MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2023
But also, Trump in chains: Today was an especially big day on Morning Joe.
At 6 A.M., Joe and Mika were joined by one sidekick (Jonathan Lemire) and by five other guests. The eight participants shared time in an uninterrupted opening segment whose contets were captured by this chyron:
LAW ENFORCEMENT PLANS FOR POSSIBLE TRUMP INDICTMENT
The uninterrupted opening segment ran a full 35 minutes. As the eight participants struggled for time, familiar perspectives emerged.
There was no serious sign of disagreement, however minor, on any significant point. This is the shape of "cable news" in this era of tribal polarization.
In fairness, former prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg briefly questioned the standard framing surrounding one legal point in today's opening segment.
Rosenberg is one of several (admirable) legal analysts who have emerged in the past few years on blue tribe cable news program. We'll likely review what he said this morning before the week is through.
That said, this seems to be shaping up as the long-awaited "Week That Was"—the week in which Donald J. Trump will finally be indicted for an alleged crime. At this site, we'll be covering the way these events are covered by mainstream blue tribe pundits.
We'll start by returning to a cable news show which was broadcast last Friday. We refer to the broadcast of Deadline: White House, the two-hour daily program which has long been devoted to this unyielding framework:
Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!
Tomorrow, we're going to start with last Friday's broadcast. One day earlier, an unusual thing had occurred:
The program is hosted by Nicolle Wallace, a rabid opponent of everyone and everything which might keep Trump out of prison. Her targets include Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose obvious cowardice Wallace assails on a daily basis.
Nothing matters on this popular show other than Trump Trump Jail. Having said that, dear God!
Last Thursday, one of Wallace's "favorite reporters and friends" actually seemed to dissent, if only in a theoretical way, from the standard framing of a topic concerning which Wallace has a well-established, novelized point of view.
Outrageously, this regular guest had actually seemed to suggest that he could imagine possible reasons for Garland's failure to indict Trump—for his outrageous cowardice!
The guest in question is a legal expert; Wallace, of course, is not. But when the legal expert briefly diverged from established Storyline, he was instantly rebuked for his apostasy by his less qualified host.
Just as quickly, the expert backtracked, seeming to apologize for his unseemly behavior. He tugged at his forelock as he apologized for his brief divergence from Wallace's point of view.
The next day, a wide array of standard misrepresentations were offered, all through the course of Deadline's two hours. This is the way our own blue tribe now gets scripted on such matters, by an array of "favorite reporters" and "dear, dear friends" best thought of as "Hacks Like Us."
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but the novelizations, scriptings and frameworks are well-known and unyielding. Routinely, the representations are highly selective on our own tribe's "cable news" programs.
Seldom is heard a discouraging word! Indeed, when someone introduces the tiniest bit of possible nuance, he will quickly be chastised for his divergence.
Meanwhile, this is the week when the highly disordered Donald J. Trump may finally get charged with a crime! Hacks like us hope against hope that the charge against Trump can get bumped up, by whatever manner or means, from misdemeanor to felony status.
We cast about, looking for ways the prosecutor might be able to do that. This has an unsettling resemblance to the ways of "political prosecution," but so it goes in these perilous times.
With apologies for our sour demeanor, this may finally be the week when we get to see Trump in chains! We'll follow the action in our reports. Meanwhile, full disclosure:
We'll be focused on "hacks like us!" With apologies for our feelings, we're feeling quite sour this week.
Tomorrow: For starters, a grossly selective presentation about a deeply serious charge
ReplyDeleteHa-ha, a good one, dear Bob. Thanks for documenting the recent liberal atrocities...
The walls are closing in! Banana republic-style...
...what's the charge, by the way? Somehow we can't figure it out...
He had sex with a porn star and used campaign cash to silence her.
DeleteSurprisingly, heterosexual relations still aren't a crime in the US of A, dear dembot. Nor is signing an NDA. And campaign finance laws are enforced by the feds.
Delete...so, it sounds like your cult's witch doctors fooled ya... Again...
