Conspiracy Theories and Flawed Journalism

 

In case you haven’t been paying attention, Donald Trump has once again stirred up a hornet’s nest with one of his tweets, this time concerning the death of Lori Klausutis, an employee of then-Congressman Joe Scarborough. The story in a nutshell is that Klausutis, an otherwise fit young woman of 28, died in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach office from a head injury she sustained when passing out due to an undiagnosed heart condition. It has been a favorite topic among conspiracy theorists for almost 20 years.

The medical examiner’s report should have been the end of it. After all, the outcome of the autopsy was perfectly reasonable. But then several things got in the way. One, the medical examiner that made the ruling turned out to be a bit of a crackpot, arrested a decade later for illegally keeping stolen body parts in a South Florida storage facility. Secondly, Scarborough himself hasn’t helped. Here he is joking about the incident on Don Imus’ nationally syndicated radio show while pushing the launch of a show on MSNBC:

That was in 2003. Laughter is a strange reaction from someone who said it was outrageous rumors that caused him to resign his seat in Congress.

The reactions to Trump’s tweet has been predictable enough. But like so many of the other outrages of the Trump era, the anger is either misplaced or counterproductive. Like the political class that wishes to ignore their own complicity in Trump’s rise to the Oval Office, likewise the press wishes to ignore their own complicity in making the truth a rare commodity in the so-called “age of information.” If you spend three years rumor-mongering about Russia collusion theories and the backgrounds of Supreme Court nominees it’s difficult to take your objections to the President’s tweets seriously. In the end the reality of your headline is “Noted Victim of Conspiracy Theories Shares His Own Conspiracy Theories.”

Someone on Twitter framed the situation thusly: There is no difference between a “conspiracy theory” and “fake news.” That, of course, is nonsense. Conspiracy theories are partly based on the experience that the application of the law is too often double-tiered, with one set of rules for ordinary citizens and another for the well-connected. This is universal. Those on the right see privilege born of political power, those on the left see it as being the result of wealth and race.

In that regard, most conspiracy theories are organic, born of curiosity and mistrust, and perpetuated because the ordinary citizen doesn’t have the resources to disprove them. That makes “fake news” ten times worse. It’s not amateur bumbling, it’s professional malpractice. They have the resources and the skill but lack the motivation and therefore the effort to provide the most truthful reporting possible.

All good reporters and the best stories begin with theories and the simple question, “What if…” It’s the ability to follow through and the willingness to be convinced that dead ends aren’t wasted that makes a good journalist.

But there is also a basic flaw in journalism that needs to be addressed: the two source rule. In an era where elements of the Federal Government are actively trying to undermine and overturn the results of elections the standard for printing or broadcasting, an item needs to be higher than that. As the folks at Fusion GPS demonstrated, finding two or more people to tell the same lie in order to get that lie into the papers and on-air is an awfully easy thing to accomplish.

Fundamentally, a functioning press would be able to able to throttle conspiracy theories without breaking a sweat. But that takes trust from the public-at-large, something that the profession of journalism has willingly abandoned in the pursuance of political goals.

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  1. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins: If you have evidence that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump, please produce it. Otherwise please withdraw your allegation that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump.

    Gary, in November of 2017 Scarborough wrote an editorial for the Washington Post promising Mueller was about to prove Trump was a Russian asset. Accusing the President of being an agent of a foreign hostile power is within your boundaries of civility? If it is you have a strange definition of civility.

    A $10 gift card to Whataburger is yours if you get him to demonstrate half an ounce of intellectual honesty with respect to Biden’s treatment of the truck driver.

    • #61
  2. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    23 data points that a $35m investigation revealed to be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

    • #62
  3. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins: If you have evidence that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump, please produce it. Otherwise please withdraw your allegation that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump.

    Gary, in November of 2017 Scarborough wrote an editorial for the Washington Post promising Mueller was about to prove Trump was a Russian asset. Accusing the President of being an agent of a foreign hostile power is within your boundaries of civility? If it is you have a strange definition of civility.

    I think that you overstated the conclusion. Here is the column. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-trump-so-obsessed-with-russia-were-finally-going-to-find-out/2017/11/02/8ba33bba-bff5-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html There are 23 data points in the column. Given those data points, one could legitimately come to that conclusion.

