THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2022
Journos still haven't quite heard: We're still surprised—but not surprised—by the way the press is reporting—or not reporting—Donald J. Trump's repeated remarks about the war on Ukraine.
As we noted in Monday's report, Trump came out quite strongly against Mr. Putin's war when he addressed the CPAC convention on February 26. These are the things he said on that occasion:
TRUMP (2/26/22): The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling. It is an outrage and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur...We are praying for the brave people of Ukraine, God bless them all.
[SUSTAINED APPLAUSE]
Thank you. They are indeed brave. As everyone understands, this horrific disaster would never have happened if our election was not rigged and if I was the president.
[...]
The problem is not that Putin is smart—which, of course he's smart. But the real problem is that our leaders are dumb. Dumb. So dumb.
They so far allowed him to get away with this travesty and assault on humanity. That's what it is. This is an assault on humanity. So sad. Putin is playing Biden like a drum...
To review the C-Span tape of Trump's address, you can just click here.
In his original statement about the war, Trump had almost seemed to endorse Putin's "savvy" conduct. Speaking at CPAC, he explicitly said that Putin was conducting "an assault on humanity."
You'd think those statements would have been news, but mainstream news orgs almost seemed to disappear them. Even now, very few journalists seem to know that Trump came out strongly against the war at CPAC—that he said that Putin was conducting an atrocity and an assault of humanity.
Way back on February 26, opposition to Putin's war became the official Trump position. But right on through this morning's editions, mainstream journalists have failed to report this basic information. Instead, they keep acting like other Republicans are defying or opposing Trump when they criticize the war.
This is pleasing gruel for our tribe. But it's clownishly wrong.
How dumb does this school of journalism get? Let's start with Max Boot's column, which appeared online today in the Washington Post. Below, you see the way the column begins, headline included:
Will Trump’s love affair with Putin finally be the breaking point for Republicans? I doubt it.
For years, I’ve been hoping that some outrage would finally turn the Republican Party against Donald Trump, and for years, I’ve been bitterly disappointed...
Will the Republican Party finally come to its senses now that one of Trump’s favorite dictators is waging a cruel war of aggression against Ukraine? Hope springs eternal. The Republican Accountability Project—a Never Trump conservative group—has been airing a hard-hitting commercial on Fox “News” Channel that juxtaposes Trump’s sickening praise for Vladimir Putin’s dismemberment of Ukraine (“genius,” “smart,” “savvy”) with heartbreaking pictures of the suffering being inflicted by the Russian military. Trump backtracked a bit last week; he called the invasion a “holocaust” but still would not denounce his pal Putin.
In that second paragraph, Boot quotes some of the stupid things Trump said in his first comments about the war in Ukraine. He fails to mention the aggressive comments Trump made at CPAC. Given the way those comments have been disappeared, we'd bet even money that Boot has never heard about them.
Bringing the note of comedy in, Boot says that Trump "backtracked a bit last week," calling the invasion of Ukraine a "holocaust." Boot seems unaware of the fact that this aggressive assessment actually extended Trump's earlier denunciations.
When did Trump call the invasion a "holocaust?" That comment has also largely been disappeared wherever our liberal tribe's Storyline is sold.
By way of contrast, readers of the New York Post were allowed to know that Trump had said that. That said, here's the start of Mark Moore's comically bungled news report, to which Boot provides a link:
MOORE (3/2/22): Former President Donald Trump condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “holocaust” Wednesday, but would not denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin for launching the military operation that has been targeting civilian areas with ferocious rocket attacks.
During an appearance on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” host Maria Bartiromo asked the one-time commander-in-chief to comment on how he thought President Biden should respond to Putin’s “possible crimes against humanity.”
“We’re watching a holocaust. We’re watching something that I’ve never seen before, the way that they’re going to go in—they’re blowing up buildings with children, with women, with professions, with people—think of just people,” Trump responded. “They’re blowing up indiscriminately, they’re just shooting massive missiles and rockets into these buildings and everybody is dying.”
“The numbers are far worse than what you’re seeing on television. … Many people are dying and we’re allowing this to happen,” he added.
In Moore's fuller account of Trump's remarks, he quotes Trump calling the invasion a "holocaust" again. Nore notes that Trump didn't use Putin's name as he voiced this judgment.
Earth to Moore: When you've called the Russian invasion a holocaust, you've come fairly close to denouncing Vladimir Putin!
That said, Moore didn't seem to know that Trump had previously denounced the invasion, naming Putin as her did. Here's the way Moore described Trump's previous statements about the invasion:
MOORE: When the Russian leader announced last month that he would move troops into a section of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed rebels to act as “peacekeepers,” Trump called the move “smart” and “savvy.”