We don’t know whether Trump had sex with Stormy. We all figure he probably did, but the reality is we just don’t know. So maybe this is a more accurate description of his crimes: He used campaign cash to pay off a blackmailer and then covered up
Deletethe payment.
If you want to know what Trump is accused of, wait for the indictment. Then read it.
DeleteHe porked a hooker with his squiggly little pickle and had his mongrel renegades pay her off with hush money from his campaign coffers to keep her quiet which is a felony at best.
DeleteIt would have been cheaper to support Stormy wanting to break-up NATO, like he did with the other people who blackmailed him.
DeleteTiny is in a bit of a pickle.
DeleteIt will be easy to prove criminal intent.
DeleteHe rubbed butter on the sex positive porn queen and then tried to shame her for it. That's how he thinks.
DeleteShe’s “sex positive”.
DeleteAnonymouse 12:53pm, that’s is a great one!
Stormy is sex positive in the way convenience store owners are Slim Jim, Slushies, and gasoline positive.
She's the aggrieved party and now it's time for the Diabolical Orange Mediocrity to pay.
DeleteOdds are he serves time.
He already did pay. That’s the issue.
DeleteShe signed the NDA.. Therefore Trump is going to jail.
DeleteTiny liked what Stormy was offering. She at least is honest.
DeleteCecelia', Trump sat on her face. He paid her for the privilege, not the other way around. Don't try to confuse the situation.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:00pm, that’s what I meant when I cracked that “paying” is what has Trump in trouble.
DeleteI can’t help that anonymices have no ear for irony.
They were bathing together afterwards which she told him he wouldn't be charged for. Scrubbing him up and down. Then according to documents, they lifted weights. And this is the thanks she gets.
DeletePrison isn't good enough for this guy.
2:22 seems to be confused about the nature of the problem. It’s too bad Tiny didn’t shtup an accountant. There was however that other woman he paid off, what was her name?
DeleteSusan McDougal
DeleteAnonymouse 2:29pm, never ask questions that evoke the answer “your mother” off the top of everyone’s heads.
DeleteMy mother isn’t Karen McDougal. But that’s the other one Trump illegally paid off.
DeleteSorry. I should have referred to Trump by his nickname, Tiny.
DeleteI had to look her up. She’s really special.
DeleteAccording to this highly attractive woman, she had very “real feelings”
for the total hunk Mr. Trump, who she slept with “dozens of times”, and is extremely hurt too by being double-crossed and mistreated by the National Enquirer folks after they laid her $150,000 to tell her story.
Please excuse the Freudian.
DeleteYou do realize Trump is on the hook for more serious charges than campaign finance violations, (for which Cohen served jail time.) Not sure pity is in order if Trump is guilty of actual crimes.
DeletePity is not “in order” for Trump if they don’t find him guilty of actual crimes.
DeleteHe’made his bed, so to speak, with this.
Bob has frequently extended pity to Trump for being a narcissist/sociopath/demonic force but unable to help himself. And he used that precise word, even though Trump hasn’t been convicted of anything yet.
DeleteTrump, being a devout Christian of superior moral values was shagging a porn star and playboy bunny while his third wife was pregnant. Exceptional moral compass. Not sure the best of his actions to crime him for. Know for certain he made up Tuesday as indictment day, and instead of treating it as another one of his endless lies and threats to Democracy, the press falls all over themselves to spread this filthy man's lies.
DeleteAnonymouse 3:06pm, because Bob thinks people with mental problem are pitiable. Most people do. That’s not tantamount to saying these people aren’t responsible for their actions (unless they’re psychotic).
DeleteTo Bob’s point, iTrump’s mental state was germane to a discussion on Trump’s ability to lead and should have been examined in the media.
I don’t think Trump has mental problems. I don’t find him pitiable at all.
I think you’re pitiable due to the fact that you’re so militant as to be angered by Bob's positions.
I was thinking the other day, that it is interesting that the man who Bob had no reservations in electing, despite a serious disability, is now in a mental hospital due to suicidal depression.
