DAYS OF TRIAL: What did the former commander know...

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2021

...and when the heck did he know it?: We've spent a few minutes this morning revisiting some basic information about the Clinton impeachment vote.

We may post that information later. Right now, before today's session starts, we'll consider a basic pair of questions:

What did the former commander know? And when the heck did he know it?

None of what follows should have much bearing on an assessment of the former commander-in-chief. It does shed light on the way we the people are propagandized on "cable news" under current arrangements.

What did the commander know? When did the commander know it? We refer to the chronology of two events which occurred during the January 6 riot—the commander's now-famous phone call with Senator Tommy Tuberville, and his now-famous idiotic tweet concerning Vice President Pence.

Which came first—the phone call or the tweet? Below, we show you the way that question was answered on Anderson Cooper's program last night. (CNN still creates transcripts.) 

We'll show you an excerpt from Cooper's program. That said, it's our impression that we in Our Town were offered this chronology all over cable last night.

We note a minor irony. As we start, Cooper has just finished speaking with CNN's fact-checker, Daniel Dale:

COOPER (2/12/21): Daniel Dale, I appreciate it. Thanks.

For reaction on the hearing on the Hill, I want to bring in our congressional correspondent, Ryan Nobles. So Ryan, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, who has been one of the former president's strongest allies from day one, he has been responding to this new reporting. What is he saying?

NOBLES: Yes, that's right, Anderson. You know, the Trump impeachment lawyers attempted to make the case that the recollection of what Tommy Tuberville remembered on that day at the Capitol wasn't correct, and that that indicated that the former president had no idea that his vice president was being evacuated after, or I should say before, he then attacked him on Twitter.

But Tuberville stood by his recollection of that day today, telling reporters afterwards exactly what the phone call was like. He actually told our Manu Raju that he had to get off the phone with the president and he told him the reason he needed to get off the phone was because the vice president was being evacuated.

And if you match up the timeline, the president's tweet attacking Vice President Pence came about 10 minutes after that fact.

So this idea that the Trump legal team is trying to present, that somehow the president had no idea that his vice president was in danger when he attacked him, just really does not meet up with the facts of the case.

According to Nobles, Trump spoke with Tuberville on the phone, then issued his idiotic tweet about Pence roughly ten minutes later.

It's our impression that this chronology was presented all over cable last night—at least, all over the cable news channels which are viewed in Our Town. 

We don't know if that chronology is accurate. But as of this morning, the Washington Post is reporting that this widely-reported chronology is wrong.

The Post's analysis piece was written by Philip Bump. You can read the full piece for yourselves, but here is the relevant section, section heading included:

BUMP (2/13/21): The Tuberville call

Then there’s that call with Tuberville. It wasn’t actually placed directly to Tuberville. Instead, the president called Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) phone.

At the time of the question posed by Collins and Murkowski, the timing of the call wasn’t clear. On Friday evening, a spokesman for Lee said that the senator received the call from Trump at 2:26 p.m. Lee has said once he realized Trump was intending to call Tuberville, he quickly handed Tuberville his phone so the two could speak.

With that clarity, it’s now clear that the president spoke with Tuberville—and was told about Pence’s evacuation—two minutes after the tweet.

According to Bump, it's now clear that the former commander posted his idiotic tweet about Pence two minutes before he spoke with Tuberville. That would mean that CNN's chronology was wrong.

We don't know which chronology is correct. We do know this:

At present, our nation's corporate "cable news" stars work almost wholly from script, and also from the desire to please you. You shouldn't believe the things they say until you've had a chance to check their statements out.

(In fairness, everyone makes mistakes. But when "news" must conform to Storyline, the errors all tilt one way.)

Our world was already running on Storyline and script during the Clinton impeachment. We'll include one highly amusing example in our later post.

We don't offer this morning's rumination to tilt your view concerning the former commander-in-chief. We focus  here on the nation's press corps—and actually no, you really can't believe the things you hear them (ardently) say.

The most famous of the cable kids are paid millions of dollars per year. More and more and more and more, they're paid to keep you happy.