FALSEHOODS, MISSTATEMENTS AND LIES: Lawrence O'Donnell gets it on!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2017

Part 1—Our own team's gross incompetence: Last night, in his opening segment, Lawrence O'Donnell really got it on.

The transcript isn't available yet, not even through Nexis. Given the way his corporate channel works, who knows when it will appear?

The transcript isn't available yet, but we're willing to show you how O'Donnell started his program last night. You see his words below.

In many ways, O'Donnell's show is currently well worth watching. But what you see here is spectacularly dumb—and dumbness is a large liberal problem. It helped put Trump where he is:

O'DONNELL (1/23/17): So we have now entered the presidential era of falsehoods and footnotes.

Parents and teachers around the country who have been trying to teach kids to follow George Washington's example of never telling a lie are now busy explaining to those same kids what a "falsehood" is, now that much of the media has seemd to arrive at an informal agreement to call a lie a "falsehood."

To watch the full segment, click here.

In many ways, O'Donnell's show is well worth watching. He frequently offers well reasoned discussions. His viewers aren't subjected to the mugging, clowning and sheer pomposity with which they will have been assailed in the preceding hour.

In many ways, O'Donnell's show is well worth watching. But what you see in that brief excerpt tilts toward spectacular dumbness—and dumbness has been a major liberal problem, dating back at least twenty-five years.

Manifestly, our dumbness helped send Donald J. Trump to the White House. That dumbness has been on display in the past few days as our leaders stumble and flail concerning the meaning of everyday terms like falsehood, misstatement and lie.

For starters, make no mistake—our team is genuinely dumb. We've been putting our dumbness on display as we posture, flail and clown with these concepts and terms.

Have we really thrashed and flailed? For starters, consider what O'Donnell said, and seemed to say, in that short opening passage.

O'Donnell said this: Much of the media has seemed to arrive at an informal agreement to refer to lies as "falsehoods."

In what it claims, and in what it implies, that statement strikes us as quite dumb.

Has "much of the media" decided that they should refer to lies as "falsehoods?" It's hard to unpack all the things which are implied by that claim.

But if it's a short answer you want, we'll say the answer is "no." We see no sign that major news orgs have made any such decision.

Please note—as he continued, O'Donnell revealed a key fact. He understands that many falsehoods, possibly most, don't qualify as lies.

Duh! Lawrence O'Donnell understands that many falsehoods aren't lies! He explained this blindingly obvious point in the following passage:

O'DONNELL: A falsehood is simply a statement that is untrue. You could pass along a falsehood not knowing that it's untrue. And in that case, it wouldn't technically be a lie, because a lie is the deliberate use of a falsehood with the intention to deceive.

Duh! O'Donnell made a blindingly obvious point in that blindingly obvious passage. On the other hand, he managed to make a silly statement even there. We refer to this:

"You could pass along a falsehood not knowing that it's untrue. And in that case, it wouldn't technically be a lie."

It wouldn't technically be a lie? Actually, in that situation, your misstatement wouldn't be a lie at all! It wouldn't come close to being a lie! There's nothing "technical" about it.

Duh! If you don't know that your statement is false, you haven't told a lie! As an example, consider a groaning misstatement O'Donnell himself once made.

It was Friday, October 6, 2000. O'Donnell was taping that weekend's edition of The McLaughlin Group, a high-profile TV gong show.

The program was being taped three days after the history-changing first Bush-Gore debate. Inevitably, John McLaughlin was pimping the mandated claim that Candidate Gore had issued a new assortment of "tall tales" and "fibs."

O'Donnell quickly affirmed this mandated claim, making an erroneous statement which we'll show you below. This completed a hat trick on O'Donnell's part this night.

O'Donnell had already trashed Gore for having sighed too much in the debate. (This was another mandated claim. Gore had done this deliberately, O'Donnell further said.)

O'Donnell had also already said that Candidate Bush had won the debate by exceeding expectations. ("Bush won by not getting flattened by Gore as everyone expected," he said. In this way, O'Donnell had voiced another mandated claim.)

O'Donnell had already acceded to these mandated scripts. Now, he completed the hat trick. He did so by offering a misstatement, alleging an "untruth" by Gore:

O'DONNELL (10/6/00): John, his most ridiculous and his most relevant untruths are his claims of legislative achievement. He told Time magazine last year that he enacted the Earned Income Tax Credit, which of course went into law before he was ever in Congress.

Working hard to send Bush to the White House, O'Donnell uncorked a plain misstatement—a plainly inaccurate claim.

In fact, Gore hadn't "told Time magazine [in 1999] that he enacted the Earned Income Tax Credit." The transcript of Gore's Q-and-A with Time makes that fact perfectly clear.

That said, many journalists had made that claim in 1999, advancing the narrative they were building about Big Liar Gore. We'll guess that O'Donnell heard those claims—and that he dumbly believed them.

One year later, O'Donnell made a misstatement about this point on the McLaughlin Group. That said, we don't doubt that he dumbly believed what he said.

Plainly, O'Donnell made a misstatement. But we know of no reason—none at all—to think that he told a "lie." And no, we aren't making a "technical" point. There's nothing "technical" about it:

O'Donnell made a misstatement, full freaking stop. We know of no reason—none at all—to suppose that he told a lie.

Can we talk? Back in October 2000, O'Donnell's statement was false. Last night, several of his statements struck us as rather dumb.

Back then, he helped send Candidate Bush to the White House. Last night, he was preening and helping establish a basic point about our world:

Over here in the liberal world, our intellectual leaders are frequently rather dumb.

The dumbness of our liberal world has been on display in the past week as we struggle with the concepts of falsehood, misstatement, lie. That said, we liberals have been strikingly dumb for a very long time. Plainly, our tribal dumbness has helped produce the astonishing state we now find ourselves in.

We slept in the woods for twenty-five years. Now we're all out there marching!

What's a falsehood, a misstatement, a lie? In what way does a statement that's false differ from one that's misleading?

How should journalists deal with such questions? We'll ponder such basic points all week. As we do, we'll warn you of a continuing problem:

We liberals are deeply self-impressed, but we're also reliably dumb.

The other team relies on that fact. We rarely disappoint them.

Coming: Waldman and Drum and Chait and oh my! Also, why in the world do we have to have so many different words?

For better or worse, youth will be served!

MONDAY, JANUARY 23, 2017

The Smithsonian meets the press pool: Last Saturday morning, the Washington Post reported a horrible set of groaners.

The groaners appear in a $50 picture book about Donald J. Trump. At the time, the book was on sale at the Museum of Natural History, a branch of the Smithsonian.

Oops. According to the Post's Ian Shapira, the photograph-laden book contains a supply of "false assertions," or howlers:

SHAPIRA (1/21/17): The Trump book, which is heavy on photos and pullout memorabilia and bears the words "Make America Great Again" on its cover, contains a series of false assertions:

On Trump's years of challenging of President Obama's birthplace and citizenship: "Donald Trump took the fall for what should have been the fault of Hillary Clinton, whose campaign first propagated the misinformation about President Obama."

On the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee's computers: No proof it was the Russians, the book maintains, despite the intelligence community's assessment that the evidence against the Russians is overwhelming. "The Clinton campaign desperately claimed that Russia hacked the DNC and that Putin was trying to influence the American election. This was a strange maneuver on their part. ... Outside her most loyal supporters, the tactic flopped and most Americans were able to see through this blatant manipulation to distract them from the ugly truth."

On Trump's surprise victory on Nov. 8: "Sweeping" and "decisive." Clinton only won the popular vote by 200,000 ballots, the book says—although her edge was actually almost 3 million.

On Trump's history of charitable giving: The new president "is a kind-hearted philanthropist and humanitarian," according to the book, although he went years without contributing any money to his own charitable foundation.

In an update to his report, Shapira says the book has been removed from sale.

Who managed to write this ridiculous book? According to Shapira, the author is Brandon Christopher Hall, "a 25-year-old from Atlanta." In an interview with Shapira, Hall said "he voted for the Green Party's Jill Stein and described himself as a former supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders." (That makes him one of ours.)

Everybody makes mistakes. Needless to say, this includes people of various ages.

Still, when we read Shapira's report, we couldn't help thinking of Time magazine's Zeke Miller, who made a now-famous mistake on Inauguration Day.

Miller's now-famous groaning mistake involved the bust of Dr. King—the now-famous bust of Dr. King which didn't get removed from the Oval Office. Last Friday, Miller reported that the bust had been removed. He made this claim in a press pool report he authored from the White House.

Everybody makes mistakes, Miller included. That said, his groaner served as the latest pretext for the claim that the Washington press corps is out to get Donald J. Trump.

Everybody makes mistakes; Miller's became an instant classic. In this morning's New York Times, Jim Rutenberg helps place this groaner in context. He spoke with Ari Fleischer, the former Bush press secretary:

RUTENBERG (1/23/17): The Trump team’s emotions were raw over the weekend, Mr. Fleischer noted, after a mistaken pool report was sent to the rest of the White House press corps, claiming that Mr. Trump had removed a bust of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. Zeke Miller, the Time magazine journalist who had written the report, quickly corrected it and apologized when the White House alerted him to the error.

“It rightly leaves the people inside feeling that ‘reporters were opposed to us all along for being racist and the first thing they did was imply we were,’” Mr. Fleischer said.

Indeed. For ourselves, we'll take a wild guess. The fact that Miller's mistaken perception painted Trump as a racist helps explain why Miller made this mistake in the first place. It also explains why Miller should have been especially careful before he sent his mistaken claim to the rest of the press.

Everybody makes mistakes. That said, who is Zeke Miller?