DeleteI'd get in the bathe with Trump in a minute if I could.
DeleteBob never expressed pity for Fetterman. Just Trump.
DeleteHillary Clinton actually helped her husband slime a young employee he had sex with multiple times.
DeleteAnonymouse 3:33pm, pity toward your political candidate is not the sentiment that you want to inspire in the public.
DeleteCarl Tucker's son
DeleteTypical Trump lover's fallback: the Clintons especially when they got nothin'.
DeleteI just brought up the Clintons because someone mentioned moral values. I was viewing his sodomy with a subordinate and Hillary's support of it through a moral, not legal lens.
Delete4:33: Hillary Clinton supported sodomy with his subordinate? When was that?
Delete@4:33 doesn’t know what it is.
DeleteNo one can possibly believe a Republican would end up in a scandal, like Bill Clinton's consensual sex with an adult.
DeleteShe called rumors of the affair a right wing conspiracy - which was a lie to protecting him from the truth about his repeated acts of sodomy with his extremely young subordinate employee. Which is fine - but it's highly immoral all around. Our whole country is highly immoral - built on genocide and today the biggest war machine the world has ever known, bombing and killing innocent women and children all over the world constantly for decades. Maybe human beings are immoral by nature.
Delete@6:10 AM
DeleteHumyn beings are fine. In this particular case, it's just that Psycho-Witch is ...well... a psycho. Clinical.
...as, apart from tons of circumstantial evidence, she makes perfectly obvious here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXDU48RHLU
6:10, she said that before she knew that the Lewinsky affair was true.
DeleteBy the way, she was 100% accurate about the RW conspiracy funded by shadowy right wing billionaires.
Your reading assignment is as follows:
"The Hunting of the President" by Joe Conason
"Fools for Scandal" by Gene Lyons
"This is the shape of "cable news" in this era of tribal polarization."
ReplyDeleteIn unfairness, this is absolutely true.
Let's just agree, that the best thing about Tucker Carlson is his all-out disdain for Republican voters.
ReplyDeleteBipartisanship we can agree to.
Delete
ReplyDeleteSo, what do you think, dear Bob, about the possibility of this farce being a PsyOp for destructing the public from Ten Percent Family's troubles? As alleged here:
"And according to House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), the timing of a leak from Bragg's office over the indictment is suspect.
The indictment news leaked right after Mr. Comer revealed that he had obtained bank records showing Biden family members were involved in a business transaction with a Chinese company that paid them more than $1 million.
Mr. Comer called the DA’s targeting of Mr. Trump “an effort to detract” from the Biden/China probe..."
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/house-gop-weaponized-government-panel-looking-manhattan-soros-da-plan-indict-trump
...wait, "destructing the public"? Yes, definitely. But also distracting the public...
DeleteIt's not Biden's fault you're a Russian bot.
DeleteThis kind of thing was bound to happen, when the entire government of the United States sets out to make Mao the victim.
DeleteGotta think after watching Comer in action he sniffed way too much airplane glue when a kid, or yesterday.
DeleteWell, you can’t say Bob isn’t telling us where
ReplyDeletehe is coming from. He will be focusing strictly
on the anti Trump Blue media. When they
have an expert on to present a dissenting
legal viewpoint will he gage that as a point
in their favor, will he credit them for this?
Dream on. Does Fox present alternate views
to their pro Trump consensus? Bob won’t
know, he doesn’t watch Fox.
Ruby Freeman was of no interest to
Bob. He didn’t like that damn committee.
As a old gentleman of the South, Bob
thinks those kinds of black people should
be seen and not heard anyway. But if
you are looking for a poor victim of our
system Bob has found one, in poor
Donald Trump!
Bob’s meltdown should be entertaining.
I’d say “get the popcorn” but Bob doesn’t
understand that’s only an expression.
So let’s say this: Somerby, you had choices
in a confusing world, and you chose evil.
If we manage to take down your boy,
I hope your mental anguish is intense.
