SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 2024
...its performance was an embarrassment: On Monday, August 19—the first day of the Democratic National Convention—CBS News was given the chance to conduct a brief interview with Candidate Donald J. Trump.
The interview produced zero discussion. The reason for that is clear.
As we noted yesterday, we weren't aware of this interview until August 25. On that day, the brief one-on-one session was mentioned in a news report by the New York Times.
According to the Times report, Candidate Trump was trying to show that he was willing to be interviewed by major reporters, unlike his allegedly unintelligent opponent in the current White House campaign.
Within that context, we decided to see what had been asked, and what had been answered, in the course of the CBS interview.
When we searched, we could find no transcript of the interview. We couldn't find a videotape of the full interview session.
We did find an August 19 news report about the interview—a news report by Kathryn Watson of CBS News. When we read Watson's report, we were surprised by what it contained.
Watson is a good, decent person. Headline included, here's how the official report from CBS News began:
Trump defends personal attacks on Harris, discusses election outcome, release of medical records
Former president and GOP nominee Donald Trump said in an exclusive TV interview that he would release his medical records, as he faces off against Vice President Kamala Harris in the race for the White House. Trump, 78, also defended his repeated insults of Harris' intelligence and said he would accept the election outcome if he believes the election is "free and fair."
He spoke with CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns in Pennsylvania Monday, as Democrats kick off the Democratic convention in Chicago.
"You will release your medical records to the public?" Huey-Burns asked the former president.
"Oh sure, I would do that very gladly, sure," Trump responded.
Say what? Could that possibly have been the biggest news to emerge from the CBS interview? Candidate Trump says he will release his medical records at some undisclosed point in time?
We were surprised to see the news report start with that non-disclosure disclosure. As far as we knew, no one had been asking the two candidates to release their medical records.
As far as we know, this hasn't been any sort of issue as the fall campaign approaches. But there it was, presented by Watson as the leading piece of news to emerge from the interview session.
That seemed like an odd way for the news report to start. But as we continued to read the report, matters got much, much worse. Continuing directly, Watson now offered this:
Barely a month after an attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted that no, he isn't suffering from any post-traumatic stress disorder and hasn't experienced any other lasting effects after a gunman grazed his ear with a bullet.
The Republican nominee said he just had a medical exam and received a "perfect score," and two cognitive tests, which he said he "aced."
"I got everything right," Trump said. "And one of the doctors said, 'I've never seen that before, where you get everything right.' No, I have no problem. I'd go a step further, I think anybody that runs for president, whether they're 75 or 65 or 45, I think should take a cognitive test."
Everyone should take a cognitive test, the mental giant proclaimed.
Question: As of August 19, had anyone suggested that Candidate Trump was "experiencing any lasting effects" from the July 13 assassination attempt?
As far as we know, no one had made any such suggestions as the five weeks had passed.
In fairness, there was nothing "wrong" with asking some such question in the course of an interview session. But again, we were surprised to see that offered as the leading topic in the interview—and then, Dear God, there was this:
Once again, for the ten millionth time, the candidate was being quoted about the way he had managed to "ace" those two alleged "cognitive tests."
As every journalist surely knows, Trump has been talking about "acing those cognitive tests" since the dawn of time. As every journalist surely knows, his claims about his unprecedented "perfect score" on the so-called "cognitive tests" have come to us straight outta the Kingdom of High Delusion.
Has the candidate taken a new set of "cognitive tests' in the wake of the assassination attempt? Reporter Watson didn't say. But in this peculiar way, CBS News was telling the world about the major points which had emerged from its interview session with Trump!
Can it really be true? Can it be true that Caitlin Huey-Burns, the CBS correspondent who conducted the interview, was subjected to the candidate's latest recitation of the brilliant, unprecedented way he'd :"aced" his cognitive tests?
We assume that Huey-Burns was subjected to some such nonsense, but we can find no documentary evidence in support of this report.
As noted, CBS News never produced a transcript of the session Trump. On one of the network's streaming shows, CBS News did broadcast edited videotape of the interview session—videotape which ran a bit less than six minutes.
(In order to watch that videotape, you can click right here.)
That said, whoever edited that videotape had enough sense to eliminate Trump's transparent foolishness concerning those cognitive tests. For unknown reasons, reporter Watson chose to elevate Trump's vacuous comments about the cognitive tests to the very top of the CBS report.
So it went at CBS News as Huey-Burns interviewed Trump and Watson reported what happened.
It would be easy for progressives to wonder about Watson's approach to the material. She's a graduate of an evangelical college (Biola University, class of 2011) and before coming to CBS News, she spent five years working for a pair of conservative orgs, including The Daily Caller.
Fairness suggests a different judgment. Judging from the six minutes of tape, Huey-Burns's interview with Trump hadn't given Warson a whole lot to work with. For example, here's what happened when Huey-Burns raised the question of the possible PTSD:
HUEY-BURNS (8/19/24): We are one month removed from the assassination attempts on your life. I'm wondering if you are experiencing any PTSD from that experience?