    The norms were destroyed before Donald Trump.  And since 2016 he has been slandered, vilified, lied about by Democrats and the media, including Scarborough, all of whom wanted to perpetuate the Russia hoax and had no interest in any information contradicting their phony narrative.  And that’s only one of many phony narratives they’ve created about the President. Meanwhile, every Republican learned when they saw what happened with Brett Kavanaugh that the lies and slanders weren’t just for Trump, it was for all of them.  If you think Trump going away is going to restore normality and comity you are deluded.

    • #63
  4. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins: If you have evidence that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump, please produce it. Otherwise please withdraw your allegation that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump.

    Gary, in November of 2017 Scarborough wrote an editorial for the Washington Post promising Mueller was about to prove Trump was a Russian asset. Accusing the President of being an agent of a foreign hostile power is within your boundaries of civility? If it is you have a strange definition of civility.

    I think that you overstated the conclusion. Here is the column. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-trump-so-obsessed-with-russia-were-finally-going-to-find-out/2017/11/02/8ba33bba-bff5-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html There are 23 data points in the column. Given those data points, one could legitimately come to that conclusion.

    The norms were destroyed before Donald Trump. And since 2016 he has been slandered, vilified, lied about by Democrats and the media, including Scarborough, all of whom wanted to perpetuate the Russia hoax and had no interest in any information contradicting their phony narrative. And that’s only one of many phony narratives they’ve created about the President. Meanwhile, every Republican learned when they saw what happened with Brett Kavanaugh that the lies and slanders weren’t just for Trump, it was for all of them. If you think Trump going away is going to restore normality and comity you are deluded.

    It’ll all be fine once Republicans get back to business as usual.

    thank you sir may i have another - Google Search (With images ...

     

    • #64
  5. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins: If you have evidence that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump, please produce it. Otherwise please withdraw your allegation that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump.

    Gary, in November of 2017 Scarborough wrote an editorial for the Washington Post promising Mueller was about to prove Trump was a Russian asset. Accusing the President of being an agent of a foreign hostile power is within your boundaries of civility? If it is you have a strange definition of civility.

    I think that you overstated the conclusion. Here is the column. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-trump-so-obsessed-with-russia-were-finally-going-to-find-out/2017/11/02/8ba33bba-bff5-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html There are 23 data points in the column. Given those data points, one could legitimately come to that conclusion.

    The norms were destroyed before Donald Trump. And since 2016 he has been slandered, vilified, lied about by Democrats and the media, including Scarborough, all of whom wanted to perpetuate the Russia hoax and had no interest in any information contradicting their phony narrative. And that’s only one of many phony narratives they’ve created about the President. Meanwhile, every Republican learned when they saw what happened with Brett Kavanaugh that the lies and slanders weren’t just for Trump, it was for all of them. If you think Trump going away is going to restore normality and comity you are deluded.

    It’ll all be fine once Republicans get back to business as usual.

    thank you sir may i have another - Google Search (With images ...

     

    The republicans, I take it, are the one getting paddled.  (Is that Mitt Romney?)

    • #65
  6. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Percival (View Comment):

    23 data points that a $35m investigation revealed to be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

    Sound and fury, larded with lies and disinformation.

     

    For example, “Kremlin-linked Mifsud.”

    In an official report, Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence asserted that “in their approach to Papadopoulos, the Russians used common tradecraft and employed a cut-out,” a “Kremlin-linked…Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud.”

    No one in the American intelligence community has publicly challenged this description.

    But there is one major problem with this story: No evidence has been presented to support the claim. Although Mifsud has traveled many times to Russia and has contacts with Russian academics, his closest public ties are to Western governments, politicians, and institutions, including the CIA, FBI and British intelligence services. One of Mifsud’s jobs has been to train diplomats, police officers, and intelligence officers at schools in London and Rome, where he lived and worked over the last dozen years.

    If a guy working for the Kremlin was doing all of that, the FBI, CIA, and British intelligence (all of which were part of the frame job) have a really big problem.n

    • #66
  7. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    So far Trump has kept doubling down.  

    In 1946, the Republican Party took back the House of Representatives with a simply slogan “Had Enough?”  And the American people had had enough of the Democrats at that point.  

    With Trump never, never backing down and always doubling down, I think that the most effective question Biden could have would be if Americans have had enough of Trump, or were simply exhausted of all of the lies, all of the deceit, and all of President Tweety.