Somerby also found two “poor” Clintons in the ‘90’s and poor Hilary continued during the Obama Admin. He found a poor Gore and a poor John Kerry. He managed to find a poor Susan Rice and a poor Eric Holder. He’s found a poor Biden.
DeleteWhat bothers you is that Bob doesn’t keep the “pity” reserved for (D).
Trump deserves no pity. He’s a demonic force. According to Tucker, and I tend to believe him.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:34pm, if they could have gotten Trump for being a “demonic force”, I’m sure they would have charged that, rather than going with this stuff.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:56pm, neither you or Bob “settled” for the word of any court in the Clinton controversy. You two never raised an argument on behalf of indictments.
DeleteEasy to suggest that you would have settled and accepted it, if things had gone the other way.
It’s clear that you’re self-serving and disingenuous, it’s no failing on Bob’s part that he’s not those things.
Delete@Cecelia 3:12 PM
Meh. Dear Bob sure is "those things".
Has he ever complained about Ten Percent's mental fitness being a taboo in dembot media? About his tribe's nuclear brinkmanship (remember his 'Mr. Trump's Big War' alarmism)?
...no, in our opinion dear Bob's M.O. is pretty much the same as that of any soros-spammer here, just a bit more nuanced...
Mao, in 2020, Bob did say he thought Biden was too old to run.
DeleteHowever, read my allusion to Fetterman.
Bob is no anonymouse. He’s not in the same solar system.
Delete"Bob is no anonymouse. He’s not in the same solar system."
Meh. We'll have to agree to disagree on this...
...and yes, dear Bob's unsolicited announcement of being willing to vote for Fetterman is another exhibit...
The Mao-Cecelia circle jerk: always an amusing contretemps.
DeleteCarl, you need look up the definition for “circle jerk” or for “contretemps”.
DeleteCecelia at 3:12, you simply stop making any perceivable sense here. But, hardly the the first time Clinton Hate reduces the speaker to babbling incoherently. Also, it’s a good sign that you, Bob an Mao or on the same page. Bob still hasn’t found a way (other than the general cover of the insanity defense) to go near the Georgia phone call, and apparently there was more than one….
DeleteAnonymouse 4:39pm, there hasn’t been a trial as yet. No case laid out. No arguments made.
DeleteWhy would anyone declare that they’re willing to go along with anything at this point, or at ANY point, if they remain unconvinced?
I assume that you’re not suggesting that Bob’s going to riot if he’s not in agreement with the court.
Cecelia, it is Bob who is complaining (and heartsick, obviously) at the reaction to the indictment that has only been announced by Trump.
DeleteAnonymouse 5:29pm, Anonymouse 5:29pm, actually, Bob has voiced trepidation about the case being the slam dunk that the MSNBC folks think of it as being and would like to hear that mentioned during the discussion panels.
Delete“When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
DeleteI suppose Somerby understands that if they don’t, Trump will be more of a threat than you imagined.
Trump is a tired old man who is sinking into dementia and poor health. He is not a threat to anyone. The question is whether our nation has the resolve to apply the law before he dies of old age.
DeleteTrump never was a king, no matter how much he wanted to be one. America is a democracy and doesn't have kings. We decided that back when George Washington refused to let his country crown him. If you hadn't gone to school in FL, you might know that.
Anonymouse 6:05pm, no one has called Trump a king. Certainly not me.
DeleteI was referencing a famous quote by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
When you cite someone else, it is tradition to enclose the quoted part in quote marks ('') and to then cite the source (e.g., MTG). Otherwise people think you are saying it yourself. Actually MTG didn't originally say that, but was herself quoting someone else (Ralph Waldo Emerson, but it also appeared on The Wire).
DeleteWhen you start blabbering about kings in the context of Donald Trump, who really did want to be a king, it is natural that people are going to think you are as confused as Trump about how our government actually works, and WHY we are not a monarchy today.
You do not get the benefit of the doubt here because you say so much other stupid shit.
Anonymouse 7:05pm, I put the quote in quotation marks. It’s such a universally known one, that it never occurred to me that anyone wouldn’t be familiar with it, and, well…of course…you took the quip about MTG as being serious.
