The Washington Post adds a soupcon of doubt!

FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2022

Lawrence / Joe / Mika seemed sure: Last evening, Lawrence was totally sure.

He opened his show with one of his rants. The Secret Service had conducted a fraud! One of the largest ever!

Eight hours later, Joe and Mika were also sure—and Willie chimed in too. The Secret Service was in the wrong. The Inspector General was right!

(To see how sure Joe and Mika were, you can just click here. Then, click on "Somebody's Lying.")

As they displayed the certainty of their rants, none of these people actually knew what had actually happened. There was no possible way they could know. They were simply providing our failing blue tribe with the story our tribe would like.

And then, later this morning, it happened! The Washington Post came along with this report, casting a rather large shadow of doubt on the Inspector General:

SACCHETTI AND LEONNIG (7/15/22): Cuffari, nominated by Trump in 2019 and confirmed by the Senate, has faced significant criticism since he took over the office. His first-year audits plummeted to historic lows, he clashed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the veracity of an inspection of a detention center, and he blocked investigations into the Secret Service’s handling of George Floyd protests in Lafayette Square and the spread of the coronavirus in its ranks, documents show.

The OIG’s office is under investigation by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), an independent entity in the executive branch, for undisclosed allegations of misconduct, according to an internal email circulated to the office in January.

The nonprofit Project On Government Oversight (POGO), an independent watchdog, has called on President Biden to remove Cuffari.

Cuffari’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday, and DHS had no immediate comment on his allegations.

A person briefed on the Secret Service’s reaction to Cuffari’s letter said the agency rejects his characterizations that they eliminated or deleted records after Cuffari’s office requested them.

The report goes on from there. As you know, Leonnig is Carol Leonnig. She literally wrote the book on the Secret Service, though she isn't the gang's best friend. 

This morning's report in the Washington Post makes the (Trump-appointed) IG sound a little bit shaky. Is it possible that, in this instance, it's the IG who's basically wrong?

For ourselves, we don't have the slightest idea how this matter will turn out. That, of course, is the obvious point. The same was true of Lawrence last night, and of Joe and Mika this morning.

These instantly scripted tribal performers were serving Mikey his Maypo. Whatever their motives or thinking might be, they were instantly handing our floundering tribe the story our tribe would like.

It's almost always pure Storyline now, even on our own cable channels. Again and again and again and again, it's mandated preconceived Storyline pretty much all the way down.

We don't know who's right or who's wrong in this case. That, of course, is precisely the point:

We don't know who's right and who's wrong. But neither did Lawrence, Joe, Mika!

Full disclosure: Almost surely, MSNBC slow-walks its transcript production to prevent fuller discussion of modern "journalism" of this unfortunate type. 

Even as we type this report, the most recent transcript of Lawrence's show dates from Thursday, June 30. For such tired old transcripts, you can just click here. 

This is the way the game is played, business division-wise.