    • #67
  8. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    Chris Cillizza of CNN had an excellent piece at https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/politics/joe-scarborough-donald-trump-lori-klausutis/index.html.  The money quote:

    “Let’s take this out of the political context for a second. Strip it down to the bare bones. And those are this:

    “A powerful person is using a massive megaphone to allege, contra facts, that another powerful person was responsible in some way for the death of a young woman. In so doing, the powerful person is dredging up terrible memories for those close to the woman — and forcing them to deal with her tragic death anew. All in service of hurting another very powerful person. The woman — and her family — are collateral damage.

    “Without names or politics included, that sort of behavior is the sort of thing we would condemn as despicable. Literally disgusting. The sort of thing that, societally, we would need to stand up against for fear that it would one day come for us and the ones we loved (and have lost).”

    • #68
  9. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    If I was Timothy Klausutis, I would be more angry about this. And yet he said nothing at the time. Because only the Orange Man is Bad. Sad.

     

    • #69
  10. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Gary Robbins: In 1946, the Republican Party took back the House of Representatives with a simply slogan “Had Enough?”

    The electorate of 1946 is dead. Within two years Harry Truman won the White House with the simple slogan of the “do nothing Republicans.” (You would have to have been born prior to November of 1925 to vote in ‘46.)

    Again, no one is defending Trump’s tweet. The only one “doubling-down” here is you. 

    • #70
  11. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins: In 1946, the Republican Party took back the House of Representatives with a simply slogan “Had Enough?”

    The electorate of 1946 is dead. Within two years Harry Truman won the White House with the simple slogan of the “do nothing Republicans.” (You would have to have been born prior to November of 1925 to vote in ‘46.)

    Again, no one is defending Trump’s tweet. The only one “doubling-down” here is you.

    And so will Trump withdraw his tweet? 

    And how about you?  Aren’t you simply “Anti-Anti-Trump”?  And if you are “Anti-Anti-Trump” then aren’t you a Trump Enabler?

    • #71
  12. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    The Wall Street Journal’s editorial today page states

    “Donald Trump sometimes traffics in conspiracy theories—recall his innuendo in 2016 about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination—but his latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him. Mr. Trump has been tweeting the suggestion that Mr. Scarborough might have had something to do with the death in 2001 of a young woman who worked in his Florida office when Mr. Scarborough was a GOP Congressman.”

    The Journal’s editorial board publicly condemned Trump for pushing the conspiracy theory in an editorial Tuesday, saying his comments about Scarborough were “nasty stuff” and “ugly even for him.”

    The editorial board added that it didn’t expect Trump to stop his tirade against Scarborough but wanted to make it clear that “Mr. Trump is debasing his office” and “hurting the country in doing so.”

    Are you with the WSJ in condemning Trump, or do you believe that the WSJ is another “liberal” newspaper?

    • #72
  13. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Gary Robbins: And so will Trump withdraw his tweet? 

    I doubt it. Just as I doubt it has any meaningful relationship to how 99.9989% will vote in November. Mean Guy vs Dementia Guy and rebuilding the post-Covid economy will probably be higher on the list. 

    And how about you? Aren’t you simply “Anti-Anti-Trump”? And if you are “Anti-Anti-Trump” then aren’t you a Trump Enabler?

    You don’t seem very interested in what or who has “enabled” the rise of Donald Trump because you’re as complicit as anyone. Just as those, like Joe Scarborough, that straddle the political/media sphere are also complicit. I’ve been pretty consistent in my analysis of the Trump Era. You won’t ever get past it, nor will anyone else in the Republican Party, until you address the systematic failure of how the party has dealt with the day-to-day rumble of partisan politics. 

    I truly don’t think you comprehend how much of Trump’s rise is directly attributable to George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney and the professional class of consultants and bed-wetters that pour over polls and the Op-Ed pages of the WaPost and NYT every morning. You know, the “normalcy” you yearn for. Until you (and them) are ready to engage in self-examination you’re stuck.

    • #73
  14. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    There is an excellent piece in The Atlantic today by Republican Peter Wehner.  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/malignant-cruelty-donald-trump/612097/

    He writes,

    “Donald Trump doesn’t merely want to criticize his opponents; he takes a depraved delight in inflicting pain on others, even if there’s collateral damage in the process, as is the case with the Klausutis family. There’s something quite sick about it all.