TRUMP: No, not at all. But I do—I'm thinking about it. It's a miracle that I wasn't killed, as you know. You saw the flight of the bullet and everything else, You saw—they say an eighth of an inch away. An eighth of an inch! And there has to be a reason, and I do believe in God, and I also believe perhaps God has a purpose, that he wants to save this country. And I think that may have really been a reason.
We have to save our country Our country's going bad. We're a failed nation, we're failing very badly. Just take a look at the mess that's happening right now in Chicago.
The answer is, it was a very close, it was a very close call. An eighth of an inch and I wouldn't be talking to you right now. And I think God has a reason for doing things. and his reason might very well be that he wants to save this country—maybe save the world.
We don't know why Huey-Burns chose to ask that particular question. Whatever the reason might have been, the question gave Trump a chance to ruminate, for the ten millionth time, about the way God had plainly spared his life, quite possibly in order to save the world.
A more serious reporter might have chastised herself at that point for having triggered this latest, highly familiar presentation with that somewhat unusual question. By way of contrast, Huey-Burns reacted in the manner shown:
HUEY-BURNS (continuing directly): Have you suffered any other kinds of effects?
TRUMP: No, not at all. I haven't. I got better, I healed well, and I haven't. But it could have been—it could have been very bad.
This pointless exchange had now burned away about one-fourth of the six minutes seen on the videotape. In her news report, Watson selected this as the interview's major finding.
She even mentioned Trump's discussion of the way he allegedly aced his cognitive tests, a bit of material which was mercifully edited out of the videotape CBS News chose to air.
Why did Huey-Burns ask the question about PTSD? We have no idea. A bit later, she turned to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Her question was a bit of a softball. She then stood by in silence as Candidate Trump offered a rambling, repetitive filibuster which began, and eventually ended, with what is universally known to be a howling misstatement of fact:
HUEY-BURNS: You were influential in picking three Supreme Court Justice to overturn Roe v. Wade. Do you have any regrets about the overturning of Roe v. Wade?
TRUMP: Well, they've wanted to overturn it for 52 years. Fifty-two years, they've worked to overturn Roe v. Wade. They wanted to bring it back to the states. All legal scholars, all Democrats, all Repub—everybody wanted to bring it back. This is for years and decades and decades.
And they brought it back to the states. And now, the states are controlling it—it's in the hands of the states, and people are voting. And frankly, I believe in the exceptions, like Ronald Reagan believed in the exceptions. I think most people, most Republicans, do believe in the exceptions. And we are having a great response.
Ohio voted—and by the way, they voted more liberally than some people might have wanted. Kansas voted. Many of the states have voted, or are in the process of voting, and what it did is it brought it back to the states and allowed the people to vote. And after 52 years, we can clean up something that frankly has been a very hot bone of contention. We want to unify our country, and people have different thoughts on it and all.
And I will say this—that in some cases, it was a more liberal vote, or a more progressive vote, than some of these states would have thought, and in some cases it will perhaps be the other. But it's now in the hands of the people—and again, Democrats and Republicans, everybody, wanted to do this for 52 years, and I got it done. And we should never be in the federal government—the federal government should have nothing to do with this issue. It's being solved at the state level and people are very happy.
Mercifully, the rambling filibuster finally came to an end. That said, the filibuster began and ended with an absurdly inaccurate claim—with the ridiculous claim that all legal scholars, and all Democrats, had wanted Roe v. Wade to be overturned.
The candidate constantly makes this claim. Everyone knows how absurdly false it is.
In this instance, Trump used the ridiculous claim to begin and end his rambling statement. It's hard to know why any journalist wouldn't have responded by noting the sheer absurdity of this absurdly false claim.
Huey-Burns just stood there and took it! Incredibly, she "followed up" with this—and Trump began rambling again:
HUEY-BURNS (continuing directly): So no regrets?
TRUMP: No regrets, no. I wouldn't have regrets. Again, I did something that was, most people felt, undoable. They didn't want it in the federal government. It shouldn't be in the halls of the federal government. It should be in the state governments. And I was able to bring it back to the state governments and now the people are voting. And again, they're voting in many cases with the exceptions—the three exceptions, like Ronald Reagan, like myself.
Trump filibustered further. By now, he had burned two full minutes off the clock in discussing the way he had managed to do what everyone always had wanted.
Huey-Burns is a good, decent person, That said, her journalistic performance was so bad, as she spoke with Trump, that it barely fits on the charts.
In the roughly six minutes which CBS aired, she had started by asking the following question. This question dealt with a very serious topic—but it was the wrong question all the way down:
HUEY-BURNS: Will you accept the results of this election?
That's the first question on the videotape aired by CBS News. It deals with a very serious topic, but it's the easiest question in the world to answer.
It's also the wrong question to ask about this deadly serious topic. In fairness to Huey-Burns, many other high-end journalists have approached this topic this way.
In response to that question, Trump burned time off the clock, assuring Huey-Burns that he would indeed accept the results if the election is "free and fair." It's very easy to say such things, and such statements commit the candidate to no future behavior.