It turns out that Miller is in his sixth year out of Yale. Presumably, his relative youth is saving Time some money in labor costs. His relative youth may also explain why he was foolish enough to make this foolish mistake, which served the crackpot partisan ends of Donald J. Trump and them.

Everybody makes mistakes, including people who recently went to Yale and may turn out to be fantastic journalists. That said, we're often amazed by the youth of the modern press corps.

On the bright side, youth comes relatively cheap. Still, we've often wondered about the possible down side to this smart money move.

A 25-year-old wrote that groaner-laden book. Subsequently, a kid from Yale made a now-famous mistake which painted Trump in a familiar way.

In fairness, everyone makes mistakes. But people upset by the rise of Donald J. Trump need to start getting angry about the various practices which have helped fuel his rise.

These recent mistakes were made by players Over Here, by players on Our Own team. Miller's groaner is the type of mistake our self-impressed team very much enjoys. Hall's mistakes may have come from one of our tribe's brainwashed legion of Hillary haters.

Fleischer explained why Miller's mistake made people mad. Miller's mistake was very dumb, and groaningly predictable to boot.

Did his mistake make people mad? We can't exactly say we blame them. Will the day ever come when Our Team starts getting mad about these gong shows too?

CONWAYISM AND BABEL: On Day Two, Cooper got it right!

MONDAY, JANUARY 23, 2017

Part 4—Yesterday's efforts by Todd: To appearances, Conwayism, which leads us to Babel, can almost look like a form of mental illness.

Chuck Todd confronted the strange condition on yesterday's Meet the Press. For the full transcript, click here.

Back in October, Todd had weirdly punched through a journalistic fourth wall. In decidedly non-journalistic fashion, he'd weirdly vouched for Kellyanne Conway, weirdly declaring that she "is a very good person."

For background, just click here.

Yesterday, that "very good person" was accusing Todd, again and again, of all sorts of deliberate misconduct. Mainly, though, the very good person was refusing to answer a fairly basic question.

At the top of yesterday's program, Todd played tape of Trump press secretary Sean Spicer making the following statement about the Trump inauguration:

"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe."

Todd then showed several photographs—photos which seemed to show that Spicer's statement was wrong, at least in the "in person" part. He showed the pair of photographs two separate times.

Based on the photos which Todd displayed, it seemed fairly clear that Obama's 2009 inauguration had been watched, in person, by a much larger crowd. On this basis, Todd kept asking Conway why Spicer had made his claim, which Todd said was "provably false."

Again and again and again and again, Conway refused to answer.

Todd kept asking; Conway kept ducking. For the record, here's the first way Todd asked this basic question:

TODD (1/22/17): And joining me now is the counselor to President Trump, Kellyanne Conway.

Ms. Conway, welcome to the White House North Lawn, which will become a familiar place for you, I think. Let me begin with this question:

The presidency is about choices, so I'm curious why President Trump chose yesterday to send out his press secretary to essentially litigate a provable falsehood when it comes to a small and petty thing like inaugural crowd size.

I guess my question to you is, Why do that?

To watch the whole interview, click here.

In our view, Todd has already made several journalistic mistakes. Somewhat weirdly, he has also welcomed Conway to the White House, a somewhat weird piece of behavior Conway chose not to exploit.

That said, Todd had asked Conway a rather basic question. He'd said that Spicer's claim about crowd size was "provably false." Assuming facts not in evidence, he'd then asked Conway why Trump told Spicer to make the false claim.

Despite a bit of embroidery, Todd's question was fairly clear. For the record, this was the first, rambling example of Conway's refusal to answer:

CONWAY (continuing directly): Chuck, the president did many things yesterday and the day before that are very meaningful to America. He signed executive orders to stop Obamacare and all of its problems. Many people have lost their—millions of people have lost their insurance, their doctors, their plans.

So that stops right now. He's going to replace it with something much more free market and patient-centric in nature.

And on this matter of crowd size, I mean, for me, I think the most quantifiable points of interest for Americans should be what just happened a few months ago that brought him here, the 31 of 50 states he won, the 2600 counties, the 200 counties that went for President Obama that now went to President Trump, and the fact that 29-30 million women voted for Donald Trump for president. They should be respected. Somebody should cover their voices as well.

I'm about things that are quantifiable and important, I don't think that—I don't think ultimately presidents are judged by crowd sizes at their inauguration. I think they're judged by their accomplishments. And we know that President Obama and his accomplishments, that there's a lot of unfinished business there.

And on this matter of crowd size, I think it is, I think it is a symbol for the unfair and incomplete treatment that this president often receives. I'm very heartened to see Nielsen just came out with the ratings, 31 million people watching the inauguration. President Obama had 20.5 million watching his second inauguration four short years ago.

So we know people are also watching the inauguration on different screens and in different modes and that there was—I mean, for me, there was a prediction of a downpour of rain, I think, that deterred many people from coming.

But no question, there were hundreds of thousands of people out on the mall—

Has Trump's inauguration really been watched, "in person," by the largest crowd in history? Conway wandered the countryside, failing to answer.

So far, Conway had said nothing which spoke to Todd's actual question. Finally, Todd broke in:

TODD: All right, Kellyanne, let me stop you here because you make a very reasonable and rational case for why crowd sizes don't matter. Then explain— You did not answer the question.

Why did the president send out his press secretary, who is not just the spokesperson for Donald Trump, he could be—he is also, serves as the spokesperson for all of America at times. He speaks for all of the country at times.

Why put him out there, for the very first time, in front of that podium, to utter a provable falsehood? It's a small thing. But the first time he confronts the public, it's a falsehood?

Had Trump been watched, "in person," by the largest crowd in history? It seems quite clear that he was not—that Spicer's claim actually was "a provable falsehood."

As she wandered the countryside, Conway had failed to address this point. And as the interview continued, she refused to address this point again and again and again.

Again and again, Todd broke in on Conway's rambling remarks, reminding her, again and again, that she hadn't answered his question. By our count, he told her that she had failed to answer his question at least nine additional times.

Conway simply kept refusing to address Todd's rather basic question. As she did, she displayed a remarkable aspect of Conwayism:

The Conwayist must be willing to take offense at everything which happens around her, to the point where she may appear to be borderline mentally ill.

Conway declared herself offended by Todd again and again. Again and again, she took offense at his minor word choices, just as she'd done one week before when interviewed by Anderson Cooper.

She took offense at factual mistakes made by other journalists. She complained that Todd was being "overly dramatic."

She complained about Obamacare. She complained about "the devastation and destruction in our schools."

She complained that Todd was laughing at her. She took offense at the way Todd was referring to "our president" and "our press secretary." She complained about the way the Trump campaign had been covered by the press.

She complained about the Democrats' failure to confirm Mike Pompeo as CIA head, which was threatening "the peaceful transfer of power." She claimed that "lies have been told about [Trump's] relationship and his respect for the intelligence community."

She complained about the fact that BuzzFeed released "a dossier of junk and lies and fake news," then took offense at BuzzFeed's alleged reasons for "releas[ing] the dossier." Last week, speaking with Cooper, she had taken offense at the very use of the word "dossier," a troubling Frenchified term.

These are only some of the points concerning which Conway took offense during her endless session with Todd. Again and again and again and again, she took offense at everything around her—past, present and future.

That said, make no mistake! As she kept reacting to the latest forms of disrespect and offense, she also kept refusing to address Todd's question. Why had Spicer made a provably false statement? Again and again and again and again, Conway refused to reply.

If you watch the tape of this interview, you're seeing Full-Tilt Conwayism in action. You're also seeing a person whose partisan craziness has become so absurdly intense that she may seem to be in the grip of some form of illness.

It's a basic tenet of Conwayism! The Conwayist must truly believe, or must at least seem to believe, in her own constant sense of grievance. At all times, she must truly believe that she's being treated with disrespect. She must truly believe the relentless claims which emerge from her paranoia.

Unless we assume that she's simply being disingenuous, Kellyanne Conway doesn't seem entirely "well." This raises a basic question—how should journalists like Todd deal with Conwayism?

Last week, Cooper dealt with Conway very poorly on Day One. During a 25-minute interview, he chased her around the countryside, taking every piece of bait he was offered.

He contested her every point. Again and again and again and again, he let himself be distracted from the basic questions at hand.

On Day Two, Cooper did much better. He presented a full segment in which he calmly reviewed Conway's various bogus claims from the night before.

Yesterday, in his own Day One, Todd performed more skillfully than Cooper had done. In our view, he did make a series of minor journalistic mistakes. But rather than chase Conway around as Cooper had done, he kept returning to his one basic question:

Why had Spicer made a claim which seems to be "provably false?"

He asked the question again and again. Again and again and again and again, an angry, aggrieved, offended Conway just kept refusing to answer.

Could Kellyanne Conway be "mentally ill" in some sort of way? Or is she simply crazy?

We don't know, but people like Cooper and Todd have to learn how to deal with Conwayism. It's an offshoot of Trumpism which leads us directly to Babel.

Yesterday, Conway may have seemed borderline nuts. She took offense, again and again, at virtually everything Todd said and did. Scarily, she actually seemed to believe the ridiculous things she kept saying.

She's been this way for decades now. The press corps, and the liberal world, have persistently averted their gaze from Conway, and from a host of other ridiculous people just like her.

As recently as last October, Todd was reacting to this Babel by calling Conway "a very good person." This is one of the crazy ways we got to our current place.

The annual schoolwide spelling bee!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2017

A fascinating post about health care: We're off on a mission of national import. We're headed south, by Amtrak no less, for the annual schoolwide bee.

