Future Historians Living in Trees explain demise of U.S.!

SATURDAY, MAY 27, 2023

Wallace TV program cited: Centuries ahead of where we are now, Future Historians Living in Trees are already preparing the textbooks, according to sources familiar.

They may be forced to live in trees following the cataclysmic defeat of the West, but the historians in question are highly eminent. 

BREAKING! They're attributing the end of the American experiment to "the democratization of media." More specifically, they're attributing this cataclysmic downfall to the creation and implementation of round-the-clock, profit-based "cable news."

(Full disclosure: Spokespersons for these future scholars communicate through the nocturnal submissions the haters refer to as "dreams.")

Last evening, those spokespersons offered a case in point. They cited a 20-minute "discussion" of the ongoing debt limit crisis on yesterday's Deadline: White House.

At issue was Donald J. Trump's role in the ongoing negotiations. Here's the way the lengthy segment went down:

After MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace introduced three of "our favorite reporters and friends," the pundits conducted themselves in a way which resembled the type of interaction once known as a "discussion."

For twenty minutes, the favorites pretended to conduct a news discussion. Right from the start, the presentation aired above this alarming chyron:

BREAKING NEWS
TRUMP URGING GOP TO LET U.S. DEFAULT ON ITS DEBT

The analysts came right out of their chairs! Has Donld J.  Trump been urging the GOP to do that? Has he been doing that in a way which could be described as BREAKING NEWS?

Granted, Trump had made a deeply worrying set of remarks concerning this matter during his gruesome CNN "town hall" broadcast. We specifically cited those worrying (and childish) remarks in real time. 

But that event had occurred all the way back on May 10. Our question, therefore, was this:

Has Trump been urging the GOP to default in the days and weeks since then? Has he been urging this conduct in a way which can responsibly and accurately be described as BREAKING NEWS?

Has Trump been urging such terrible conduct in the days and weeks since then? We were surprised by the Wallace chyron, because we had read this passage in a front-page report in the New York Times just yesterday morning.

We include the upbeat front-page headline from yesterday' front-page report:

White House and G.O.P. Close In on Deal to Raise Debt Limit and Cut Spending

[...]

Former President Donald J. Trump, who has said Republicans should force a default if they do not get what they want in the negotiations, also was weighing in. Mr. McCarthy told reporters he had spoken with Mr. Trump briefly about the negotiations—“it came up just for a second,” the speaker said. “He was talking about, ‘Make sure you get a good agreement.’”

After playing a tee shot on his golf course outside Washington, Mr. Trump approached a reporter for The New York Times, iPhone in hand, and showed a call with Mr. McCarthy.

“It’s going to be an interesting thing—it’s not going to be that easy,” said Mr. Trump, who described his call with the speaker as “a little, quick talk.”

“They’ve spent three years wasting money on nonsense,” he added, saying, “Republicans don’t want to see that, so I understand where they’re at.”

That was the end of the front-page report. With that in mind:

Has Trump been urging the GOP to let the United States default? A pair of high-ranking Times reporters seemed to be unaware of this BREAKING NEWS.

What was Wallace talking about during her twenty-minute segment? Specifically, in what way has Trump been "urging the GOP to let the U.S. default?"

Early on, she cited this recent report in Vanity Fair—a recent report which makes no such claim about Trump. Exactly ten minutes into the scrum, she offered this trademark bit of incompetence-laced misstatement:

WALLACE (5/26/23): Here's Donald Trump. Oh, I'm sorry, I don't have it, because I—

[LAUGHTER]

[NOW READING]

So Trump says, "I say to the Republicans out there, Congress and senators, if they don't give you massive cuts, you're going to have to do a default."

[LOOKS UP FROM HER PAPERS]

"Do a default?" I don't think that's what anyone says.

[RETURNS TO READING STATEMENT BY TRUMP]

"And I don't believe they're going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave because you don't want that to happen."

[STOPS READING] 

Again, with his massive platform that he enjoys there, that is perhaps the loudest voice people have heard from him on the default.

So spoke Wallace, reading a statement by Trump. 

Initially, she seemed to think that she'd be playing videotape of a statement by Trump. Instead, she had to read the text of his statement, a statement for which she didn't provide a source or a date.

Even there, Trump was saying that a default was something "you don't want to happen." In the statement Wallace read, he was recommending a hard bargaining stance by the GOP.  

He wasn't explicitly urging default. But then again, also this:

In fact, the statement Wallace read had been made at the May 10 "town hall" event. Everywhere else, it was sixteen days old. Here, it was said to be BREAKING NEWS.

Wallace's chyron was an inaccurate paraphrase of that statement by Trump. But in no sense did that statement by Trump constitute some sort of BREAKING NEWS.

We're sorry, but that just isn't the case. In the course of twenty minutes, none of her favorites said so.

We'll only tell you what Future Historians Living in Trees have apparently already said:

Nicolle Wallace is a policy flyweight and an instinctive dissembler. She should be on the air two hours a day in much the way that Donald J. Trump should be playing center field for the Yankees.

Now for the apparent history of our disastrous era:

According to the history texts those future scholars have reportedly assembled, blue tribe cable had become almost as disingenuous as red tribe cable by June 2023.

So went "the democratization of media" as the American experiment eventually crashed to the ground.

In our own view, Wallace shouldn't be on the air on anything like a "news channel." 

In private life, she may be a good and decent person—we aren't equipped to tell you. But as a journalist, she and her endless list of (compensated) favorites and friends are, in large part, conducting a daily clown show. 

On the whole, her daily program is two hours of blue tribe comfort food. More and more and more and more, it's propaganda-adjacent.

Journalistically, Wallace is largely a clown; on balance, her favorites and friends are enablers. According to future scholars, blue tribe cable got dumber and dumber, but also more and more phony, with each passing day.

We return you to yesterday's Times report. It included no sign that Donald J. Trump has been behaving in the manner described by Wallace and her friends. 

There was no such BREAKING NEWS to report. That chyron was a deception.

Meanwhile, consider this: 

This childish, friends-based TV format began in the 1950s. It got its start with The Mickey Mouse Club, a Disney program aimed at people who were seven or eight years old.

If you want a modern-day version for adults, tune in to Wallace's show.

Yesterday's segment was full of misstatements by Wallace. On the brighter side, to borrow from Warren Zevon, [her] hair was perfect, which makes for "good TV."

To watch the entire twenty minutes, you can start here. This is the way the west was lost, or so say despondent historians.