    “A lot of human casualties result from the cruelty of malignant narcissists like Donald Trump—casualties, it should be said, that his supporters in the Republican Party, on various pro-Trump websites and news outlets, and on talk radio are willing to tolerate or even defend. Their philosophy seems to be that you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet. If putting up with Trump’s indecency is the price of maintaining power, so be it. Will Trump’s white evangelical supporters—Franklin Graham Jr., Robert Jeffress, Eric Metaxas, Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reed—defend his behavior as the perfect embodiment of the New Testament ethic, the credo of Jesus, the message from the Sermon on the Mount? ‘Blessed are the brutal, for they shall inherit the Earth.'”

    The piece ends, 

    “There is a wickedness in our president that long ago corrupted [Trump]. It’s corrupted his party. And it’s in the process of corrupting our country, too.

    “He is a crimson stain on American decency. He needs to go.”

    Amen.

    • #74
  15. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins: And so will Trump withdraw his tweet?

    I doubt it. Just as I doubt it has any meaningful relationship to how 99.9989% will vote in November. Mean Guy vs Dementia Guy and rebuilding the post-Covid economy will probably be higher on the list.

    And how about you? Aren’t you simply “Anti-Anti-Trump”? And if you are “Anti-Anti-Trump” then aren’t you a Trump Enabler?

    You don’t seem very interested in what or who has “enabled” the rise of Donald Trump because you’re as complicit as anyone. Just as those, like Joe Scarborough, that straddle the political/media sphere are also complicit. I’ve been pretty consistent in my analysis of the Trump Era. You won’t ever get past it, nor will anyone else in the Republican Party, until you address the systematic failure of how the party has dealt with the day-to-day rumble of partisan politics.

    I truly don’t think you comprehend how much of Trump’s rise is directly attributable to George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney and the professional class of consultants and bed-wetters that pour over polls and the Op-Ed pages of the WaPost and NYT every morning. You know, the “normalcy” you yearn for. Until you (and them) are ready to engage in self-examination you’re stuck.

    Sorry, I am not buying it.  JVL has an excellent piece in The Bulwark today.  https://thebulwark.com/faq-should-twitter-ban-donald-trump/  He writes in part,

    “Ideally, a president would have the decency and temperament, experience and prudence to keep from saying the kinds of things Trump routinely says on Twitter.

    “And if you wind back the clock to, say, 1970, or 1990, or 2015, there were all sorts of guardrails in place that would have stopped a Republican president from saying the things Donald Trump says.

    “His advisers would have told him to cut it out.

    “If they didn’t, then conservative intellectuals would have taken him to the woodshed.

    “If they didn’t, then congressional Republicans would have told him to lock it down.

    “And eventually, by hook or by crook, the president would have gotten the message.

    “Those guardrails are all gone. Trump’s advisers are his family. Congressional Republicans are more beholden to Trump than any party has ever been to a president. And Conservatism Inc.?”

    By not calling Trump to account, with all due respect, you are enabling his behavior.

    • #75
  16. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Again, quoting people like Wehner and Last as an appeal to authority doesn’t work. These are the same people who helped create the situation that led to Trump’s rise. Stop and ask yourself why have these people have been spitting into the wind for four years. Primarily it’s because they are incapable of detecting which way the wind has been blowing. Last’s “guardrails” are actually part of the problem, not the cure. This is what “enabled” Trump.

    If I had to come up with analogy, you and your Bulwarkian idols are like oncologists who want to defeat cancer yet continue to smoke cigarettes – and continue to sell them to your patients. You are not only incapable of asking the question, “How did we get to this point in our politics?” you don’t want anyone else to ask the question either because the answer isn’t one you like. That only assures that you will continue to be frustrated at the current state of affairs. 

    • #76
  17. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Again, quoting people like Wehner and Last as an appeal to authority doesn’t work. These are the same people who helped create the situation that led to Trump’s rise. Stop and ask yourself why have these people have been spitting into the wind for four years. Primarily it’s because they are incapable of detecting which way the wind has been blowing. Last’s “guardrails” are actually part of the problem, not the cure. This is what “enabled” Trump.

    If I had to come up with analogy, you and your Bulwarkian idols are like oncologists who want to defeat cancer yet continue to smoke cigarettes – and continue to sell them to your patients. You are not only incapable of asking the question, “How did we get to this point in our politics?” you don’t want anyone else to ask the question either because the answer isn’t one you like. That only assures that you will continue to be frustrated at the current state of affairs.