Two years ago, when a certain unnamed relative was a mere third grader, we attended the bee for the first time. As we reported in real time, we were very much impressed by the greatness of the event.

Last year, we got blizzarded out. Tomorrow, as other ceremonies occur, we'll be in the public school auditorium, awaiting the word which was under review when we called the young scholar's home last evening:

"Promulgate: P-R-O-M-U-L-G-A-T-E. Promulgate."

(Journalistic definition: "Promulgate: A scandal involving trivial conduct committed by person or persons named Promul.")

We don't expect to post in the next few days. Under the circumstances, we'll have to postpone our final discussion of the scourge of Conwayism.

Upon our return to our sprawling campus, we'll discuss the role played by Anderson Cooper in the lengthy, ridiculous non-discussion we've been assessing this week. Our question:

Do people like Cooper really want to counter the noxious practices of this rhetorical style?

As we leave, we'll recommend two readings about people who voted for Trump:

In last Sunday's New York Times, Susan Chira offered brief interviews with several women who voted for Trump. Because we liberals are often so eager to cartoonize and generalize about Trump voters, it might be worth our time to consider the things these people said.

In a similar vein, we strongly recommend this fascinating post by Kevin Drum. We suggest you read it for what it says, and for what it doesn't.

Drum's post concerns another 50-something woman who has health insurance under Obamacare but can't afford to pay for actual health care. We strongly recommend Drum's post, and the first few ugly comments about the woman in question:

"Hard to feel sorry for someone who never asked for details. Ignored all his racism, misogyny, hate and out right lies and now is upset."

That was the very first comment appended to Drum's post.

Easy to be hard! All too often, that old bromide seems to capture the state of loathing which is so common in our liberal team's self-impressed soul.

For what it says and what it doesn't, we think Drum's post is very important. What makes our health care "system" so clownish, so awful? We'll discuss Drum's fascinating post upon our return.

We'll leave you with an important word:

"Tribalism: T-R-I-B-A-L-I-S-M. Ugly massive dumbness."

It savages our human functions. It blinds us to human concerns. It makes us very, very dumb. We tend to prove this in comments.

Michigan schools in the age of DeVos!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2017

Headed for the bottom: Yesterday, by happenstance, we experienced a rare mid-afternoon sighting.

By happenstance, we happened to watch this ten-minute, mid-afternoon segment on MSNBC. During the segment, Kate Snow interviewed two guests about our public schools.

Specifically, the segment was inspired by yesterday's Senate hearing involving Betsy DeVos, who will almost surely be our next secretary of education.

First, Snow interviewed a conservative who spoke in praise of DeVos. Then, she interviewed Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, who took a different view.

Largely because of her family's vast wealth, DeVos has played a major role in Michigan's public schools over the past twenty years. At one point, Weingarten issued a warning about the state of Michigan's schools in the age of DeVos:

WEINGARTEN (1/17/17): Look at the statistics from Michigan...What's happened in Michigan, on the same Naep test that you just talked about, they went from the middle of the pack in 2003 to the bottom, to 41 out of 50. That's not success. That's actually going backwards.

We decided to check it out. To access state-by-state comparisons on the Naep, we skillfully clicked here.

Yikes! In terms of their rankings among the fiftry states, Michigan's school have been in a serious downward spiral during the age of DeVos. As always, we'll disaggregate.

Below, you see the relative standing of Michigan's white students in Grade 8 reading and math, as compared to their counterparts in the other 49 states. Some states didn't participate before 2003. For the sake of simplicity, we're omitting some intermediate testing years:

Michigan, standing among the fifty states
Grade 8 reading, white students, Naep
2002: 19 out of 41 states
2003: 12 of 50
2005: 30 of 50

[...]

2013: 41 of 50
2015: 42 of 50

Grade 8 math, white students, Naep
2000: 10 out of 39 states
2003: 25 of 50
2005: 31 of 50

[...]

2013: 42 of 50
2015: 42 of 50

That has the look of a terrible downward spiral. Here are the rankings for Michigan's black kids. Some states don't have enough black kids to produce a statistically significant sample for purposes of the Naep:

Michigan, standing among the fifty states
Grade 8 reading, black students, Naep
2002: 22 out of 32 states
2003: 29 of 40
2005: 33 of 39

[...]

2013: 33 of 42
2015: 39 of 43

Grade 8 math, black students, Naep
2000: 22 out of 28 states
2003: 35 of 40
2005: 32 of 40

[...]

2013: 41 of 43
2015: 37 of 39

As compared with their peers in other states, Michigan's black kids started from a lower place than the state's white kids.

Among the state's white kids, the drop during the age of DeVos is really quite extreme. As compared with their counterparts in the other states, both groups of students in Michigan now rank near the bottom.

You won't see these data elsewhere; the truth is, nobody cares. We'll also say this about yesterday's report on MSNBC:

Kate Snow is perfectly bright. She went to Cornell, then got a master's degree at Georgetown. Her father is an anthropology professor at Penn State. For some C-Span learnin', click here.

Snow brought nothing, zero, nada, to yesterday's discussion. She seemed to be reading perfunctory questions which had been prepared by staff. She showed no sign of knowing a thing about public schools or testing data, a topic she quickly introduced to no useful effect.

Snow looked great, and she's perfectly bright. But she seems to know nothing about these topics. Basically, she was phoning it in. Simply put, her owners don't care.

That said, the story is largely the same all through our liberal world. We'll pretend to squawk about DeVos. In truth, we don't really care.

Please note: We're talking here about relative standing among the fifty states. From 2003 to 2015, white students' average scores in Grade 8 math actually improved by a small amount in Michigan.

That said, average scores in other states improved a whole lot more. This left Michigan near the bottom in terms of relative standing.

In Michigan, black students' average scores actually dropped by a small amount during those same years. In the age of DeVos, with test scores rising, Michigan has been a major outlier.

Here's the good news for DeVos—nobody actually cares!

CONWAYISM AND BABEL: Now you're insulting BuzzFeed, she said!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2017

Part 3—A blizzard of crazy complaints: Is Moscow blackmailing Donald J. Trump? Or doing something like that?

To us, that seems like an obvious possibility, given Trump's endless array of puzzling statements and crazy ideas. We'd like to see a stronger push for a full-blown, serious probe.

That said, sometimes a crazy idea is just a crazy idea. (We believe Freud said that.) Trump's puzzling statements and crazy ideas may come straight from the heart.

In our view, CNN got out over its skis a bit when it offered a breathless report about Donald J. Trump last Tuesday afternoon and evening, January 10.

In truth, the channel was reporting a small, but puzzling, piece of news about the intelligence briefing Donald J. Trump had received the previous week. Based on the excited way CNN proceeded, you would have thought their "enormous team effort" had produced Pentagon Papers II, or even brand-new information about the white Bronco chase.

In our view, CNN went overboard pimping its own greatness when it made its report. The channel also seemed a bit credulous about the possible motives behind the intelligence briefing it was reporting, and about possible reasons why the news of this briefing was leaked.

For our money, CNN didn't cover itself in glory last Tuesday, even though its basic reporting seems to have been accurate. The next night, though, the gorilla dust really hit the fan when CNN burned twenty-five minutes letting Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway blather, distract and emote.

We refer to the dust Conway threw in the air last Wednesday, January 11, as she pretended to discuss the CNN report. Assisting her was Anderson Cooper, who seemed to lack the basic skills required for such an assignment.

Cooper videotaped, then aired, a 25-minute session with Conway. During the session, Conway displayed the main practices of the gruesome rhetorical style now known as Conwayism.

What did Conway do in her session with Cooper? For starters, she made a repeated claim, again and again—a repeated claim which turned out to be false. Beyond that, she displayed the central conceit of Conwayism:

The Conwayist must always be willing to make the next stupid complaint.

If you watch the tape of the Cooper-Conway exchange, you'll see an endless array of complaints by Kellyanne Conway. A few of her complaints may even have some merit, although it will be hard to tell through all the confusion and dust.

Most of Kellyanne Conway's complaints are ludicrous, groanworthy, silly, absurd. Her complaints are routinely inane. But this is the gong show she's chosen.

For decades, Conways has been perfecting the practices and skills which constitute Conwayism. She's a master at adopting an air of grievance as she lodges absurd complaints.

For unknown reasons, Cooper seemed innocent of any knowledge about how to handle such an approach. A cynic would say that, for business reasons, he prefers the Crossfire-style nonsense which marked this pseudo-discussion.

If you watch that 25-minute tape, you'll see a giant at work. We refer to Conway's preternatural skill at producing a blizzard of silly complaints while maintaining an air of deep grievance.

Good God! By our count, she falsely claimed, a dozen times, that CNN linked to BuzzFeed the previous night, a repeated claim which was wrong. But as she and Cooper pretended to stage an important discussion, she also made, by our count, roughly thirty other complaints and claims, most of which were utterly silly blather.

Kellyanne Conway is always prepared to make the next inane complaint! If you watch that full tape, you'll see her do so again and again.

You'll see her complain that CNN's polling turned out to be wrong in last year's election. You'll see her complain about the way Obama's transition was covered in 2009.

You'll see her complain that "heads didn't roll at CNN" when its election polling was imperfect. You'll see her complain that no one will get fired at CNN if this new report turns out to be wrong—which, of course, it hasn't.

You'll see her say that CNN's report from the previous night was "just not true." You'll never get clear on what it was that the channel got wrong. (As far as we know, CNN's factual statements were all correct.)

You'll see her claim that CNN should carry the blame for various things that BuzzFeed and others did. You'll even see her praise herself for being "gracious enough to come on and discuss it."