The more salient question involved in this topic would go something like this:
Why do you keep telling jam-packed audiences that the last election was stolen? You've had almost four years to present a white paper offering justification for this inflammatory claim. In the absence of some such evidence, why do you insist on making this angry claim?
That's the obvious way to approach this highly important matter. Like other high-end mainstream journalists, Huey-Burned lobbed a softball at the candidate, and Trump burned time off the clock.
This mist be one of the worst interviews we've ever seen a journalist perform. Even more embarrassing is what happened after the six minutes of videotape stopped playing on The Daily Report with John Dickerson, the CBS streaming broadcast to which we have referred.
Jericka Duncan was guest hosting that evening. Incredibly, her reaction was this:
DUNCAN (8/19/24): CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns joins me now with that great interview. I can only imagine sort of on the spot and being able to ask those questions about policy, one after the next.
Incredibly, Duncan marveled at the moxie Huey-Burns had displayed in conducting "that great interview." Duncan could only imagine being able to ask such fabulous questions!
On that same evening's CBS Evening News, Norah O'Donnell aired less than two minutes of the utterly worthless interview. Like Duncan, she and Robert Costa further embarrassed CBS News with their praise for Huey-Burns.
For the record, we chatted with Norah long ago, way back when she was just starting out at The Hotline. She was very bright and very pleasant. It was always obvious that was going to be a big star.
Back in 1999, we repeatedly praised her for the way she pushed back on Hardball against Chris Matthews in his sudden, developing "war against Gore." Norah O'Donnell has plenty of smarts and she displayed plenty of moxie at that time until, in the end, she gave up.
Robert Costa is plenty sharp too. Chatting with O'Donnell that night, he made reference to "Caitlin's excellent interview." In such ways, discourse dies.
Walter Cronkite, a serious person, was once the face of CBS News. We can go no further today, so we'll close by saying this:
A major nation is in big trouble when its major mainstream news orgs have become as silly and as pitiful, as fatuous / feckless as this.
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/11/14215930/comey-email-election-clinton-campaign
ReplyDeleteDonald Trump has called his election a historic landslide, but it was anything but. Only two other presidents have been elected with smaller popular vote margins since records began in 1824. His edge in the Electoral College, while decisive, depends on less than 80,000 votes across three states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) out of more than 135 million cast nationwide. It was a very close election.
In a close election, there are a million reasons “why” it was close. Trump’s popularity with working-class whites. Turnout among the Democratic base. Campaign malpractice in the Midwest. Jill Stein. Millennials. Most are probably true in the sense they could move enough votes.
The Clinton campaign, however, has centered its why-we-lost narrative on the “Comey effect,” along with another outside factor, Russia’s hacking of DNC and Clinton campaign email accounts. The “Comey effect” refers to the impact of FBI Director James Comey’s October 28 letter to the House Judiciary Committee announcing the discovery new emails that appeared pertinent to their closed investigation of Clinton and his subsequent letter on November 6 that absolved Clinton (after millions of votes had already been cast early).
Many people — most notably Trump and other Republicans — have scoffed at the claim that the letter changed the outcome of the election, suggesting that it’s a convenient excuse for a weak candidate who made some questionable strategic decisions.
But the Comey effect was real, it was big, and it probably cost Clinton the election. Below, we present four pieces of evidence demonstrating that this is the case.
When we began looking at the data, we were skeptical that Comey’s intervention was decisive. Politicos are notoriously prone to attributing election outcomes to gaffes and other oversimplified causes. It was once posited that a single awkward scream cost Howard Dean his shot at winning the Democratic primary, that the Willie Horton ad destroyed Michael Dukakis, and that the notorious “47 percent” video from 2012 caused Mitt Romney’s loss. Research since has debunked the idea that these incidents were decisive factors. In almost every case, the effects of supposed “game changers” tend to be smaller than broader structural factors, including the state of the economy, the popularity of the incumbent and how long a single party has held the White House.
But Comey’s letter is unique for a few reasons. First, it was an intervention by an institution that Americans have largely perceived as nonpartisan. (Indeed, the FBI actively works to foster that image.) Second, the intervention was almost perfectly timed to impact Clinton at the worst time — dominating the final week of campaigning as an unusually large number of undecided voters made up their minds. Finally, it aligned perfectly with the narrative pushed by Trump — and bolstered by the media’s obsessive coverage of how Clinton handled her State Department email, and the slow-drip release of hacked emails — that Clinton was somehow fundamentally corrupt.
Exhibit 1: the state polls
Delete[...]
Exhibit 2: the national polls
The effect of Comey’s late intervention into the election is also clear in the national polls. As neuroscientist Sam Wang showed, Clinton’s margin over Trump falls dramatically in national polls directly after the Comey letter and never recovers. At the time, statistician Nate Silver noted that the Comey letter coincided with “a swing of about 3 points against her” — a massive swing in a tight election. These public polls are supported by internal polling from both campaigns suggesting that Comey was a massive blow to Clinton at a pivotal moment in the election.
