TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2024
Then, Judge Jeanine cited Van Jones: Yesterday afternoon, during the 5 o'clock Eastern hour, we enjoyed a good solid laugh.
More precisely, we may have enjoyed a bit of a mordant chuckle. It happened as we were watching The Five, the highest rated program in this nation's "cable news" firmament.
Millions of citizens were watching the Fox News Channel as the five panelists stood in line to praise President-elect Donald J. Trump for his brilliance at yesterday's Mar-a-Lago news event. Politely, each performer waited his or her turn to say how brilliant the incoming commander had been in his answers to every question.
Thanks to the sometimes invaluable Rev, a transcript exists of the press event, along with videotape. For the record, the event lasted for an hour and ten minutes, with the first question coming at the 25-minute mark.
Below, we'll link you to the comment from Judge Jeanine on The Five, the comment at which we chuckled. For now, let's look at some of the answers the incoming president offered the press—and let's recall the questions Blue America has been asking:
How did we ever lose to this guy? How did it get this far?
If our view, those are perfectly sensible questions. In our view, it's Blue America's inability to answer these questions which is the problem at hand.
What did the incoming president say at his first post-election presser? At one point, he reverted to a familiar theme as he spoke about Lara Trump, his daughter in law.
We were back in the high life again. No push-back or follow-up occurred:
TRUMP (12/16/24): When the election started getting closer, I asked her would she go to Washington and work on as chairman of the [RNC] along with Michael Whatley. And they did such an unbelievable job, especially on cheating.
They stopped it. Or at least they stymied it. Too big to rig. And we won in a landslide. We won tremendously. She did an amazing job.
Say what? As an aside, the landslide to which he referred was actually a win of less than 1.5 points—a rather slender win against an opponent who was only able to campaign for a bit more than three months.
That's a mere aside. More significant was the commander's claim about cheating—the never-ending, unexplained claim which flows all through his orations, with no one in the mainstream press knowing how to question, challenge or address the allegation at hand.
In this case, did "cheating" occur in the recent campaign? What form did this cheating take?
Did Lara Trump lessen the cheating, or did she "stop it" outright? None of the journalists at yesterday's freewheeling event questioned what the commander had said as this unsupported message continued to spread out to the world.
Yesterday, no one mentioned this supported claim on The Five. Also, none of the program's performers ever will.
Many of the commander's answers went on and on, and then they went on a bit more. We were intrigued by this statement about his nominee for Secretary of Defense:
TRUMP: So many [nominees] have been just unbelievably received. I think Pete Hegseth is making tremendous strides over the last week. He's going to be great.
Look, he went to Princeton. He went to Harvard. He was a great student there. But he really was, from the first day I met him, all he wanted to talk about was military. He's just a military guy. I think it's a natural.
This was my idea. And Pete Hegseth gave up a lot because he was going big places in Fox. Big, big places. A lot of money. And he didn't even hesitate when I said, "Do you want to do this?" He said, "Absolutely."
I said, "If it doesn't work out, you'll never have the opportunity that you have right now in terms of the world of entertainment or business, whatever you want to call it. You'll never have that opportunity again." In fact, it could be just the opposite, because it's nasty out there.
He said, "I don't care. I have to do it for my country." He gave up a tremendous amount. If this didn't work, it would be a tragedy, but that's what he loves. He loves the military. I never talked to him about anything else. He'd talk about the military.
Oof! Hegseth left his role as co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend to accept the nomination. But in the commander's lexicon, Hegseth agreed to leave "the world of entertainment or business, whatever you want to call it."
They forgot to play that piece of tape yesterday on The Five! For ourselves, we were intrigued by the commander's reference to the "tremendous amount" of money Hegseth abandoned when he left the Fox News Channel.
Question! How much money does a person make for eight hours of work per week? Also, what kind of tribal obedience is being purchased when those giant salaries are paid?
We've been posing this question for decades with respect to all the news channels. Also, why isn't the public simply told what these important public figures t paid?
Back at Mar-a-Lago, the random questions kept being thrown, with rambling answers provided. Eventually, the commander offered these unexplained statements about New Jersey's drones:
TRUMP: The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it's a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went, and for some reason they don't want to comment. And I think they'd be better off saying what it is.
Our military knows and our president knows, and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense. I can't imagine it's the enemy because if it was the enemy, they'd blast it out. Even if they were late, they'd blast it.
Something strange is going on. For some reason they don't want to tell the people, and they should because the people are really—I mean, they happen to be over Bedminster, if you want to know the truth.
They're very close to Bedminster. I think maybe I won't spend the weekend in Bedminster. I've decided to cancel my trip.
What makes the incoming commander think he knows any of that? Also, will he really cancel his weekend plans because of his fear of the drones?
The commander refused to say if he's been briefed on this matter. So it endlessly goes.
Eventually, we got to these remarks about an erroneous poll in Iowa. Also, about the many lawsuits against media figures to come:
TRUMP: I'm doing this, not because I want to, I'm doing this because I feel I have an obligation to.