You'll see her complain that CNN based its report on anonymous sources. That's something all news orgs do, often in quoting Conway herself.

You'll see her complain that CNN's chyrons were wrong during last year's election. Also, that their "chyrons were wrong" during the previous night's report.

You'll see her constantly changing the subject, for example by asking tangential questions like these:

CONWAY (1/11/17): If cybersecurity was such a big priority to this administration and the Democratic Party and its apologists in the media, then why didn't we do more about it over the last eight years? Why, when 21 million personnel files were hacked of innocent Americans to the Office of Personnel Management by China, President Obama basically gave them a slap on the wrist?

[...]

CONWAY: If the four intelligence officials that gave the top-secret briefing last week that some fools think they should leak to the media when it's a top-secret intelligence briefing for a reason so they we're all protected, everybody, then why according to your own report last night—"report" used as a loose word here—why do they not tell the president-elect about it? Because your own reporting says that there's no confirmation that they briefed him orally. If it was so darn important...if it's worthy of a CNN screaming headline that became this huge fake news story, then why did they not brief him?

For the full transcript, click here.

In response to that second complaint, Cooper sensibly said that he didn't know why the IC chose to brief Trump in the way it did, but that this didn't affect the accuracy of what CNN reported. (According to later reporting, James B. Comey did brief Trump orally about the contents of the two-page summary.)

In response to the first distraction, Cooper sensibly said, "I know you like to pivot." By that he meant that Conway likes to change the subject, thus creating a bewildering pseudo-discussion. That said:

Cooper's willingness to let Conway do that is one of our key topics here.

If you watch that 25-minute tape, you'll see an impressive blizzard of charges, complaints, distractions, sleights of hand and semi-comical groaners. The work product of this practice is sometimes described as "gorilla dust." It represents the attempt to create so much confusion that no clear point can ever be established within our public discourse.

How silly were some of Conway's complaints? Let's focus on a few of the absolute dumbest. Remember the basic tenet of Conwayism:

The spokesperson must always be willing to lodge the next complaint, no matter how silly or dumb.

How absurd were Conway's complaints? How much contempt did she show for CNN's viewers? Consider this early nonsense, in which Conway claimed that CNN called its January 10 report a "bombshell:"

CONWAY: Anderson, because CNN went first and had this breathless report, you know, everybody said it was a bombshell, earth-shattering report last night—

COOPER: We didn't say it was a bombshell.

CONWAY: BuzzFeed then went ahead— Yes you did! Yes, you did. It says right here: "Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian effort to compromise him." That's not true.

COOPER: Where's the word "bombshell?"

CONWAY: Your headline is wrong. Well, then Seth Meyers said that he, confronted me on the "bombshell." None of it is true.

COOPER: I'm sorry what Seth Meyers said to you.

Conway insisted that CNN had used the world bombshell. As proof, she read a CNN headline which didn't use that word.

Confronted with this obvious problem, she said that Meyers had used the word when she appeared on his show. Conwayism is powerful!

The sheer inanity of that exchange captures the essence of Conwayism. Remember, though—the Conwayist must always maintain an air of grievance as he makes her claims.

A few minutes later, Conway launched another absurd complaint. As the exchange begins, Cooper is trying to discern what Conway is actually saying about CNN's report. Quickly, Conway expresses her next point of grievance:

COOPER: So you're saying there was no two-page summary that was included in briefing material?

CONWAY: The president-elect was asked that question today. You should refer to his answer. But I will tell you—

COOPER: No, you can answer it. He said, he said—

CONWAY: No, I wasn't in the briefing.

COOPER: OK. So you can't say whether or not— You're saying it's not true, but you're saying also you can't say—

CONWAY: What did the president-elect say when he was asked?

COOPER: I don't know, you tell me.

CONWAY: Well then, you didn't pay attention to the press conference!

Vintage Conwayism! When Cooper asked Trump's spokesperson to relate what Trump had said, she replied, with an air of grievance, that Cooper hadn't paid sufficient attention during that day's press conference.

"I just don't want to misquote the president-elect," Cooper replied. "I assume you know what the president-elect said today." Cooper then paraphrased what Trump had said, and Conway raced ahead to the next in her long list of complaints.

Conwayism means never having to say you're not offended. At various times, Conway lodged silly, absurd complaints about Cooper's use of words:

COOPER: This is a red herring. You're just, it's like you got— You're trying to distract from my question which is, you do not have information whether it's true or not.

CONWAY: Anderson, you can use words like "pivot," "distract," "red herring" all you want. The fact is that the media have a 16 percent approval rating for a reason. It's been earned. And it's crap like this that really undergirds why Donald Trump won.

[...]

CONWAY: It's all fake news. And let me just say Anderson, I really think—

COOPER: But it's not all fake news. I mean, that's just disingenuous.

CONWAY: Well, in [the BuzzFeed] report, it is fake news. And people keep using the word "dossier" like some, like using some fancy French word is going to imbue it with credibility.

Please don't say "red herring," or even "distract!" Meanwhile, those French! They have a different word for everything!

Joking aside, those exchanges represent Conwayism in its purest form. In Conwayism, the practitioner must always be willing to issue the next complaint, no matter how silly or stupid.

At one point, Cooper was forced to take The Conway Challenge. When he successfully passed the test, Conway conjured an instant rebuttal:

COOPER: I get the anger over the BuzzFeed stuff. I thought that was—when I read that, it was totally unsubstantiated. We're not reporting that. I guess I don't understand— I guess actually, I think I do understand because I think it's politics for you to try to link all the reporters together. But it seems just unfair and frankly disingenuous.

CONWAY: No. Actually, very few people came to CNN's defense today. I'm sure you're aware of that.

COOPER: Well actually, Shepard Smith on Fox did, which I thought was interesting and actually pretty courageous.

CONWAY: That's a cherry pick. Great.

When Cooper cited a major host who did "come to CNN's defense," Conway knew how to react. Remember: when dealing with a Conwayist, there's nothing a person can say which won't produce instant aggrieved rebuttal.

(For the record: "cherry pick" seems to be OK, although "red herring" is not.)

At one point, Conway produced a truly amazing reaction. It happened when Cooper criticized the very news org she herself had criticized all through their pointless exchange.

This is Ultimate Conwayism. Giving the demagogue her due, the analysts burst into applause:

CONWAY: Anderson, do you think that BuzzFeed, or anybody else, after months of deciding against publishing specious, scurrilous, unverified, uncorroborated junk in a Democratic opposition research document, do you think they would have released it last night had CNN not preceded it with its own report? I doubt it. There was a nexus here.

COOPER: The last time I read BuzzFeed, I saw a headline that said like, "Ten top sex toys that was going to improve your sex life." I don't read BuzzFeed.

CONWAY: OK, now you're insulting BuzzFeed.

In a virtuoso performance, Conway adopted an air of grievance on behalf of BuzzFeed itself! Truly, the Conwayist will always be willing to voice the next complaint.

If you watch that 25-minute tape, you'll be watching Conwayism in its purest form. On the one hand, you'll see Conway make a false claim again and again, insisting, again and again, that CNN linked to the BuzzFeed report, which it actually didn't.

Beyond that, you'll see the essence of this rhetorical style. Conwayism involves the constant churning of aggrieved complaints, no matter how silly/inane.

Conway's performance on that tape is a public disgrace. She's churning clouds of gorilla dust every step of the way, creating maximum confusion while maintaining an air of deep grievance.

Vladimir Putin opposes the practices of civil society; Kellyanne Conway does too. Her conduct on that pitiful tape produced a perfect Babel.

We're left with the role played by Anderson Cooper. What should we think about him?

Next: Cable loves heat, not light

Todd lets Priebus make bogus claim!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2017

You live in a world without facts: Why does Rep. John Lewis think Donald Trump isn't legitimate?

It's hard to say! You see, Lewis made his much-discussed statement on Meet the Press, and there his statement just sat. Below, you see the text of Lewis' original statement, along with Chuck Todd's questions:

TODD (1/15/17): You have forged relationships with many presidents. Do you plan on trying to forge a relationship with Donald Trump?

LEWIS: You know, I believe in forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It will be hard. It's going to be very difficult. I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president.

TODD: You do not consider him a legitimate president? Why is that?

LEWIS: I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. I don't plan to attend the inauguration. It will be the first one that I'll miss since I've been at Congress. You cannot be at home with something that you feel that it`s wrong.

In that exchange, Lewis said he doesn't consider Trump to be "a legitimate president" because of actions by the Russians. The Russians helped get Trump elected. This means he isn't legit.

There's always dissembling and disinformation within our election campaigns. To us, this doesn't quite explain why you'd say that Trump isn't legit.

(It does explain why you'd insist on a full investigation of what occurred.)

At that point, Todd asked an additional question. When he did, the plot thickened quite a bit, but Todd didn't seem to notice:

TODD (continuing directly): It's going to send—it's going to send a big message to a lot of people in this country that you don't believe he's a legitimate president.

LEWIS: I think there was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians and others to help him get elected. That's not right. That's not fair. That's not the open, democratic process.

At this point, Lewis seems to have made a much more serious claim. He says there was "a conspiracy" to get Trump elected—a conspiracy "on the part of the Russians and others."

Who else took part in this conspiracy? For some reason, Todd didn't ask. But then, throughout the interview, which he aired in two parts, Todd spoke to Lewis as if Lewis were six years old.

Was Trump himself, or the Trump campaign, involved in the conspiracy Lewis alleged? For whatever reason, Todd never asked.

We have a relentlessly childish discourse. That said, Todd's exchange with Lewis was grown-up stuff compared with what happened when he spoke with Reince Priebus.