It’s worth noting that Comey also made headlines in July, when he testified in Congress about Clinton’s email server and then announced he would not charge her, while at the same time declaring her behavior “extremely careless.” In the words of Nate Silver, “That period produced about a 2-point swing against Clinton.” In other words, every time Comey and emails were driving the news cycle, Clinton’s national polling numbers took a significant hit.
Exhibit 3: The early voting numbers compared with the late deciders
Early voting numbers are also suggestive of Comey’s impact on the race. Take for example a noncompetitive blue state like Rhode Island
[...]
Exhibit 4: media coverage of email, email, and more email
The Comey effect dominated media coverage in a way few events did during the campaign, other than Trump’s famous “grab ’em by the pussy” Access Hollywood video. During the final days of the election major newspapers “published 100 stories, 46 of which were on the front page, about or mentioning the emails.” The tone and tenor of coverage shifted markedly against Clinton in the closing week of the campaign.
Coverage of Clinton’s emails eclipsed her policy proposals and ended up being the only story about Clinton that stuck with voters. While 79 percent of registered voters had heard “a lot” about Clinton’s emails, only 23 percent heard “a lot” about Trump’s housing discrimination, 27 percent heard “a lot” about the Donald J. Trump Foundation’s illegal political contribution to the Florida attorney general, and, surprisingly, only 59 percent had heard a “a lot” about the Hollywood Access tape. The word clouds below show, in graphical form, that emails were the central way that most voters understood Clinton:
[...]
During the entirety of the general election campaign, June 7 to November 8, Gallup found that Clinton only sustained a “lead” in media coverage, meaning more Americans were hearing about Clinton than Trump, four times. Two were email related: FBI Director Comey’s press conference in late July, in which he called Clinton “extremely careless,” and Comey’s server-related announcements in late October and early November. (The others occurred during Clinton’s bout with pneumonia and during the party’s convention.)
The Shorenstein Center found that negative coverage of Clinton’s campaign was fueled by allegations of “scandal.” As the chart below shows, “scandal” coverage toward Clinton peaked in the final week of the campaign, consuming more than a third of her coverage. The timing was perilous.
The upshot:
It’s true that there are other possible explanations for a late shift in vote intentions, but thus far there is no alternative explanation of merit. (The cyberhacks were surely important, but their effects would have been felt more steadily throughout the campaign.)
Instead, the evidence is clear, and consistent, regarding the Comey effect. The timing of the shift both at the state and national levels lines up very neatly with the publication of the letter, as does the predominance of the story in the media coverage from the final week of the campaign. With an unusually large number of undecided voters late in the campaign, the letter hugely increased the salience of what was the defining critique of Clinton during the campaign at its most critical moment....
In addition to showing evidence contrary to our fiery leftist's unsupported claims about the "Comey effect," the above article also shows how Mao's and DIC's views of the so-called "liberal" media are complete bunk.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete6 Times People Fixed God's Perfect Word!
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXRRm6oZpXI
The above video raises an important question: was it Yahweh or Yahweh's dad El who guided the bullets (one of which killed a father in front of his family)?
DeleteSpeaking of releasing video tapes, ABC hasn’t released the full videotape of the Harris interview. AFAIK they do not intend to ever release it. Why not?
ReplyDeleteI think it's because URADOOFUS.
DeleteYeah. TV never edited anything except this interview.
DeleteYeh, we really need to hear some off-camera producer cut in to say, "We're picking up some interference on your mic. Can we start again from the last question?"
DeleteTrump was definitely changed after the attempted assassination.
ReplyDeleteDavid, it’s a version of exercising their Miranda rights in the court of public opinion.
ReplyDeleteHarris seems to have stopped claiming that she once worked at McDonald’s. Was that claim false? AFAIK no evidence of such a job has ever been produced.
ReplyDeleteHow and where has she stopped claiming she worked at McDonald's?
DeleteAnd what kind of evidence could possibly exist that she worked at a McDonald's over 30 years ago?
Is that the sort of thing an aspiring attorney would put it on her resume, you nitwit?
“And what kind of evidence could possibly exist that she worked at a McDonald's over 30 years ago?”
DeletePerhaps a Social Security record?
Right, Cecelia, we'll get right on it as soon as prince orangebirdsnest releases his tax returns.
DeleteAnd those health reports he promised.
DeleteAnonymouse 1:41pm, in the time-honored way of Deep State, they leaked some of Trump’s tax records. No one would be surprised if that didn’t happen again.
DeleteTrump is fact checked, Ms I-Know-You-R-But-What—Am-I.
My Social Security statements do not include part-time jobs I held in high school/college.
DeleteDon;t worry, Cecelia, I am sure the liberal NY Times right now has assigned a full team of reporters to diligently search all employment records from 40 years ago at all McDs. Cause you just gotta know.
DeleteCecelia, get back to me when the first reporter asks Trump about the $10000000 bribe from Egypt back in 2016 or what his business relationship is with Saudi Arabia is, you know cause that's kind of more current.
@David
DeleteAs far as I know, Harris mentioned this exactly once in the context of talking about people who work at McDonalds. It's not something she has made a major part of her personal story, so I'm mystified that you'd say that she has "stopped claiming" she worked there.