    After the Democrats crush Trump and take the Senate in 2020, I wonder what you will say then.

    • #77
  18. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    Senator Romney tweeted a criticism of Trump’s tweet.  I stand with Senator Romney, and against President Tweety.

    • #78
  19. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Gary Robbins: After the Democrats crush Trump and take the Senate in 2020, I wonder what you will say then

    I will say it wasn’t a tweet. Again, the post-Covid economy, China and a LOT of other factors are going drive this election, not the stylistic sideshow the majority of anti-Trumpers have been fixated on for four years. 

    • #79
  20. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Bruce Bawer on the “D.C. Right”:

    . . . I’ve known you for decades. You’re think-tankers, government officials, political journalists, and pundits. Some of you have been all these things.  

    For a long while, I thought you were the good guys. You talked about individual liberty. Some of you identified as conservatives, others as libertarians, still others as classical liberals. None of you are outright leftists.  

    . . .

    When the Democrats tried to sell the patently phony Russian-collusion narrative and impeachment case, some of you joined in the pile-on. Some didn’t: such matters weren’t in your wheelhouse. Besides, at least some of you had to have realized early on that it was all lies. 

    But none of you blew the whistle on it. 

    The Obama people were trying to overturn the 2016 election—a reprehensible betrayal of constitutional principles that put the United States through years of hell. 

    And what did you do? Even if you didn’t explicitly parrot Rachel Maddow, you nonetheless aided and abetted this coup attempt by staying silent about it while continuing to slam Trump over the trivial outrage du jour.  

    Yet I didn’t take you on personally. I wanted to think we could stay friends despite having different politics. 

    But as the deep state persisted in its unscrupulous mischief—e.g., perp-walking Roger Stone from his home while tipped-off CNN hacks looked on—it became harder to see things that way. 

    In recent days, I’ve reached an apotheosis. It was triggered by a thread on one of your Facebook pages. 

    Some of the commenters were fellow D.C. insiders. But others (I easily discovered) were big machers in Hollywood and on Wall Street. 

    As it happened, the comments on the thread were written in the hours after the Michael Flynn stuff exploded and it was established that Obama himself was almost certainly behind the effort to frame and dethrone Trump. 

    But what was striking was that the thread wasn’t about that. There wasn’t a word about Obama’s perfidy or Trump’s innocence. 

    . . .

    What’s at the core of your being, I see now, is not a sense of principles but your identity as part of the Washington establishment. 

    You’ve posed as people who take seriously your responsibility to the American republic. In reality, your loyalty has been to the increasingly sprawling D.C. bureaucracy, and its tentacles in New York and L.A. 

    If you can shrug off the transgressions of Obama and his courtiers so blithely, it’s because you’re all fellow members of the same establishment as Obama, Biden, Brennan, Comey, Clapper, and the Clintons, with the same values and priorities.  

    Guilt and innocence? Right and wrong? Right and Left? Who cares about such things? That’s for rubes in Flyover Country. 

    What matters is preserving your privileges as members of the patrician class. What matters is keeping cosa nostra—“our thing”—intact. 

    • #80
  21. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    @garyrobbins Let me amend something to the last comment. Elections (all of them) are unique to the moment. The big danger here is that if Trump does lose, the party will completely mis-interpret the reason.

    IF they attribute it to style and not substance, if they fail to properly assess the rise of Trump before they try to analyze a loss, they risk enabling the rise of someone much, much worse. But then foresight has never been their strong suit to begin with. They’re still hopelessly stuck driving in reverse with George Bush’s head squarely in the rear view mirror.

    • #81
  22. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Again, quoting people like Wehner and Last as an appeal to authority doesn’t work. These are the same people who helped create the situation that led to Trump’s rise. Stop and ask yourself why have these people have been spitting into the wind for four years. Primarily it’s because they are incapable of detecting which way the wind has been blowing. Last’s “guardrails” are actually part of the problem, not the cure. This is what “enabled” Trump.

    If I had to come up with analogy, you and your Bulwarkian idols are like oncologists who want to defeat cancer yet continue to smoke cigarettes – and continue to sell them to your patients. You are not only incapable of asking the question, “How did we get to this point in our politics?” you don’t want anyone else to ask the question either because the answer isn’t one you like. That only assures that you will continue to be frustrated at the current state of affairs.

    After the Democrats crush Trump and take the Senate in 2020, I wonder what you will say then.