In the passage shown below, Priebus makes an inaccurate claim two times. Todd just sits there and takes it:

PRIEBUS: James Clapper, the intelligence community—I don't know if John Lewis knows more than they do, but they have concluded that there's no evidence that anything that was done in the course of this election by Russians, or whoever, changed the course of this election.

Say what? Clapper and the intelligence community "have concluded that there's no evidence that anything that was done in the course of this election by Russians changed the course of this election?"

Obviously, that statement by Priebus was false. When the IC issued its public report about the hacking, they explicitly said that they hadn't attempted to assess whether the Russian conduct affected electoral outcomes.

("We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election." They said this plain as day, right there on page i.)

Obviously, Priebus' statement was false. Seconds later, he said it again. When he did, Todd jumped in to issue a non-challenge challenge:

PRIEBUS: There is nothing here in regard to this issue and Russia—

TODD: Wait a minute.

PRIEBUS: —and all of the defense intelligence agencies have concluded that.

TODD: I'm just curious. when you say there's nothing here, there's—

PRIEBUS: I mean evidence that changed the outcome of the election.

Priebus' grammar doesn't parse, but in context, his meaning was perfectly clear. Priebus had said it two more times. The intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia's interference didn't change the outcome of the election.

This statement was false every time Priebus said it, but Todd just let it go. Here's where he took things from there:

TODD (continuing directly): You're talking—you're not disputing that there is a lot of evidence of Russia's attempts to interfere in the election?

PRIEBUS: I'm not disputing that the Russian entities hacked the DNC, but I am—I'm not going to go back to our interview of a few weeks ago. I am also going to say that when you don't have any defenses on your computer system and you basically hand over 50,000 emails, obviously, that makes it a whole lot easier...

TODD: OK, but Mr. Priebus, does that excuse a foreign government from attempting to interfere in the United States election?

Sad! Priebus agreed that Russians did hack the DNC. He agreed that this behavior was wrong.

But he had also repeatedly said that the IC has concluded that this didn't change the outcome of the election. That repeated statement was false, but Todd just let it go.

In fairness, Todd is hardly alone. Last night, Don Lemon and two of CNN's liberal hacks let the same statement by a Trump hack go unchallenged. Last week, Jon Meacham let the statement go unchallenged when it was made by Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe.

It's an RNC/Trump talking point. The stars are letting it go.

What does John Lewis actually think? Todd didn't bother to ask. Subsequently, he let a glaring repeated misstatement by Priebus go unchallenged.

The world of our public discourse is an extremely childish world. On the bright side, many stars are receiving millions of bucks for their roles in this silly charade.

CONWAYISM AND BABEL: Always willing to make the next ludicrous claim!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2017

Part 2—The essence of Conwayism: What actually happened the day before Kellyane Conway's tiff with Anderson Cooper?

Conway's absurd performance during that tiff created an instant Babel. Her performance showcased the essence of Conwayism, an offshoot of the better-known rhetorical form, Trumpism.

What actually happened on Tuesday, January 10, triggering this giant tiff? Thank you for asking:

First, CNN aired a breathless report about Donald J. Trump's intelligence briefing the week before. Then, BuzzFeed published a 35-page document—a document full of unverified claims about that same Donald J. Trump.

According to CNN, a two-page summary of this document had been presented to Trump, in some manner or form, during or after the intelligence briefing. After CNN made this report, BuzzFeed went ahead and published the full dossier.

Did Donald J. Trump have reason to fault CNN for its slightly breathless report? Did he have reason to fault the unnamed "U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the briefings" who had served as CNN's sources?

Did he have reason to fault BuzzFeed for publishing the dossier? These are perfectly sensible questions, but all such matters were obscured by the crazy burst of Conwayism with which Cooper was confronted on Wednesday, January 11.

Kellyanne Conway is, at present, Trump's most aggressive spokesperson. In our view, she could have made some reasonable, limited complaints about CNN's report from the day before.

At present, there's no apparent reason to believe any of the unverified claims in the 35-page dossier. As best we can tell, one of the claims in that document instantly turned out to be false. The sexiest claim was so over-the-top that it recalled crazy unverified claims from the past, such as the claim in a number-one best-selling book that First Lady Hillary Clinton used drug paraphernalia for ornaments on the White House Christmas tree.

You'd pretty much have to be nuts to have believed something like that, but many people did believe it. In certain respects, the sexiest claim in the new dossier is almost as unlikely as that pathetic claim from the past.

Still, CNN adopted a slightly breathless air as it unveiled its new report. Here's the way Jake Tapper took the throw from Wolf during the 6 PM hour:

TAPPER (1/10/17): That's right, Wolf, a CNN exclusive.

CNN has learned that the nation's top intelligence officials gave information to president-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama last week about claims of Russian efforts to compromise president-elect Trump.

The information was provided as part of last week's classified intelligence briefings regarding Russian efforts to undermine the 2016 U.S. elections.

I have been working on this story with my colleagues Jim Sciutto, Evan Perez and Carl Bernstein. They all join me now.

Jim, let's walk through the basics here of what we know.

SCIUTTO: We will. To be clear, this has been an enormous team effort by my colleagues here and others at CNN.

For full transcript, click here.

Tapper and a cast of thousands announced that the "CNN exclusive" had resulted from "an enormous team effort" at CNN. Minutes later, Tapper introduced "the legendary Carl Bernstein, who also worked with the three of us on this story."

There was a hint of Oscar night as everyone on the team took his turn at the microphone, explaining the enormous team effort. And uh-oh! Getting way out over his skis, Sciutto was soon suggesting, wink wink wink, that the unverified claims in the dossier just might perhaps maybe be true:

SCIUTTO: The synopsis was considered so sensitive that it was not included in the classified report about Russian hacking that was more widely distributed, but rather in an annex only shared at the most senior levels of the government, this, of course, including President Obama, the president-elect and those eight congressional leaders.

But, Jake, we should also note that including this in these briefings given to the president and the president-elect, taking the time, while they are not verified, to take the time and include them in those very important meetings is a measure, gives a measure of at least importance to it. Not credence yet, because they haven't established it's factual. But you don't put that in there for no reason.

Wink wink, hint hint! These claims just may be true, Sciutto suggested. You don't put stuff like that in a briefing for no reason!

Sciutto didn't suggest a second possibility. He didn't suggest the possibility that the Intelligence Community included this material in the briefing, then leaked the fact that they had done so, as political payback to Donald J. Trump for the ridiculous insults he has thrown at the IC in recent weeks. Thoughts like this didn't seem to have entered the enormous team's head.

Our view? From the legendary Bernstein right on down, the CNN stars did seem to have their thumbs on the scale a tad during their somewhat breathless report. Even if all the narrow factual claims in CNN's report were accurate, it seems to us that Kellyanne Conway could have lodged a few basic complaints about the network's performance.

In our view, Kellyanne Conway could have lodged some sensible complaints about CNN's report. That said, Homey doesn't play it that way.

Conwayism has never been about the presentation of sensible observations, claims and complaints. Conwayism runs on a different fuel, and here's what it is:

The constant willingness to advance the next ridiculous claim.

Yesterday, we reviewed one striking part of Conway's performance with Anderson Cooper on Wednesday, January 11. Again and again and again and again, she kept insisting that CNN had linked to BuzzFeed's presentation of the unverified, 35-page dossier.

Almost everyone in the press corps agreed—BuzzFeed shouldn't have published the unverified collection of claims about Trump. Again and again and again and again, Conway kept insisting that CNN had linked to BuzzFeed's publication, making CNN just as guilty as BuzzFeed in this regard.

As far as we know, Conway's repeated claim was inaccurate, false, bogus, wrong. As far as we know, CNN didn't link to BuzzFeed's report, though the channel hasn't exactly broken its back to settle this apparently bogus claim in a definitive manner. (Again and again, our mainstream press corps doesn't run on facts.)

Again and again and again and again, Conway had made a cutting claim—a cutting claim which seems to have been false. That said, please understand today's basic point:

False claims are a common part of Conwayism, but they aren't its essence.

The essence of Conwayism is something slightly different. It's the willingness to advance a stream of ridiculous claims, no matter how ludicrous and absurd the various claims and complaints may be.

Conway has been practicing this culture since the mid-1990s. As she spoke with Cooper that night, she showcased this ludicrous culture in its purest form.

Even after she seemed to see that her claim about the link may have been wrong, she jumped from one ludicrous claim to another. In the process, she created a Babel—though she did so with Cooper's help.

Tomorrow, we'll look at some of the ludicrous claims Conway advanced that night. Gorilla dust was all around as her nonsense continued.

"Gorilla dust?" Ross Perot introduced the term into the political lexicon in 1992. We'll offer some background below.

That said, gorilla dust was all around as Conway created a Babel last Wednesday night. Increasingly, our public discourse functions this way.

People like Cooper help.

Tomorrow: No charge or complaint too absurd

What the heck is gorilla dust: Fortune magazine explained the term in 1987:

"Gorilla dust: When gorillas fight, they throw dust in the air to confuse each other." The magazine referred to Ross Perot as it offered this explanation.

Ross Perot commonly used the term within the political context. Within the political context, the term refers to the attempt to create massive confusion through distractions and asides, thereby eliminating the possibility of a clear discussion.

In 2011, White House press secretary Jay Carney used the term in a press briefing. Inevitably, the youngsters at the Washington Post had never heard the term.

Finally, one old-timer—he was 56—explained Perot's use of the term.

Conway threw plenty of dust during her pseudo-discussion with Cooper. In the process, she created our latest Babel.