Are you just fishing around for a "big lie" you can invent?
Anonymouse 2:12pm, that’s a new one, isn’t it?
DeleteWhen is that indictment coming? November 1st?
Serious voters should be sufficiently informed to take a $10 million bridge from Egypt or the Saudis into account.
DeleteBribe
DeleteNo, don't worry about the felon you're voting for. This is old news that coverup specialist Bill "the fixer" Barr stomped on when he was AG. I will tell you though, Dems do have a few things to learn from Barr about how to weaponize the justice department. But don't worry sister, the felon under a RECO indictment in Georgia can't be charged with the Egyptian bribe - past the statute of limitations. Plus Roberts/Alito/Thomas will make up some shit about why if he does it it's not a crime ala Nixon.
DeleteEdit: RICO
DeleteSomewhere in the middle of Somerby's feigned incredulity, I lost the point of today's essay. Trump gave an interview and he spouted a lot of bullshit to a reporter. So what? I find it especially hard to believe that any of this would be surprising to Somerby when this is exactly what has been happening since 2015, except that Trump has gotten worse in his ability to state a coherent thought. His language is so vague that you have to know what he means in order to make sense of anything he said. But then his listeners are supplying the meaning and it is unclear Trump himself knows anything about a subject.
ReplyDeleteFor example, Trump says: "Fifty-two years, they've worked to overturn Roe v. Wade. They wanted to bring it back to the states. "
He never, in all of his answer to the reporter, says what IT is. What was brought back to the states? It wasn't Roe v. Wade. I doubt Trump even knows. He has this same lack of specificity with everything he discusses.
But I am also puzzled that Somerby thinks people stopped calling for a medical report to determine what actually happened to Trump's ear. People are still following the news about the motives of the shooter and whether the secret service was lax, so why wouldn't we care about Trump's injury?
Trump in the last week has twice admitted he lost the election, both times saying the exact same phrase "by a little bit". Along with his disingenuous
Deleteattempts at equivocating his stances on abortion and Project 2025, Trump obviously knows he is likely to lose and is desperate to try anything that will keep him from facing personal responsibility for his crimes, which likely involves some form of imprisonment, more likely house arrest considering the circumstances.
Somerby uses similar tactics in his rhetoric, always providing himself with plausible deniability.
Somerby ignores Trump's admittance since it cuts against one of his main theses that Trump may actually believe his "big lies".
Furthermore, Trump was more likely hit by shrapnel than a bullet since that is what injured the four policemen that were nearest him, since his "injury" healed in a few days, and since the FBI says they have accounted for all the bullets and have not announced that there was any Trump DNA material or a trajectory that would indicate Trump was hit by a bullet.
We do not know the shooter's motive, but we do know he was a White male Republican gun enthusiast, a staunch conservative that had Trump signs in his yard.
We also have a clear indication that Trump's falsehoods are not from ignorance but from lying. Somerby has a lot of 'splainin' to do.
It was just this week Trump told Dr. Phil he would have won California if the count was fair.
DeleteSo hold off on his admitting defeat.
Unlike Somerby, Heather Cox Richardson seems to believe that the press is becoming more assertive about challenging Trump's narratives. She uses the Arlington Cemetery situation as an example of press pushback:
ReplyDelete"Harris’s refusal to accept the MAGA terms of engagement, along with the exuberant support for Harris and Walz, has Trump, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, and MAGA Republicans reeling. That, in turn, has made them seem vulnerable, and that vulnerability is now opening up room for pundits from a range of outlets to challenge them. They seem to be losing the ability to control the public conversation by asserting dominance.
This change has been evident this week in the response to Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery with the family of a soldier who died in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago for campaign videos and photos attacking Harris, despite the fact that federal law prohibits campaign activities in the cemetery, in what is widely considered hallowed ground. The moment almost passed unnoticed, as it likely would have in the past, but Esquire’s Charles Pierce asked in his blog: “How The Hell Was Trump Allowed To Use Arlington National Cemetery As A Campaign Prop?”
Led by NPR, different outlets begin to dig into the story, and Trump, Vance, Trump’s spokesperson, and Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita all tried to brush off their lawlessness with their usual rhetoric. Trump tried to change the subject to say he was being unfairly attacked for supporting a military family. Vance tried to suggest that Harris should have attended the private ceremony and that for criticizing it she should “go to hell,” although she hadn’t commented on it. The spokesperson suggested that the female cemetery official who tried to stop them was experiencing a “mental health episode,” and LaCivita, a leading figure in the Swift Boat veterans’ attacks on John Kerry in 2004, reposted an offending video to “trigger” Army officials, he said.
It hasn’t flown. Today, MSNBC’s Dasha Burns asked Trump directly: “Should your campaign have put out those videos and photos?” Trump answered: “Well, we have a lot of people. You know, we have people, TikTok people, you know we’re leading the Internet. That was the other thing. We’re so far above her on the Internet….” Burns interrupted and followed up: “But on that hallowed ground, should they have put out the images…?” Trump said: “Well I don’t know what the rules and regulations are, I don’t know who did it, and, I, it could have been them. It could have been the parents. It could have been somebody….”