“So, Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine, I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper,” the former president said in a radio interview. “That’s the strongest peace force. … We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace, all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy … I know him very well. Very, very well.”
Despite taking criticism for praising the Russian autocrat, Trump doubled down during his speech over the weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando.
“Yesterday, I was asked by reporters if I thought President Putin was smart. I said, ‘Of course he’s smart,’ ” Trump told the crowd. “The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course he is smart, but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb.”
Sad! Moore reported Trump initial stupid remarks about how "savvy" Putin's initial move had been. The reporter had heard about that!
But when Moore quoted Trump's subsequent remarks at CPAC, he completely omitted the remarks in which Trump—referring to Putin by name—described the invasion as an atrocity and an assault on humanity.
To appearances, Moore simply didn't know that Trump had made those comments. To appearances, the blackout on Trump's remarks had been so complete that the news hadn't even reached the New York Post!
Earth to journalists:
Ever since February 26, it has been the official Trump line to denounce this invasion. When other Republicans denounce Putin and the invasion, they aren't challenging the official Trump line. They are echoing it.
For whatever reason, Trump established this official line during his CPAC address. Mainstream newspapers seemed to disappear what he said—and to this day, we can't find a single sign that Max Boot has ever heard that the crackpot former president actually made those remarks. Just check out that headline again!
To appearances, it's more fun for our liberal tribe if we pretend that our disordered former president never said the things he actually said.
Trump's remarks were disappeared. Let a thousand Storylines bloom!
This pattern extends rather widely: This pattern extends rather widely. For another example from yesterday's Washington Post, you can just click here.
Trump's initial remarks are pleasingly cited. His later remarks don't appear.
"Trump calls invasion "a holocaust!""
ReplyDeleteOh dear. This reminds us, dear Bob, of a tweet by Thy Lord Soros we saw recently. Here it is:
"George Soros
@georgesoros
Brave Ukrainians are now on the frontline and risking their lives in an onslaught that reminds me of the siege of Budapest in 1944 and the siege of Sarajevo in 1993."
https://twitter.com/georgesoros/status/1497572265659187200
Yes, dear Bob, the siege of Budapest in 1944! As an educated specimen of your tribe you certainly must be aware what kind of brave people were on the frontline and risking their lives during the siege of Budapest in 1944, right?
Any comments on this? Sadly (although not surprisingly), we didn't detect any reaction from the dembot media...
Mao, do you accept a fee for keeping an eye on Bob, to make sure he never strays too far to the left? Can't help noticing your worthless posts are never screened out, unlike many more left wing posters.
DeleteMao can't (or isn't allowed to) discuss the substance of the post so he pulls a "look over here... shiny!"
ReplyDeleteThis Daily Howler, I tell ya, it's always TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP!!!!
ReplyDeleteMost people can relate to each other.
DeleteI was in a waiting room recently, and complimented
a fellow waitee on her really cute shoes and we slowly morphed into a conversation about the Ukraine from different perspectives, but still civil, rational, and interesting.
You don't HAVE to hate all your contrarians.
The key phrase in this revolting performance is clearly "Boot quotes some of the stupid things Trump said in his earlier comments..."
ReplyDeleteWhich of course, the pathetic Mr. Somerby does not want to mention. Earth to Bob: Maybe because you generously have given Trump a pass as a mental case you've never really paid much attention.
The charming pattern of Trump's dementia is that he will say some "stupid things," backtrack with some popular disclaimers, and then go right back to whatever filth was drooling out of his pie whole a few days before.
Demanding fair play for President Trump at this moment is an act of cruel dementia on BOB's part. Bob, always working to let Trump off the hook, might have noticed that he was saying "stupid things" about his fantasy business partner in 2015, when he asked him, quite publicly, to dig up dirt on his political foes. When he tried to blackmail Ukraine into damaging Biden. In all of these instances, Bob has taken the Fox News line, like he believed Trump's obvious criminal mentality was the invention of the "Deep State."
One could go on about this sad state of affairs. Years ago, when Bob started his slide into foolishness, after his once honorable defense of his college roommate was no longer fed by the headlines, one regular poster dismissed Bob as simply a mean drunk. At the time I thought that was cruel and unfair. I'm coming around. -Greg
We should also note, Max Boot was one of the few hard line conservatives who did not blow with wind when the tragic Trump phenomenon beset the Country. Bob is unfit to wash his feet.
ReplyDeleteHere Somerby suggests that Max Boot might not know what Trump said most recently:
Delete"Given the way those comments have been disappeared, we'd bet even money that Boot has never heard about them."
