitting on the beach, not some BS about a wrestling GIF, nothing about hurt feelings at some news network, no video of the latest trans-thing Hollywood trash. No, this is The News! A flood in this city. A plane that went down. A missile was launched and there is a lot of worry about it. The was a bus crash that killed quite a few people. Our brave smoke-jumpers are having a rough July again. And so on. I really liked watching The News.
So I was thinking, what if CNN threw all the DNC Operatives out on their butts and went back to The News? I have always felt that this is what CNN always did best.
I’m pretty sure I would watch them a lot more than I do now, which is precisely zero.
Yes, I noticed this too. And if you look at his tweet stream, the tweet right before the body slam is about veterans and healthcare…oops.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/881373634585079808
Did CNN just unite the warring factions of Ricochet? I demand more insane tweets! I want em around the clock.
Boss, Aspergers will sometimes cross some wires and result in dudes who don’t want to get laid by men or women. Some others are so socially inept that they would have a hard time picking up a call girl. It also tends to make you really good at oddball tasks. It’s the Revenge of the Nerds!
Honestly, we should get these dudes into Intelligence. They are the dudes you want doing bomb damage assessment or poring over photos.
The two stories I’m familiar with, about shia labeouf:
1: He put up a livestream of a flag and open sky at an undisclosed location. In less than 24 hours they found it, and replaced it. They found it from tracking airplane contrails during the day, and star locations at night.
2: He put up another livestream from inside a rental cabin in (finland?). In less than a week they identified the cabin by matching the furniture and patterns in the wood paneling from pictures on rental sites.
This story is on the front page of lucianne.com this morning, as a “must read”:
http://lucianne.com/
Congratulations, Jon!
CNN Staff Reeling After Personal Info Leaked
But then they would lose their magic powers as wizards….
Okay, I’m feeling a little guilty about laughing. But then I remember that these people happily use the power of the press to destroy the lives of private citizens. So watching them suddenly clutching their pearls at what’s happening to them is schadenfreudelicious.
I don’t feel bad at all.
Hubris, meet Nemesis.
CNN is really dancing hard now. They issued a statement that can only be taken as a threat:
Any normal person hears that as a threat that if the behavior of the person does not comply with CNN standards, they will dox him. Now, CNN claims to be holding to a higher standard because someone has doxed them? That is like saying you will break someone’s kneecaps if they get out of line, and then saying you have the moral high ground because someone decides to hit you.
I am sorry if some staffers are being hurt. Threats of violence are not OK. However, the culture that CNN itself supports, and the culture supported by liberals is one of brown-shirt threats. Doxxing, SWATing, hounding people from jobs, are all part of the growing tools of the left. I suppose they really thought that those tools, once unleashed, would never be turned upon them. The world in which we live, is one where camps on both sides will use these tools to go after the other side. The left has been at war with the right for some time. Now that members of the right are responding in kind, the left is appalled.
I will believe the left actually cares, once they start to condemn the behavior on their own side. Until then, we will see more and more violence and threats from the right because they have been shown that these tactics work against your enemies.
That was yesterday’s threat. They had a new one today.
“The threat we issued yesterday was not a threat. And if anyone says differently, we’ll hunt them down and destroy them.”
Something like that…
“You little upstarts! How dare you do to us what we said we might do to you, before we get to do it to you!”
That’s true. I saw it in Live And Let Die with James Bond ….
Kananga was pissed!
That just went into the rhetorical tool box. Blatantly plagiarizing.
While 4chan is private. Even the Israeli military has found value in the unique capabilities of people with Autism. Here is a link to one of many stories that point out the capabilities these folks have.
The Israeli Army Unit that Recruits Teens with Autism.
The First Gulf War made CNN a powerhouse. Unfortunately, the Peter and Bernie show was political even then. So while CNN might have been better then, they were already ungood.
I wonder who CNN hired to ensure this guy’s continued ‘good’ behavior.
Any word on the rumor that the guy CNN identified wasn’t really the guy – but someone CNN picked because of the ‘newsworthyness’ of his OTHER involvement on the internet?
The current story is that someone else took his video, re-synced it back to the original sound, and changed several other things to produce the version that Trump tweeted. Given some of those changes, I personally think it’s just as likely that the second person started with the original source and made their own.
Outstanding article. If you haven’t seen The Accountant, do.
I love that movie.