Burns interrupted again: “It was your campaign’s TikTok that put out the video.” Trump answered: "I really don't know anything about it. All I do is I stood there and I said, 'If you'd like to have a picture, we can have a picture.' If somebody did it; this was a setup by the people in the administration that, 'Oh, Trump is coming to Arlington, that looks so bad for us.’"
This isn't the passive press just taking dictation that Somerby describes above.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-30-2024
Sorry, it's been almost a week since the incident and we still don't have the name(s) of the brownshirt thugs in Trump's fascist little army who physically assaulted the woman at the ANC. And there were mainstream media reporters who witness the whole fucking thing. Yesterday his attacks on the media lead one of the thugs attending his Nurenberg rally to attempt to physically attack the news media covering the rally.
DeleteThom Hartmann says today: " Why aren’t the Department of Defense or the Department of Justice seeking criminal assault and trespass charges against the Trump staffers who assaulted an Arlington National Cemetery employee and then proceeded to use gravestones as end-tables and campaign props? And what about House Speaker and notorious white supremacist christian nationalist Mike Johnson’s role in setting the entire thing up in the first place? If the SecDef and AG are too timid, the Senate should convene a hearing next Tuesday to look into this desecration of America’s most sacred ground. Veterans and veterans’ groups of all stripes are outraged, and the groundswell is growing. Democratic senators, grow a spine!"
DeleteTrump: "It could have been the parents...If somebody did it; this was a setup by the people in the administration"
DeleteOof.
After trying to throw the parents under the bus, seconds later he is trying to blame it on the Biden admin.
The small dick grievance energy that Trump, Vance, Johnson (the irony), and their supporters exude could possibly solve the climate crisis.
We can't solve the climate crisis, because current thinking is too unsophisticated. Current thinking:
Delete1. Global warming will be a problem in the long term
2. CO2 emissions contribute to global warming
3. Therefore, we should work to develop alternative sources of energy
That thinking won't work IMO because of two real world problems
1. The demand for energy will continue to grow, particularly in underdeveloped nations. China is happy to develop some alternative energy sources, but China is not willing to give up coal and oil. They have other higher priorities, So, even though the US and Europe get more energy from wind, solar, nuclear and biomass, other countries will continue to burn large amounts of fossil fuels. In other words, we are not going to win this war by doing away with fossil fuels, even though that might be very desirable.
2. The current dumb approach encourages a poor use of government spending. State and federal politicians are thrilled to give money to firms that are supposedly making a difference. It looks good to constituents, and, I suppose, generates big donations from favored companies. But, this money is pretty much wasted. Some of these approaches don't work. Even those that do work to a degree, like wind, are expensive, have problematic aspects, and will never produce enough energy to replace fossil fuels.
A more sophisticated thinking would acknowledge that we are bound to fail in our goal to severely reduce fossil fuels. So, we must work and plan to develop policies to deal with a warming world.
We get it that you’re a Republican but you have made it clear you’re no scientist. Your understanding is political and wrong. Framing approaches to climate change as either/or instead of doing both is fatuous.
DeleteGarth Daniels
DeleteI was laughing so hard that I hit the publish button.
DeleteTo use a metaphor, here's David's solution: since there's nothing to do about the poison, we need to be sophisticated and learn how to drink it better.
How Trumpish of you David.
Speaking of Trump and since we're way off topic here:
where's the helicopter tape with Willie Brown?;
where's the Arlington tape?;
where's the infrastructure plan?
where'd the medical plan to replace the ACA?:
where's the ear medical report?; and
where's the tax returns?
Garth - the water in Yosemite is sort-of poisoned. It has giardia which will make you sick. It would be great if we could delete all the giardia in all the water there. But, recognizing that such an effort is bound to fail, we find ways to live with the giardia, e.g., by using portable water filters when we hike.
DeleteDIC is flailing about more than usual here because the commentary rightly is centered around his idol’s use of the military as a prop. And of course the first sentence of his diatribe about climate change is a self-own.
DeleteEquating climate change with a common lake bacterium is the height of foolishness even for a Trump rube.
Delete99.9% of the people who do their own research support reparations for black people.
DeleteSomerby has been ignoring Project 2025 in favor of calling Biden old, and now calling everyone else fatuous. Without folks like Thom Hartmann, the right wing would be able to continue its nefarious efforts in relative obscurity. But here is the second half of Trump's agenda should be he reelected:
ReplyDelete"— The “Other Project 2025.” The Heritage Foundation’s notorious effort to radically transform America by undoing FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great Society, and the gains made by President Biden in the past three-plus years has become so well known, and thus so toxic, that Trump himself is backing away from it (even though over 140 of his former administration staffers and cabinet members helped put it together). Not to worry for rightwing world, though; with some overlap, another group, just formed three years ago, has their own 250-page blueprint to turn America into a fascist state. The America First Policy Institute has, like America First Legal, borrowed the notorious “America First” phrase from the actual Nazis who formed and ran it back in the 1940s and is positioning itself as the new leader of the Trump transition, should he win the White House this fall. Their agenda apparently includes gutting protective regulations and the agencies that enforce them, stepping up the production and use of fossil fuels, killing off programs to reduce the impact of climate change, and expanding the role of police in everything from our bedrooms to our schools to keeping an eye out for people who disagree with the new Trump administration. So far, AFPI has largely flown under the radar, but they’re definitely worth keeping an eye on as they appear to have major funding from rightwing billionaires (they don’t disclose their donors) and are well-stocked with Trump alumni."
https://hartmannreport.com/p/saturday-report-83124-the-other-project
"Robert Costa is plenty sharp too. Chatting with O'Donnell that night, he made reference to "Caitlin's excellent interview." In such ways, discourse dies."