DeleteCecelia ,
DeleteCongratulations for the wittiest comment ever by a Right-winger, with that quip about MTG that no one understood.
Yep. “Blabbering about kings.”
DeleteSomerby complains about no disagreement.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 60s an LA radio host used to bring guests on his show solely to abuse them verbally. It may have been fun for hostile listeners, but it wasn’t informative. Joe & Mika may have other goals.
Joe and Mika were quite friendly to Trump early on, view Kavanaugh as a victim, did a shocking show back slapping Ken Starr during Trumps run. All ignored by Bob.
DeleteIt was tv, not radio, it was Joe Pyne, and it was quite often informative,
DeleteNote the confusion about what crime Trump is supposed to have committed. One commenter above incorrectly said that Trump had used campaign funds to pay Daniels. I am quite sure he used his own funds.
ReplyDeleteI am ignorant, too. I also don't know what crime Trump is supposed to have committed. Of course, that doesn't matter for a lot of people. They want to convict Trump of some crime, no matter what. They know he's guilty. They're waiting to find out what he's guilty of.
The alleged crime is that the funds Trump paid Daniels with, though ostensibly his own, should be considered 'campaign' funds because the payment to Daniels benefitted his campaign (by keeping his liaison with Daniels secret), and therefore should have been reported as such (but weren't).
DeleteHis defense will be that, in the absence of any campaign, he would still have both made and concealed the payments (to protect his marriage). Therefore the payment should not be considered a campaign expenditure.
I think he can beat this rap.
Trump treats all campaign funds as personal. Whether he can beat the rap doesn’t mean he is innocent.
DeleteI agree with Hector. And, the case is even more far-fetched. Failing to properly report a campaign expense is a misdemeanor with 2 year statute of limitations. So, in order to prosecute Trump, New York would have to use some legal ploy to convert a misdemeanor into a felony.
DeleteDavid in Cal,
DeleteBorder crossing and overstaying your visa are misdemeanors. That's why you'll never hear a Right-winger talk about it.
LOL.
BTW, do you even hear yourself?
"Outrageously, this regular guest had actually seemed to suggest that he could imagine possible reasons for Garland's failure to indict Trump—for his outrageous cowardice!
ReplyDeleteThe guest in question is a legal expert; Wallace, of course, is not. But when the legal expert briefly diverged from established Storyline, he was instantly rebuked for his apostasy by his less qualified host. "
We are asked to take Somerby's word that this happened. No quotes. I am not inclined to do that because Somerby has lied (or been misleading) about what was said the context in which it was said, too often before.
I have no idea what narrative Somerby is complaining about, what the guest said that deviated from it, and what Wallace said to chastise him -- because Somerby didn't tell us any of that. We're just supposed to accept that this happened, and that it always happens. No evidence or proof necessary. Just because Somerby says so.
No thank you.
"Meanwhile, this is the week when the highly disordered Donald J. Trump may finally get charged with a crime! "
ReplyDeleteThe only person who has actually said that Trump will be charged on Tuesday is Trump himself. People are discussing the possibility because Trump said so -- not as part of calling for Trump to be jailed. This is Trump's news. Should a former president be ignored when he makes this kind of claim? I don't think so. But Somerby is pretending that it is the bloodthirty lefty mob that is slavering for Trump's blood. Not Trump saying that they are going to indict him as the result of an investigation and grand jury proceeding. That is the public seeking justice, not a mob calling for blood.
I think Somerby may be confused about what is happening.
"With apologies for our feelings, we're feeling quite sour this week."
ReplyDeleteWho becomes sour and sad because a master criminal is finally brought to justice? Republicans mostly, and then only the ones who are still Trump lovers. The rest of us are feeling renewed hope that our system "works" and that even the wealthy and powerful can be prosecuted under the law and not buy their way off ot subvert the system, that the chief virtue of our democracy, that all people are equal under the law, is actually true in practice.
Who feels sour when they find they can believe in the values upon which our nation was founded?