    This prediction is just as good as your one in 2016.

    • #82
  23. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins: If you have evidence that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump, please produce it. Otherwise please withdraw your allegation that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump.

    Gary, in November of 2017 Scarborough wrote an editorial for the Washington Post promising Mueller was about to prove Trump was a Russian asset. Accusing the President of being an agent of a foreign hostile power is within your boundaries of civility? If it is you have a strange definition of civility.

    I think that you overstated the conclusion. Here is the column. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-trump-so-obsessed-with-russia-were-finally-going-to-find-out/2017/11/02/8ba33bba-bff5-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html There are 23 data points in the column. Given those data points, one could legitimately come to that conclusion.

    There were many data points regarding the death of Lori Klausutis that were suspicious and unanswered by Scarborough, one could legitimately come to that conclusion as well.

    This reminds me also of how Seth Rich’s family wanted no further investigation either.

    • #83
  24. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    Bruce Bawer on the “D.C. Right”:

    . . . I’ve known you for decades. You’re think-tankers, government officials, political journalists, and pundits. Some of you have been all these things.

    For a long while, I thought you were the good guys. You talked about individual liberty. Some of you identified as conservatives, others as libertarians, still others as classical liberals. None of you are outright leftists.

    . . .

    When the Democrats tried to sell the patently phony Russian-collusion narrative and impeachment case, some of you joined in the pile-on. Some didn’t: such matters weren’t in your wheelhouse. Besides, at least some of you had to have realized early on that it was all lies.

    But none of you blew the whistle on it.

    The Obama people were trying to overturn the 2016 election—a reprehensible betrayal of constitutional principles that put the United States through years of hell.

    And what did you do? Even if you didn’t explicitly parrot Rachel Maddow, you nonetheless aided and abetted this coup attempt by staying silent about it while continuing to slam Trump over the trivial outrage du jour.

    Yet I didn’t take you on personally. I wanted to think we could stay friends despite having different politics.

    But as the deep state persisted in its unscrupulous mischief—e.g., perp-walking Roger Stone from his home while tipped-off CNN hacks looked on—it became harder to see things that way.

    In recent days, I’ve reached an apotheosis. It was triggered by a thread on one of your Facebook pages.

    Some of the commenters were fellow D.C. insiders. But others (I easily discovered) were big machers in Hollywood and on Wall Street.

    As it happened, the comments on the thread were written in the hours after the Michael Flynn stuff exploded and it was established that Obama himself was almost certainly behind the effort to frame and dethrone Trump.

    But what was striking was that the thread wasn’t about that. There wasn’t a word about Obama’s perfidy or Trump’s innocence.

    . . .

    What’s at the core of your being, I see now, is not a sense of principles but your identity as part of the Washington establishment.

    You’ve posed as people who take seriously your responsibility to the American republic. In reality, your loyalty has been to the increasingly sprawling D.C. bureaucracy, and its tentacles in New York and L.A.

    If you can shrug off the transgressions of Obama and his courtiers so blithely, it’s because you’re all fellow members of the same establishment as Obama, Biden, Brennan, Comey, Clapper, and the Clintons, with the same values and priorities.

    Guilt and innocence? Right and wrong? Right and Left? Who cares about such things? That’s for rubes in Flyover Country.

    What matters is preserving your privileges as members of the patrician class. What matters is keeping cosa nostra—“our thing”—intact.

    You are quoting “American Greatness.”  That is hardly a reputable source, like, say, the Wall Street Journal.

    • #84
  25. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    EJHill (View Comment):

    @garyrobbins Let me amend something to the last comment. Elections (all of them) are unique to the moment. The big danger here is that if Trump does lose, the party will completely mis-interpret the reason.

    IF they attribute it to style and not substance, if they fail to properly assess the rise of Trump before they try to analyze a loss, they risk enabling the rise of someone much, much worse. But then foresight has never been their strong suit to begin with. They’re still hopelessly stuck driving in reverse with George Bush’s head squarely in the rear view mirror.

    The issue with Trump is not style nor personality.   It is about his complete lack of character. 

    I fear that we are getting far afield of the original post, namely President Tweety smearing Joe Scarborough.   

    • #85
  26. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    Columbo (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Again, quoting people like Wehner and Last as an appeal to authority doesn’t work. These are the same people who helped create the situation that led to Trump’s rise. Stop and ask yourself why have these people have been spitting into the wind for four years. Primarily it’s because they are incapable of detecting which way the wind has been blowing. Last’s “guardrails” are actually part of the problem, not the cure. This is what “enabled” Trump.