ReplyDeleteIn Somerby's world, the reporters are responsible for the answers given by the politicians they are interviewing. Does anyone believe that Trump can be forced to answer a question he doesn't want to? Can a reporter instill knowledge into the mind of Trump while he is babbling about his cognitive tests? Trump is dumb and it is not the job of the reporter to abuse him -- that would create sympathy for Trump with viewers and outrage his supporters, strengthening their support. Reporters seem to be expecting the public to have some common sense and SEE the obvious evidence that Trump is a moron. Letting him talk without interruption is one way of letting him hang himself. But viewers need to meet reporters half way by bringing some smarts of their own.
Somerby does raise an interesting point. The edited out portions of these interviews may be the parts where the reporter says to Trump "I'm just going to keep asking this question until you answer it. Is this the best use of your air time?" or "Do you think anyone watching is going to believe that?" and similar statements left on the cutting room floor.
Trump operates with different rules than everyone else. Here Steve M. suggests that Trump has probably told JD Vance never to apologize:
ReplyDelete"When Trump was considering Vance for the VP slot, I assume that the two of them didn't have many deep conversations about policy. But I'm sure Trump told Vance never to say he's sorry. A story in The New York Times tells us that Trump is watching Vance respond to controversies, many of them self-inflicted, and the former president likes what he sees:
Mr. Vance’s relentless pace of full-throttle performances as Mr. Trump’s well-trained attack dog has pleased the former president....
Mr. Trump had instructed his young sidekick to fight forcefully through those initial attacks, and later said Mr. Vance’s execution exceeded his expectations, according to three allies who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
It's hard to measure up to Trump's sheer lack of empathy -- we saw that recently when Trump posed with a grin and a thumbs-up while standing over a grave at Arlington National Cemetery. Vance seems almost as cold and unfeeling as Trump, but he did know enough to wish Caitlin Upton well. It would have been a short step from there to an apology, even a perfuctory one. But Vance is an ambitious guy who knows how to follow the rules set down by his patron of the moment. Right now, that patron is Trump. I think Trump ordered Vance never to apologize on the campaign trail -- and I think Vance is following orders."
It isn't only that the press doesn't ask the right questions, but that the press doesn't comment at Trump's lack of empathy, and his mini-me following the same strategy.
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2024/08/was-vance-following-trumps-orders-when.html
These lost souls preach "personal responsibility" but it is always "for thee not for me".
DeleteWhen Trump and Vance met, they probably spent most of the time exchanging tips on wearing makeup. Not that there is anything wrong with it.
I'll bet they started lying to each other right from the beginning.
DeleteI love the way JD talks about women in such a confident detached clinical fashion, like he's reporting the results of his lab rat experiments and is eager to share his startling insights about women with the world. He's the gift that keeps on giving.
DeleteTPM (Talking Points Memo) has been doing a good job of talking about things that fall through the cracks in the mainstream media. One was David Neiwert's coverage of right wing political violence. Another is the misogyny inherent in both Trump and Vance's statements as they campaign. Somerby complained because Gutfeld repeated the blowjob meme Trump circulated last week. But Somerby cares a lot about vulgarity but not so much about misogyny, when it is that hatred of women that holds the right wing together these days:
ReplyDelete"But a concurrent scandal, concerning behavior just as abhorrent, has received a fraction of the attention. On Wednesday, Trump reposted a screenshot of another user’s response to a photo of Kamala Harris smiling with Hillary Clinton. It reads “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”
For Clinton, this is an obvious allusion to Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. For Harris, it’s a reference to a right-wing smear, that her 30-year-old relationship with Willie Brown, then speaker of the California State Assembly, is the only reason she succeeded in politics. This latter misogyny has often been shorthanded on the right with references to knees and kneeling; a few days earlier, Trump reposted a parody of the Alanis Morissette song “Ironic,” which said that she’d “spent her whole damn life down on her knees” with a photo of Brown in the background (in case the point was too subtle), per the New York Times.
This kind of violent misogyny, in which a woman can only succeed not just with a man’s support, but by earning that support by granting him full access to her body to fulfill his sexual desires, is par for the course for Trump. He’s been found liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll, and has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by dozens more. He reportedly refers to Harris as a “bitch” in private. His followers gleefully echo his disdain for women, selling and buying merchandise in 2016 reading “Hillary sucks, but not like Monica,” and in 2020 reading “Joe and the Hoe.”