Her crazy pseudo-discussion with Cooper produced plenty of heat but almost no light. More and more, this is the culture we've chosen.

Meanwhile, at the Washington Post, how much else sails over young journalists' heads? Youth may keep salary structures low, but it does have disadvantages.

CONWAYISM AND BABEL: Twelve angry claims!

MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2017

Part 1—Twelve angry claims which were false: She wasn't named for Conway Twitty. And she didn't marry Tim Conway.

Despite these disadvantages, Kellyanne Conway has become a powerful force within the world of Donald J. Trump.

The president-elect's rhetorical style is often referred to as Trumpism. If we lived in a different kind of world, competent intellectuals would be working to define the elements of that style.

We don't live in that kind of world. We do live in a world whose public debate is increasingly being shaped by Conwayism. This fact became more clear last Wednesday night, January 11, on Anderson Cooper's CNN show.

The previous day, all Hell had broken loose. Late Tuesday afternoon, CNN had reported that the nation's intelligence chiefs had briefed Trump on the contents of the latest "dodgy dossier," a 35-page collection of unverified claims about Trump.

A few hours later, BuzzFeed actually published the full contents of the dodgy document. The dossier had been floating around for months. Because its claims were unverified (and may in some cases have sounded crazy), no one else had published it.

Suddenly, BuzzFeed did, inanely saying that people could make up their minds for themselves about the array of charges.

CNN's report about the intelligence briefing had preceded BuzzFeed's document dump. Here's the way Jake Tapper reported to Wolf during Tuesday's 6 PM hour:

TAPPER (1/10/17): That's right, Wolf, a CNN exclusive.

CNN has learned that the nation's top intelligence officials gave information to President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama last week about claims of Russian efforts to compromise president-elect Trump.

The information was provided as part of last week's classified intelligence briefings regarding Russian efforts to undermine the 2016 U.S. elections.

I have been working on this story with my colleagues Jim Sciutto, Evan Perez and Carl Bernstein. They all join me now.

It was a CNN exclusive. Excitement seemed to be running high at the pundit-rich cable channel.

In our view, the excitement overrode good journalistic practice in certain ways during's Tapper's report. Eventually, though, it came to seem that CNN's report had basically been accurate.

CNN broke its exclusive late Tuesday afternoon. A few hours later, BuzzFeed went all in, publishing the entire dodgy dossier/memo/report, which ran 35 pages.

By Wednesday, Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway was very unhappy about this whole affair. As a result, CNN's Anderson Cooper taped a 25-minute interview with Conway.

Cooper played tape of the entire interview during his program last Wednesday night. During that session, we got to see the general shape of the rhetorical style called Conwayism. We also saw some of the journalistic failings which help make the style so effective.

Which attributes of Conwayism were on display Wednesday night? For today, let's restrict ourselves to one aspect of Conwayism—the ability to make an angry claim again and again and again and again, even if the angry claim in question is factually false.

Let's be fair! At some point, almost everyone ends up making false or shaky claims. It also seems that certain people make many more such claims than is the statistical norm.

During her session with Cooper, Conway launched her false claim quite quickly. Below, you see the way the interview started. We highlight the bogus claim to which we refer:

COOPER (1/11/17): Kellyanne, at today's press conference, Sean Spicer conflated unsubstantiated claims that BuzzFeed released with what CNN reported. And I was surprised by that, because he said BuzzFeed and CNN made the decision to run with the unsubstantiated claim.

That's simply not true. I mean, what CNN said is that CNN is not reporting on details of that memo, as it is not independently corroborated the specific allegations.

Do you acknowledge here and now that CNN did not release the 35-page unsubstantiated claims against Donald Trump and it was misleading and untrue for Sean Spicer to suggest otherwise?

CONWAY: No, our incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, was exactly right, as was the president-elect, Anderson. CNN went first yesterday and BuzzFeed went second.

COOPER: We didn't report what BuzzFeed reported.

CONWAY: I didn't say that you did, but you linked to it in your story.

To watch the full interview, just click here.

Let's be candid. In part because of Cooper's shortcomings, this conversation was already a bit of a Babel.

That said, Conway had already seemed to make a fairly specific claim. She seemed to be claiming that CNN had linked to BuzzFeed's publication of the 35-page dossier/memo/report.

Is that what Conway meant when she said, "You linked to it in your story?" Few things ever became clear during Cooper's 25-minute tussle with Conway. But it's fairly clear that Conway was claiming that CNN had linked to BuzzFeed's posting of the dossier, or to the BuzzFeed report which presented the dossier.

Again and again and again and again, Conway restated her slightly murky complaint: CNN had linked to BuzzFeed's publication of the 35-page dossier! By our count, she went on to make some version of this angry claim eleven more times.

That made it twelve angry claims in all. It was Classic Conwayism:

Conway's twelve angry claims:
1) "...you linked to it in your story."

2) "And so were you. You linked to—"

3) "Why do you link to the BuzzFeed story in your report?"

4) "If you couldn't corroborate it, why would you even link to it? Why are you linking to fake news?"

5) "Why are you linking to this stuff? You know the Michael Cohen—you know the Michael Cohen who is mentioned in that report is not the Michael Cohen who works at the Trump organization."

6) "You're linking to the BuzzFeed report."

7) "It's mentioned in here. I'm looking at the updated CNN report. I read it right before we came on air."

8) "It's on your website. But anyway, it's on CNN.com."

9) "I think if you link to something on your website, you're reporting it."

10) "No, no, hold on! You can't say you're not reporting it if it's on your website."

11) "If you say that CNN's not reporting on something but it's on your website, does that mean CNN is not reporting on it? Because I think they are."

12) Sarcastically: "The BuzzFeed report, the BuzzFeed story is not linked on your website, it's not mentioned in the story?"

If you read the transcript or watch the tape, you'll see that it's perfectly clear. In these repeated statements, Conway was claiming that CNN had linked in some way to BuzzFeed's publication of the 35-page dossier.

During the first half of her interview with Cooper, Conway made this claim again and again and again. Suddenly, though, she stopped making the claim. We'll speculate about the reason for that below.

Again and again and again and again, Conway made her angry claim. At CNN.com, CNN had linked to BuzzFeed's publication of the 35-page dossier!

If you watch the first half of the videotape, you'll be seeing one key part of Conwayism in action. We refer to the ability to make an angry claim again and again and again.

Having said that, let us also say this. As best we can tell, Conway's angry claim was false. She made her claim again and again, but she was wrong every time.

Conway kept insisting that CNN had linked to the dossier, or perhaps to BuzzFeed's report presenting the dossier. At one point (see number 7 above), she even said that she was looking at the CNN report which contained the link. She said she'd checked it "right before we came on the air" (presumably, right before they started taping).

Angrily, Conway kept making her angry claim. In the course of her tirade, she insisted, several times, that CNN should "clean house," so horrible had their overall journalism been the previous day.

It's a basic tenet of Conwayism. You keep repeating your angry claim, again and again and again. But uh-oh! As best we can tell, in this instance, Conway's claim was false.

As best we can tell, CNN didn't link to the dodgy dossier, or to the BuzzFeed report about it. But here's another problem:

When Cooper sat for his interview with Conway, it seems he didn't know that.

As Conway made her repeated claim, Cooper offered various responses. At several points, he clearly said that CNN hadn't linked to BuzzFeed.

Eventually, though, he flatly said he didn't know whether CNN had done so. This was Cooper's response to Conway's twelfth angry claim:

CONWAY: If you say that CNN's not reporting on something, but it's on your website, does that mean CNN is not reporting on it? Because I think they are.

COOPER: BuzzFeed is not on our website.

CONWAY: OK. The BuzzFeed report, the BuzzFeed story, is not linked on your website, it's not mentioned in the story?

COOPER: I don't know. I don't know all of what's on digital program.

CONWAY: I do!

COOPER: I'm told it's not, but I don't believe that it is. I find it weird that CNN—and frankly, if CNN linked to the BuzzFeed stuff, that seems to me inappropriate. And if CNN does that, I would not, I would not support that. But as far as I know, that is not the case. I'm certainly going to check out our website and I urge people to go to our website right now and check it out for themselves.

By this time, complete confusion reigned about an array of points. As we'll see in our next few reports, Cooper and Conway created a total Babel in an array of ways.

That said, Conway stopped making her angry claim at this point, perhaps because Cooper said he'd been told that her angry claim was wrong (presumably by a producer). We'd don't know if that's why Conway suddenly dropped her repeated claim. But we'd call that a decent conjecture.

At any rate, Cooper had finally said it! He finally said that he didn't know if CNN had linked to the BuzzFeed report. Earlier, he'd seemed to say that CNN didn't link. Now, surrounded by a Babel, he said something quite different.

We wouldn't say it was Cooper's "fault" that he didn't know, coming in, whether CNN had linked. You can't know what sorts of claims will be made until someone like Conway starts making them.

We wouldn't say it was Cooper's "fault" that he didn't know whether CNN had linked to BuzzFeed. But again and again, Conwayism feeds on journalistic ignorance, incompetence and deference to power—attributes which are legion.

Today, we've seen one small part of the rhetorical style known as Conwayism. In Conwayism, you make your angry, angry claims again and again and again.

Your anger may overwhelm your accuracy, as seems to have occurred in this instance. But within the world of Conwayism, this may not gigantically matter.

Concern about accuracy may not be a major part of Conwayism. We'll be honest with you one more time:

We see a similar style at work on some of our own tribe's favorite programs. Did you happen to see a certain unnamed cable star bungling facts last Thursday night as she told us about Trump's "lies?"