    If I had to come up with analogy, you and your Bulwarkian idols are like oncologists who want to defeat cancer yet continue to smoke cigarettes – and continue to sell them to your patients. You are not only incapable of asking the question, “How did we get to this point in our politics?” you don’t want anyone else to ask the question either because the answer isn’t one you like. That only assures that you will continue to be frustrated at the current state of affairs.

    After the Democrats crush Trump and take the Senate in 2020, I wonder what you will say then.

    This prediction is just as good as your one in 2016.

    Perhaps you will recall my prediction of 2018.

    • #86
  27. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    Columbo (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins: If you have evidence that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump, please produce it. Otherwise please withdraw your allegation that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump.

    Gary, in November of 2017 Scarborough wrote an editorial for the Washington Post promising Mueller was about to prove Trump was a Russian asset. Accusing the President of being an agent of a foreign hostile power is within your boundaries of civility? If it is you have a strange definition of civility.

    I think that you overstated the conclusion. Here is the column. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-trump-so-obsessed-with-russia-were-finally-going-to-find-out/2017/11/02/8ba33bba-bff5-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html There are 23 data points in the column. Given those data points, one could legitimately come to that conclusion.

    There were many data points regarding the death of Lori Klausutis that were suspicious and unanswered by Scarborough, one could legitimately come to that conclusion as well.

    This reminds me also of how Seth Rich’s family wanted no further investigation either.

    Please let Seth Rich and Lori Klausutis rest in peace.   

    • #87
  28. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    Columbo (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins: If you have evidence that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump, please produce it. Otherwise please withdraw your allegation that Joe Scarborough has “smeared” Trump.

    Gary, in November of 2017 Scarborough wrote an editorial for the Washington Post promising Mueller was about to prove Trump was a Russian asset. Accusing the President of being an agent of a foreign hostile power is within your boundaries of civility? If it is you have a strange definition of civility.

    I think that you overstated the conclusion. Here is the column. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-trump-so-obsessed-with-russia-were-finally-going-to-find-out/2017/11/02/8ba33bba-bff5-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html There are 23 data points in the column. Given those data points, one could legitimately come to that conclusion.

    There were many data points regarding the death of Lori Klausutis that were suspicious and unanswered by Scarborough, one could legitimately come to that conclusion as well.

    This reminds me also of how Seth Rich’s family wanted no further investigation either.

    Please let Seth Rich and Lori Klausutis rest in peace.

    Unsolved and very suspicious cases should not be left in ‘peace’. It is greatly perplexing to me that a family would not want all rocks turned over and questions answered by all suspects to a murder. Unless the family has been paid off or threatened by the guilty.

    • #88
  29. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Gary Robbins: I fear that we are getting far afield of the original post, namely President Tweety smearing Joe Scarborough.

    There’s your problem. That wasn’t what the original post was about. It was the ineffectiveness of the media and the role that lack of trust played in getting us to this point. That you can’t see anything beyond a need for everyone to share your sense of moral indignation is what led us “far afield.”

    • #89
  30. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    Columbo (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Again, quoting people like Wehner and Last as an appeal to authority doesn’t work. These are the same people who helped create the situation that led to Trump’s rise. Stop and ask yourself why have these people have been spitting into the wind for four years. Primarily it’s because they are incapable of detecting which way the wind has been blowing. Last’s “guardrails” are actually part of the problem, not the cure. This is what “enabled” Trump.

    If I had to come up with analogy, you and your Bulwarkian idols are like oncologists who want to defeat cancer yet continue to smoke cigarettes – and continue to sell them to your patients. You are not only incapable of asking the question, “How did we get to this point in our politics?” you don’t want anyone else to ask the question either because the answer isn’t one you like. That only assures that you will continue to be frustrated at the current state of affairs.

    After the Democrats crush Trump and take the Senate in 2020, I wonder what you will say then.

    This prediction is just as good as your one in 2016.

    Perhaps you will recall my prediction of 2018.

    Perhaps you will recall that Dirty Cops Mueller, Rosenstein  and Comey wrongly still had the President under the cloud of a Special Counsel investigation. That and that every Party with the White Office loses some seats in Congress in the off-year election.  

    • #90
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