The repost did get some pickup; the New York Times did a writeup, and it got some play on CNN. But the cemetery story is already eclipsing it in relative “badness.”
Trump’s misogyny isn’t novel, and the Harris camp is helping let those stories die because it’s made the clear calculation not to focus on “the first woman president” of it all (in and of itself, a sad triangulation performed in the wake of 2016). But misogyny has always been the special sauce of the MAGA movement, the glue that keeps a party with no remaining ideological coherence together — and it’s a critical thing to recognize and remember, as Harris seeks to vanquish Trump once and for all. "
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/trumps-violent-misogyny-doesnt-break-through
Today JD Vance is complaining about working women. I keep expecting David in Cal to ask what keeping women at home might do to our economy, but crickets...
There is that video secretly recorded of Trump in a golf cart in July where one can observe his unvarnished misogyny and how hate fuels his existence.
DeleteAnonymouse 3:22pm, and to think we only need go the TDH to see that via anonymices.
DeleteIt bothers me when the press ignores misogyny.
DeleteIf Somerby is going to stir folks up over press coverage, he should consider how his writing might influence acts like this:
ReplyDelete"Police Used Taser to Subdue Man at Trump Rally
August 31, 2024 at 2:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard
“A man at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area as the former president spoke Friday but was surrounded by police and sheriff’s deputies and was eventually subdued with a Taser,” the AP reports.
“The altercation came moments after Trump criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.”
4:40, it’s a version of exercising their 1st Amendment rights in the court of public opinion
DeleteVery little of the extremist stuff Trump says results in discussion. Digby describes the ridiculous thing Trump said to the Moms for Liberty, and the misleading headline that produced in the Los Angeles Times:
ReplyDeletehttps://digbysblog.net/2024/08/31/the-stupidest-thing-hes-said-this-week/
"Trump at Moms For Liberty on Friday, the group that just can’t stop losing elections:
“The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and you know many of these childs [sic] fifteen years later say, ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’ They say, ‘Who did this to me?’ It’s incredible.”
...[video of Trump saying this]...
"What the ever loving fuck is he talking about?
We really need to start talking about the serious problem with our society. It’s one thing to have fringe freaks out there who say stuff like this. That’s always been true. Nothing you can do about that, it’s a free country. But never has one of them mesmerized almost half the country into voting for him for president. Something’s gone very wrong.
And here’s one reason why. Check out the headline from the LA Times:
No, that is not an adequate way of describing what Trump said. That headline should say “Trump says public schools are performing transgender surgeries on students.” That’s what he said. And it should be the top story in America. But it isn’t. In fact, if it’s mentioned it’s only in passing.
They have normalized this freak show and I don’t know what it’s going to take to restore society to a place where someone who says something this insane is no longer someone that almost half the country respects enough to put into the most important job in the world."
Headline: Trump questions acceptance of transgender people during Moms for Liberty gathering
DeleteThis is why Trump is popular. Most of us believe children are too young to decide to have puberty blockers or sex change surgery. Most believe that parents, not government, should control their children’s’ upbringing. So, there is a lot of opposition to schools encouraging children to monkey with their gender without telling the parents. Trump’s position is the majority position.
DeleteI see two types of responses:
1. Deny that the problem exists. But, it does exist in some places, where not informing the parents is allowable
2. Find a tricky way to describe Trump’s policy so it sounds like just prejudice. Of course this is dishonest.
Trump shows courage by saying things that need to be said even though he lays himself open to being called a bigot
David,
DeleteQuit lying.
There is no proof that anyone ever called Trump "a bigot".
There are no places where doing surgery on a child is allowed without informing parents (except to save a child's life in an emergency situation).
Delete@11:51 Where the parents cannot be reached quickly to give consent in a hospital emergency room.
DeleteNotice how Dickhead in Cal tries to derail the thread. This is what Dickhead's fascist lying motherfucking repugnant candidate actually said to his supporters. A big fucking pile of bullshit.
DeleteAnd Dickhead comes back and doesn't even bother to notice. He makes up another pile
“The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and you know many of these childs [sic] fifteen years later say, ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’ They say, ‘Who did this to me?’ It’s incredible.”
...[video of Trump saying this]...
And Dickhead comes back and doesn't even bother to acknowledge what he said. He makes up another pile of bullshit where he shares his hallucinatory nightmares with the board. God fuck yourself, Dickhead.
"where not informing the parents is allowable".
DeleteThis is a very confused thread.
Trump implied that school districts are authorizing, or even performing, sex change operations. As usual with Trump, his speech is so muddled you can't quite tell what he said, but in either interpretation he's simply and egregiously wrong.
In the quote excerpted above, David seems to want to refer to the policy of many school districts of forbidding teachers from notifying parents if their child is 'socially transitioning' at school.
Here is some actual media criticism, about the role of influencers in campaigns vs mainstream media:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.emptywheel.net/2024/08/28/as-maggie-haberman-unabashedly-joins-the-kayfabe-tim-walz-sings-the-menards-jingle/