This is ludicrous. It doesn't sound like Boot believes Trump is sincere in calling the war an atrocity, any more than the rest of us consider this a sincere and not a self-serving CYA remark by someone who was recently reminded that he might need to be on the right side of this issue in order to run for President in 2024.
I doubt that Trump, if asked, could tell anyone coherently what is wrong with Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Referring to this as a "holocaust" reveals how clueless Trump is, and how performative his remarks, the ones lauded by Somerby, actually were.
More proof that Bob is a racist.
ReplyDeletePay attention, we generally do not make that claim, as it is difficult to verify. It is possibly true, and if so, no one would be surprised.
DeleteThe claim made here is that Bob denies that racism is an ongoing significant concern.
Bob claims to think race is an important subject, but also claims to think that it is unwise to identify and protest racial oppression.
Today Bob writes an embarrassing paean to Trump, this is inline with his embarrassingly bad takes on race and racism.
Pay attention and keep up!
"claims to think that it is unwise to identify and protest racial oppression."
DeleteSource please.
He has said this multiple times over the past several years. If you are not a regular reader here, you will have missed Somerby's numerous essays on this topic. It is not reasonable to expect other commenters here to look up past Somerby quotes for you, when it is well known what Somerby's opinions are.
DeleteHere are some examples:
Delete8/18/2015 "For obvious reasons, race is a highly emotional issue. It would be better if people on various sides tried to avoid getting a snootful or three and reaching unhelpful conclusions about what is, so far, just a few events.
In our view, Blow is sometimes inclined to get such snootfuls. Especially at our highest journalistic levels, we don’t think snootfuls help."
4/20/2017 "Ever since November, this crude attack about "blatant racism" has been peddled wherever liberal story-lines are sold. Is it possible that this simplified account represents an attempt by our own liberal tribe to "blame others for [our] losses, reducing doubts about [our] own inadequacies?"
Could it be that this rather crude story-line "converts a sense of helplessness into one of action"—that it "can even be the impetus for the formation of new communities in which people share grievances and plans for retribution?" Is it even possible that this crude story about "blatant racism" involves our tribe is a "loss of empathy" for the people we're sliming in such crude, reductionist ways?
We'd say that all those things are possible—indeed, that they're happening every day. This helps explain why we swallow the idea that the white candidate underperformed as compared to the black candidate because of the "blatant racism" found Over There among The Others. Full and complete freaking stop!"
3/15/2013 "Some of them waged the familiar war in which all-knowing white liberals drop R-bombs on everyone else’s heads, even on the heads of fellow white liberals. The x-ray vision of these people is quite highly evolved. For one example, examine this three-part exchange, in which a self-described “older Caucasian woman” gets R-bombed by a 60-something New York City man. Inerrantly, he was able to spot the “racism” in her upbeat remarks—and yes, that’s the term he used.
3/12/2015 "At several points in this discussion, you see the professors lapsing into the unfamiliar language which is often used as part of so-called “critical theory,” whether of race or gender. Such specialized language often seems to turn progressives into a separate tribe—a separate tribe which seems to be speaking its own private language.
On balance, we find it hard to believe that that constitutes a winning political approach—unless the goal is to establish a new and separate, more glorious tribe..."
6/27/2020 "The [Family of Man] book has never been out of print since it appeared in the 1950s. In the 1960s, it was very hot, even as the four olds were being smashed and destroyed.
This book was designed to promote a certain understanding of "race." It was the dominant liberal understanding of "race" in that street-fighting era.
According to this dominant thinking, there was only one race, the human race. Babies were the very same babies in Chicago and in Rangoon.
According to this revolutionary thinking, the human race should be understood as a family. The concept that people belong to different "races" was an example of oldthink. It was understood to be an unfortunate product of "the world the slaveholders made."
That was conventional liberal/progressive thinking back then. On balance, it's now a discarded artifact of counter-revolutionary oldthink.
Today, our tribe is deeply invested the idea that everyone actually does belong to some particular race. Not that various people will be treated as if they belong to a race, but that it's actually so.
Everybody belongs to a race. Your identity actually is your race. We will remind you of this every day. Everything turns on your "race."
So goes one part of our modern tribe's tribal newthink. For ourselves, we think the oldview was much more humane, but then too was also more accurate." This was Somerby's conclusion to a rant against the book White Fragility.
None of those are a claim that "it is unwise to identify and protest racial oppression." So you've made yet another stupid misreading. Or I guess a number of misreadings in this case. It's too bad you cannot understand his point but it's nobody's fault that you don't know how to read.