Tomorrow: Basic tenet: You must always be willing to move to the next ridiculous claim

Should journalists call a lie a lie?

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2017

How the debate got started: Two Sundays ago, it started.

On Meet the Press, Chuck Todd was speaking with Gerard Baker, editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal. With our journalistic culture crumbling around him, Brother Todd asked a question:

Should journalists call a lie a lie?

After Brother Todd popped the question, Baker gave Todd a reply.

Should journalists call a lie a lie? As a general matter, we'd say the answer is no.

Just last night, an unnamed major cable star helped us see why the L-bomb can be dangerous. In her case, she made several basic factual errors, trailing L-bombs behind her as she proceeded.

In fairness, most journalists aren't as kooky or self-indulgent as this rapidly fading star. For today, let's just consider what Todd and Baker said:

TODD (1/1/17): The issue of facts. We don't— People always say, "You've got to fact-check, you've got to fact-check." But we sometimes—there isn't an agreement on what the facts are. And this is yet another challenge for you and everybody here, which—

Do you feel comfortable saying. "So-and-so lied?" To be that—you know, if somebody says just an outright falsehood, do you say the word "lie?" Is that important to start putting in reporting or not?

BAKER: You know, it's a good— I'd be careful about using the word "lie." "Lie" implies much more than just saying something is false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead. I think it's perfectly—

When Donald Trump says thousands of people were on the rooftops of New Jersey on 9/11 celebrating, thousands of Muslims were there celebrating, I think it's right to investigate that claim, to report what we found, which is that nobody found any evidence of that whatsoever, and to say that.

I think it's then up to the readers to make up their own mind, to say, "This is what Donald Trump says, this is what a reliable, trustworthy news organization reports. And you know what, I don't think that's true."

I think if you start ascribing a moral intent, as it were, to someone by saying that they've lied, I think you run the risk that you look like you are being—you're not being objective. And I do think also it implies that people—

This is happening all the time now, people are looking at what Donald Trump is saying and saying this is false, this is a false claim. I think people say, "Well you know what, Hillary Clinton said a lot of things that were false. I don't recall the press being quite so concerned about saying that she lied when, in headlines or in stories like that."

That's what the twin titans said. For starters, let's frisk Todd's question, simplifying his language the tiniest bit:

If somebody says an outright falsehood, should a reporter say that he or she "lied?"

Basically, that's the question Todd asked. It's a perfectly sensible question.

That said, we'd be inclined to pose a second question in return:

If Person A says an outright falsehood, what would be wrong with reporting that Person A "said an outright falsehood?"

What exactly would be wrong with using language like that? Even that language strikes us as a bit problematic. But what's wrong with using language which simply reports that Person A made a statement which is blatantly or plainly false? Why do we want to jump ahead to the claim that Person A "lied?"

As a starter, that's the question we'd pose to Todd.

Now let's turn to Baker. He starts off noting an obvious fact: When we say that Person A lied, we've gone beyond the mere claim that Person A made a misstatement.

As Baker notes, we're now saying that Person A deliberately tried to mislead us. This takes us into the realm of intent, and intent is typically hard to demonstrate or know.

When Trump made the statement to which Baker refers, was he telling a lie? Was he telling a lie when he continued making his claim, even after evidence began to indicate that his statement was almost certainly wrong?

It's hard to nail down an answer to such questions. In partisan times like these, the claim that Person A (or Donald Trump) lied will tend to end the consideration of what Person A did. One tribe will cheer; the other tribe will leave the room. Inevitably, the reporter will have to admit that he can't quite demonstrate or prove Person A's intent.

Our basic point for the day:

There is a lot of very strong language which falls short of the claim that So-and-so "lied." In the past several decades, our mainstream reporters have very rarely turned to the use of such language, even when discussing public figures who seem to make wild misstatments as a matter of course.

There's a lot of strong language which falls short of the claim that So-and-so "lied." In most cases, we'd suggest that reporters try that sort of language out before they jump ahead to the diagnosis of "lies."

In future episodes of this series, we'll look at some of the punditry which followed Todd and Baker's exchange. We also may look at Baker's statement in a bit more detail. As he continued along, we thought he got rather wobbly. How often has Brother Baker pondered questions like this?

That said, "outright falsehood" is strong language. Has Brother Todd ever used it? We'll guess the answer is no.

INTRODUCING THE GRETA: Helping Trump spread birther claims all around!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2017

Part 4—In search of the greatness of Greta: MSNBC has stepped up its efforts at selling The Greta.

The channel is now running ads in which a certain "cable news" star vouches for Greta's greatness. "Greta is great," this unnamed star is shown saying in this repulsive new ad.

Victims, it gets even worse! The channel is now running a second ad, in which this same multimillionaire star tells us how much she enjoys interviewing Kellyanne Conway! We've only seen this ad one time, but it sent our analysts into the yard, hands clapped over their mouths.

How great is Greta Van Susteren? Last Thursday, an unnamed major cable news star vouched for her greatness on MSNBC's air. She made a wildly embellished claim about the number of times she's played tape of Greta in the past. She even described the nature of Greta's vast greatness:

MADDOW (1/5/17): If you want to count on your fingers how many times we on this show have played clips of Greta Van Susteren over the years, you could not do it. You need like four extra hands.

And she has an uncanny ability to make newsworthy things happen when the red light is on the camera and she is on TV talking about the news. She can get anybody to talk to her. She has reported from all over the world. She had a decade at CNN. She had 14 years at Fox.

She's also, outside this building, one of the single most decent and genuine and honorable people I have ever come across in this business...She starts here at MSNBC 6:00 Eastern on Monday night. And I could not be happier about it.

Off the air, Greta Van Susteren may well be the world's most decent person. On the air, her work at Fox was often inexcusably bad. The unnamed star who is pimping her greatness has spiraled down badly over the years. Alas! When corporations make people extremely famous and rich, this sort of thing sometimes happens.

How great has Greta Van Susteren's work been over the years? Today, we want to show you two of the video clips this unnamed cable news star has played on MSNBC.

We also want to show you the way Van Susteren helped Donald J. Trump pimp his birther claims down through the years. Today, an unnamed star is pleased to pretend that her dear friend and drinking companion never engaged in such conduct.

Let's start with the video clips of Greta the Great this star has played through the years. Judging from the Nexis archive, you wouldn't need four extra hands to count such incidents up.

For the five years from 2012 through 2016, we found thirteen instances in which this star played tape of Van Susteren interacting with a guest. And uh-oh! Eight of those instances involved repeated airings of just two favorite clips.

How great was Greta Van Susteren at Fox? In a clip this cable star has played on five occasions, Van Susteren interviews the rather callow Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, who inherited his seat in the House from his name's-the-same father, Rep. Duncan L. Hunter.

Back in 2014, Hunter the Younger was claiming that ISIS was sending agents across the southern border. Here's the clip of Greta's greatness, as shown last Thursday night:

MADDOW (1/5/17): This was one of my all-time favorite Greta moments from when she was on Fox.

(videotape from October 7, 2014)

HUNTER: I know that at least ten ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the Mexican border in Texas. There's nobody talking about it, there's—

VAN SUSTEREN: How do you know that?

HUNTER: Because I've asked, because I've asked the border patrol, Greta.

VAN SUSTEREN: And the border patrol, they just let ISIS members come across the border?

(end of video clip)

According to the unnamed star, we rubes are supposed to regard this exchange as one of Greta's greatest. We'll admit we have no idea why. As almost anyone can see, Greta's second question to Hunter the Younger doesn't even seem to make sense. If ten ISIS fighters have been caught, it would seem fairly clear that the border patrol wasn't "just letting them cross."

Nor did Greta proceed from there to display the astounding skill this unnamed star was now selling. In real time, this is the way her interview with Hunter the Younger proceeded:

HUNTER (continuing directly): No. They caught them at the border. Therefore, we know that ISIS is coming across the border. If they catch five or 10 of them, you know that there are going to be dozens more that did not get caught by the Border Patrol. That's how you know. All you have to do is ask the Border Patrol. That's where we are at risk here, is from ISIS and radical Islamists coming across the border. Once again, they don't have a navy, an air force or nuclear weapons. The only way that Americans are going to be harmed by radical Islamists is to have an open southern border. Chairman Dempsey said the same thing. He said that's where the major threat is here, is having an open southern border. That's how these guys are going to infiltrate through America and harm Americans.

VAN SUSTEREN: Congressman, thank you, sir.

HUNTER: Thank you.

VAN SUSTEREN: And now to the new terror raids in London...

For some reason which has gone unexplained, we rubes are supposed to regard that exchange as one of Greta's greatest at Fox. As noted, the unnamed star has played some version of this exchange five separate times in the past several years.

The unnamed star's second favorite "Greta moment" involves an exchange with Donald J. Trump. The exchange occurred in late May 2015. The unnamed star has played some form of this video clip on three separate occasions.

Last Thursday night, the clip was included in a medley of Greta's greatest moments. Here's how it was presented:

MADDOW (videotape from May 29, 2015): Foreign policy pronouncements like this one that he made this week with my friend Greta Van Susteren on Fox News.

(videotape from May 27, 2015)

TRUMP: Bring ISIS to the table or beyond that, defeat ISIS very quickly, and I'm not going to tell you what it is tonight. You know, one of the problems that we have—

VAN SUSTEREN: Why won't you tell us? Hey, Donald, Donald—

TRUMP: I'll tell you what, because I don't want to, Greta. I'll tell you what—

VAN SUSTEREN: Donald, why don't you tell?

That's what we were shown last Thursday night.