I'm going to be bringing [a lawsuit] against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points and it became the biggest story all over the world, because I was going to win Iowa by 20 points.
The farmers loved me and I love the farmers. And it was interesting the way she did it, she brought it down two weeks before, she said I was going to only win by four. That was a big story. But that was good, because she brought it down from 22 points to four, or whatever the number was. Way up, way up. Easy win. Never even thought to go there. I respect them, I love them, and they understand there's no reason to go there, because she brought it from way up, walk away, which it was, and it turned out to be in the election too, by the way. It was a win by many, many points. And then she brought it down very smartly to four a couple of weeks before, and everyone said, "Wow, that's amazing. He's only up by four points." Then she brought it down to where I was down by three or four, whatever the number she used, and that was the Des Moines Register, and it was their parent, and in my opinion it was fraud and it was election interference.
She's gotten me right always. She's a very good pollster. She knows what she was doing, and she then quit before and we'll probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow.
We're filing one on 60 Minutes. You know about that. Where they took Kamala's answer, which was a crazy answer, a horrible answer, and they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else she said later on in the interview, which wasn't a great answer, but it wasn't like the first one.
The first was grossly incompetent. It was weird. And that was fraud and election interference by their news magazine, a big part of CBS News. So as you know, we're involved in that one.
We're involved in one which has been going on for a while, and very successfully, against Bob Woodward, where he didn't quote me properly from the tapes. And then on top of everything else, he sold the tapes, which he wasn't allowed to do. He could only use them for reporting purposes, not for sale purposes, and he admits that, and I think we'll be successful on that one.
And we have one very interestingly on Pulitzer, because reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post got Pulitzer Prizes for their wonderful, accurate and highly professional reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Well, it turned out to be a hoax, and they were exactly wrong. People, like many people, John Solomon, Sean Hannity is not for Pulitzer, but Sean Hannity got it right. Many people got it right. Tucker got it right. Jesse got it right. Laura got it right. Jeanine got it right. A lot of people got it right. They didn't get anything. They gave it to reporters that got it absolutely wrong, and now everybody admits it was a hoax, and I want them to take back the Pulitzer Prizes and pay big damages.
And I think we're doing very well on that one. They have no excuse for it. They gave a Pulitzer Prize to writers that got Russia, Russia, Russia wrong. And so, I think we're doing well. And I feel I have to do this. I shouldn't really be the one to do it, it should have been the Justice Department or somebody else, but I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt. Almost as corrupt as our elections.
Those corrupt elections again!
At any rate, on and on the fellow went. He's going to sue the Pulitzer Prizes. He's going to sue Bob Woodward.
He's going to sue CBS News because of 60 Minutes. He's going to sue the Des Moines Register because they bungled a poll.
As he listed the sugarplum lawsuits to come, the commander recited some golden oldy assertions, for example about the time Tucker Carlson allegedly got something right. But so it now goes, as part of the sprawling cultural breakdown which has largely resulted from "the democratization of media," a genie which will be very hard to get back in the bottle.
In the face of all this confusion, the performers hung tough at The Five. For ourselves, we enjoyed a chuckle at 5:09 when Judge Jeanine offered the following as part of her praise oration:
JUDGE JEANINE (12/16/24): I mean, you realize that he has the capacity to deliver. He has the capacity to unite the country. He has the capacity to unite the party. And I don't think there is any greater example of that than there was at the Army-Navy game.
Because it's not—it is not just the Army-Navy game, when they went crazy with chants of USA! USA! But think about who he was in that box with.
I mean, he's got Elon and JD Vance, and he's got Vivek and Mike Johnson, and Danny Penny. And he's got all these people to show that the Republican Part is uni— No more RINOs. You're a RINO, get lost! You don't matter any more!
What he's got is a united party, a united country.
Too funny! The president has a united the country—except for all the RINOs! You RINO's can just get lost!
What about all the Democrats who may not favor the incoming president? Such people weren't mentioned at this point. But so it goes, day after day, on this clown-car "cable news" program. In this classic bit of Judge Jeanine framing, the country is fully united, except for those people who aren't Us.
So it goes, day after day, as this imitation of intelligent life rolls merrily along. And then, just like that, the tough-talking judge said this:
JUDGE JEANINE (continuing directly): And then you got a guy like Van Jones, who said, "Hey Dude! This guy is smarter than me and you."
So you've now got the left saying, "This guy is really smart. He will deliver for us."
Is that what Van Jones actually said when he spoke with Chris Cillizza? Tomorrow, we'll return to the contents of the interview we discussed in yesterday's report.
Like Thoreau and the fictional Binx Bolling, Van Jones is involved in a search. He wants to know how those of us in Blue America ever managed to lose to this guy.
It's a perfectly valid question! In our view, the problem lies in the fact that many of us in Blue America can't seem to come up with an answer.
In our view, the answers go on and on and on and on, and then they go on some more. In our view, the fact that we're unaware of this is an unfortunate fact about Us.
Tomorrow: Back to what Jones said