DeleteSo interesting that you claim those quotes represent "it is unwise to identify and protest racial oppression." And sad. Really sad. And stupid. So so stupid! . Man you are so so so so so so stupid. You're so identified with your political group that any criticism of it equals death which leads you to do intellectual and logical contortions like you have here. It's so stupid and so embarrassing. I realize you're just doing the best you can with what you've been given. But it's still really sad.
DeleteYou'd think that level of stupidity would get them the GOP nomination for President in 2024 but, alas, I don't see enough bigotry to pull it off.
Delete"It is unwise to identify and protest racial oppression."
DeleteIt's overstatement and misreadings au go-go with you imbeciles.
I don't know, maybe Putin is looking for the DNC server that CrowdStrike moved to Ukraine. You never know, right Bob?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAccording to Q-Anon, Putin is looking for an alien spacecraft that crashed in Ukraine, containing dangerous alien stuff that will hurt mankind. Putin and Trump are allied (with good reptilians) in rescuing us all from the bad aliens.
DeletePay attention and keep up!
"Speaking at CPAC, he explicitly said that Putin was conducting "an assault on humanity." "
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that Trump then went on to blame the whole thing on Biden, because it he were not president, it wouldn't have happened (according to Trump). That shifted the blame from Putin to Biden (and Democrats for rigging the election).
At that point, calling the war outrageous means that Biden is outrageous, not Putin. Somerby goes on to blame the media for not giving Trump credit for his statement, but his statement was misleading and wrong and a partisan attack on the Democrats, not a condemnation of Putin and war.
If a crazed gunman shoots up a church shouting "Let them all eat lead!" and the press reports those remarks, because they happened, should they give equal weight when the gunman pleads "not guilty" in his court arraignment, standing meekly next to his attorney?
ReplyDeleteThis is akin to that situation. Trump said something glaringly awful when he said that Putin was a genuis because he was getting so much real estate for $2 in sanctions. Later, someone pointed out his error, so Trump, obviously wishing to avoid bad PR consequences, said belatedly that Putin did something awful. Does anyone think he is any more sincere than the gunman, any less guilty of his first statement? Does anyone think Trump has actually changed his mind about Putin in any way? I don't. It would be incredibly stupid to think that.
The plea before a judge is a legal formality in order to permit a trial to go forward. The walking back of his remark is a pro-forma correction in order to permit Trump to run in 2024 as something other than Putin's puppet, even though everyone knows that is exactly what he is. There was no apochryphal moment in which Trump saw the light about Putin, no coming to Jesus for Trump. His correction is entirely self-serving. Even Somerby should see that. Why doesn't he? What is wrong with Somerby's perception of reality? The press is ignoring Trump's correction because they know exactly what it means and it is not newsworthy at all. No one in the media wants to help Trump con the public, and that's all his remark was -- a con.
The media should report his comments so that we can decide for ourselves whether Trump is being sincere or not. They shouldn't make that decision for us.
DeleteTrump is selling the car isn't he? Elect him and he'll scare the bad guys away.
ReplyDeleteI think you can certainly take note of him saying this while acknowledging he's a patron.
Big question:
DeleteHow much does Trump oppose war? Iraq? Yemen?
He promised he would get and keep America out of these wars worldwide, but he didn't actually do it. He did pull America out of its treaties and organizational obligations worldwide. It could be argued that has contributed to greater conflict. He has turned a blind eye to activities of other countries in Yemen, Saudi Arabia for example.
DeleteThis shows you where Trump is really coming from:
ReplyDelete"Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday tried to help former President Donald Trump repair his public image after Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for his "genius" invasion of Ukraine.
However, the twice-impeached former president did not take Hannity's prompts.
"You came under some fire when you said Vladimir Putin's very smart," Hannity said. "I think I know you a little bit better than most people in the media, and I think you also recognize he's evil, do you not?"
Trump, however, did not directly answer Hannity's question.
"Well I was referring to the fact that he said this is an independent nation," Trump said, referring to Putin's declaration that eastern portions of Ukraine were now their own states. "This was before there was any attack! He's calling it an independent nation! Now, a lot of things are changing, now look, this doesn't seem to be the same Putin I was dealing with! But I will tell you, he wouldn't have changed if I were dealing with him, he wouldn't have changed!"
https://www.rawstory.com/hannity-and-trump-putin/
When has T operated in good faith? Why take any T comment on face value? Bob, what has happened to your critical thinking skills?
ReplyDeleteBob's point is not that we should take Trump's comments at face value. It's that the media should report them so that everyone can decide for themselves whether to take them at face value.
DeleteUnless that decision is too scary for us to make.
They should report what Trump says. Not normalize it.
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"few journalists seem to know that Trump came out strongly against the war..."
ReplyDeleteOh, balls! He did not "come out strongly" against anything other than his own humiliation.