On that occasion in 2015, Van Susteren was asking a perfectly decent question. It was also perhaps the most obvious question in the history of the known world.

Nor did Greta push on from there. In real time, this was the rest of the story. Can you spot Greta's brilliance?

TRUMP (continuing directly): If I run, and if I win, I don't want the enemy to know what I'm doing. I don't want the enemy to know what I'm doing. Unfortunately, I will probably have to tell at some point, but there is a method of defeating them quickly and effectively and having total victory.

I don't want to be Obama, where he goes on television to explain exactly when we're going to attack a certain city, what we're going to do, what hour we're going to be using for the attack, how many men are going in. I don't want to do that because, you know, the late great General Douglas MacArthur and General Patton are spinning in their grave when they hear what we do, how we announce exactly what we're going to do and how we are going to do it. If I run and if I win, I don't want the enemy to know what I'm going to do. All I can tell you is that it is a foolproof way of winning, and I'm not talking about what some people would say, but it's a foolproof way of winning the war with ISIS and it will be absolutely 100 percent they will at a minimum come to the table and actually they will be defeated very quickly, very quickly.

VAN SUSTEREN: You say "if" you're running, so tell me. Where do you stand on this and when will you have more information on that?

You may have noted Greta's tendency to let guests like Trump rattle on at length even when they're making ridiculous claims, then to move to the next subject. Despite this rather obvious flaw, we liberals have now been told to regard this exchange as another example of Van Susteren's greatness at Fox.

Citizens, do you really need four extra hands to count the times this cable host has played tape of Van Susteren's greatness? Not exactly, no.

In fact, those two soporific exchanges represent eight of the thirteen occasions on which this cable star has played such Greta tapes in the past five years! Aside from the fact that her corporate bosses wanted her to sell their new car, it's hard to see why this unnamed star would be pimping The Greta this way.

That said, we want to help you see why last week's grift was so appalling. We want you to see the way Van Susteren helped her frequent guest, Donald J. Trump, peddle his birther claims during her tenure at Fox.

As John Whitehouse recently noted at Media Matters, Van Susteren frequently interviewed Donald J. Trump even before his run for the White House. On several occasions, this gave her the chance to apply her journalistic greatness to his birther claims.

Briefly, let's be fair. Typically, Van Susteren would meekly tell Donald J. Trump that, for herself, she was "satisfied" with Obama's claim that he had been born in Hawaii. But she avoided telling her viewers why she would have said that.

Duh! Van Susteren is a ranking, experienced lawyer who came to TV in the 1990s as a legal analyst. As of 2011, she of course understood that Obama had presented his legal Hawaii birth certificate way back in 2008, and that the state's Republican health director had vouched for its authenticity.

This was the so-called "short form" document. But duh! As Van Susteren of course understood, the "short form" document is the official document the state of Hawaii provides as proof of Hawaiian birth.

It was, and is, Obama's official "birth certificate!" He had presented it in 2008, as Van Susteren of course understood.

That said, so what? By 2011, an array of people like Donald J. Trump were saying it wasn't enough. In response, in May of that year, Obama obtained and presented his "long form" birth certificate—the type of document which is maintained in Hawaiian state archives, but isn't normally issued for any reason, or legally used as proof of birth.

As it turned out, even this wasn't enough for hustlers like Donald J. Trump. This presented Van Susteren with a problem—how to keep presenting Trump as a guest without telling her millions of viewers that they were being conned, disinformed, treated like fools, grotesquely misled and played.

Van Susteren could and should have told them that. Despite her greatness, she kept refusing.

Greta Van Susteren was very careful to keep The Donald afloat. In the transcript shown below, we see how much abuse she was willing to take to let Trump keep pimping his garbage.

It was now October 24, 2012. It had been more than a year since Obama had produced his "long form" document—his second proof of Hawaiian birth. Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump was now pimping the claim that Obama hadn't really attended Columbia, or that something embarrassing would surely be found in his mysterious college records.

As their interview began this night, Van Susteren asked about Trump's offer to pay $5 million to a charity if Obama would release his college records. Soon, though, Trump swerved back to the question of Obama's birth, and a sad discussion occurred.

When Van Susteren said she was "satisfied" about that matter, Donald J. Trump subjected her to a lengthy pistol-whipping—and Greta just sat there and took it. As she apologizes to Trump, try to note the basic things which somehow go unsaid:

TRUMP (10/24/12): You have no idea. I get millions and millions of hits on, "Just please stay with this." I walk down the street, people love me over it. I went to North Carolina, made a speech. The most important thing was the issue of location, place of birth, etc.

I went to Liberty University, made a speech, incredible school. I mean, they loved this. Greta, this is a very important issue. This is a very important issue.

VAN SUSTEREN: Are you not satisfied with the presentation of the documents of his birth? Are we going back to that? Is that why you want this? Or is it something else?

TRUMP: Well, I am not sure about it. Other people are not sure. All have you to do is pick up the newspapers and you will see. There are many people that have serious questions about what he presented. There were many, many people. So I'm certainly not sure. Now, would I like to see him—

VAN SUSTEREN: There are two different questions, though. There are two different questions. One is, I thought the birth issue was established, that you were satisfied. You got the president to produce his long-form birth certificate establishing—

TRUMP: I did. And Greta, nobody else was able to do that.

VAN SUSTEREN: Right. And so I thought that you were satisfied that he met the constitutional requirements. Now you want these other records, and I'm trying to figure out why. Is it like you want to see what kind of student he was or is there something you're looking for—

TRUMP: Greta, why are you speaking for me? I never said I was satisfied. I never told you that I was satisfied.

VAN SUSTEREN: Oh, you weren't? Oh, I didn't know that.

TRUMP: Excuse me, who's satisfied? All you have to do is pick up the newspapers, there are many, many people, tremendous numbers of people, that are not satisfied. There's tremendous skepticism as to what he presented. Unbelievable skepticism—

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, then I stand corrected. I apologize. Let me just say, I apologize for getting it wrong. I'm satisfied, so that's why I made a mistake about you. But go ahead.

TRUMP: Are you satisfied?

VAN SUSTEREN: Yeah, I am, actually, because I went back and looked—

TRUMP: I am very surprised at you. I am very surprised at you. I don't know how you can be satisfied. But if you are satisfied, you are less skeptical than me. I grew up in the real estate business in New York, Greta. I have seen everything.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Let me ask you a question about, in these college records, is there something else that you are looking for besides the issue about birth?

TRUMP: Greta, let's see what it says! You're talking about a tremendous amount of money for charity. Let's see what it says! Who knows? I mean, if you ask me, what do we know? You don't know anything, Greta. I mean, for you to say—

I really am surprised at you. You don't know anything. And for you to say that you're satisfied is really shocking to me, to be honest with you. And when you ask me, what do you think? Let's find out. I can't tell what you I think because I don't know. I haven't seen the papers. But I will tell you this—

VAN SUSTEREN: Donald, let me—this is the thing— This is what I don't get. There was a newspaper report that this child had been born at the time the president had been born in Hawaii.

TRUMP: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: And there would have been no way to create that fiction—

TRUMP: You're wrong!

VAN SUSTEREN: Am I wrong?

TRUMP: It's a well-known fact that many people in order to get certain benefits of the United States would put out those reports and they put them out when people aren't even in the country. That happened many, many times. And if you read the facts and if you understood this, you wouldn't even be asking that question.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right.

TRUMP: But that put it out because by putting it out, they would get the benefits of being a U.S. citizen and get some of the benefits and all of the benefits of being a United States citizen. So you know, I'm surprised you said that too, Greta.

VAN SUSTEREN: OK. So what is your suspicion? Are you just fishing? Or do you have—

TRUMP: Greta, I don't want to say anything about suspicion. I'd like to have him be transparent. We know nothing about our president...

The discussion continued briefly from there. As it ended, Van Susteren said, "Donald, always nice to see you, even when we lock horns."

In that discussion, Van Susteren absorbed abuse from the ludicrous Trump over her lack of skepticism about his birther claims. Bowing down before Ole Massa, she apologized for her errors—and she never stated the obvious reasons why she was "satisfied" about the question of Obama's birth.

Over the years, Van Susteren conducted a number of discussions with Trump about the birther lunacy. We find no place where she ever informed her viewers about the most elementary facts—where she told them that the "short form" record, which Obama had provided in 2008, was Hawaii's legal record of birth; where she explained the relationship between that document and the "long form" record, which Obama had provided in 2011.

In this exchange in 2012, she let Trump scold her, in derisive terms, for mentioning the birth notice which appeared in the Hawaiian newspaper. But she never mentioned these basic, obvious legal points about the gong show her guest was conducting. In this way, she served the interests of her corporate owners, who were paying her millions of dollars per year—and she treated millions of viewers like fools.

(Obviously, she also would have understood how inane Trump's statements about the birth notice were.)

Today, we liberals assail those viewers as racists. As we do, Our Own Corporate Hoor goes on the air to treat us like absolute fools, money stuffed into her pants.

Like the viewers over at Fox, we liberals just sit there and take it. If we might borrow from Don Corleone, this is the gong show we've chosen.

Greta Van Susteren's work at Fox was anything but great. Last Thursday, an unnamed star was working hard to sell us a wheezing contraption—to sell us The Edsel, The Betsy.

In TV ads, this major star can now be seen vouching for The Greta. Grinning weirdly, "Greta is great," our own tribute to Trumpism says.

To watch Greta bow to Ole Massa: For tape of Greta's exchange with Trump, just click here, then click again under the headline, "Trump Suggested Obama's Long-Form Birth Certificate Was Forged."

Can you spot the greatness there? Frankly, we cannot.