Important word enjoys night off!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2024

Blue America's faux journalism: Last night, a key word was largely given the night off on Blue America's "cable news" channel.

The key word is "allegedly." At issue was the testimony by Stormy Daniels, very little of which can be confirmed for its accuracy.

Daniel's various claims might be true—but also, her various claims might be false. There's no obvious way to tell. An actual journalist would know that.

As you may have heard, Daniels said she had sex with Donald J. Trump on one occasion in 2006. Trump says it didn't happen.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that Daniels has the more accurate number. That, of course, doesn't tell us if her ancillary claims are accurate—and, of course, it's always possible that Trump's number is more correct.

In short, there's no obvious way to know when Daniels is making accurate statements. Unless you're watching MSNBC, where a gang of actors posing as journalists spent the evening reading the transcripts of her testimony as if her statements are the received word of God, brought down from the mountaintop by none other than Moses himself.

Lisa Rubin should be frog-marched away from her current job based on her performance on last evening's The Last Word. As she spoke with a highly receptive Lawrence O'Donnell, she acted as if every word Daniels spoke was the booming voice of God.

Where in the world—where on earth—do they go to find these people?

Question! is there any reason to doubt anything Daniels said? For example, what she said about the lack of a condom? What she said that Donald Trump said about his daughter? About his wife?

Answer: Yes, of course there is, as there is with any witness in such a high-stakes forum! Even in the tabloid-adjacent New York Times, Protess and Bromwich decided to offer this tantalizing passage in this morning's front-page news report: 

Outside the jury’s presence, the judge said that “there were some things better left unsaid” in her testimony and suggested that Ms. Daniels might have “credibility issues.”

Yet he rejected the defense’s bid for a mistrial, instead inviting Mr. Trump’s lawyers to mount an aggressive questioning of Ms. Daniels.

“The more times this story has changed, the more fodder for cross-examination,” he said.

Susan Necheles, the Trump lawyer who led the cross-examination, heeded the judge’s advice.

“The more times this story has changed?" What did Judge Merchan mean by that? The Times is publishing trial transcripts at this site, but yesterday's transcript isn't available yet. For that reason, we have no way of checking the transcript to fill in the missing context.

Rubin might need to go somewhere else, but everyone has been playing the fool on our Blue Tribe's corporate channel. For a further example of what we mean, consider the confessions of Saint Nicolle, as delivered on yesterday's Deadline: White House TV program.

It started at 5:14 p.m. Eastern. The extremely belated confession started off like this:

WALLACE (5/7/24): I feel bad that I always describe her as "porn star Stormy Daniels." I mean, she was a person, with a life, and a child, and a mother who disappeared when she was 17.

And but for having sex in Tahoe with Donald Trump where basically—I don't want to use the word "seduced" because the sex she describes isn't particularly sexual—but lures her in with conversations that she thinks are about her career, about the films she directs. And then she's so, for whatever reason, eager to keep the story silent—she talks about her partner, her husband who's struggling himself with alcoholism and some postpartum issues after her daughter is born—but she's desperate to keep the story silent...

And so on from there. Wallace seems to think she knows what happened that day at Lake Tahoe. Also, she's suddenly full of regret about using the term "porn star," as she has done and done, and done quite compulsively, in recent months. 

A few minutes later, she expressed her regret again:

WALLACE: All the details certainly remind us that this is a human being. I'm guilty of this too. 

"Porn star Stormy Daniels! Porn star Stormy Daniels!" We say it like it's all one word. She brought herself to life today in a way that's beyond the caricature.

We say it like it's all one word? Actually, Wallace has been saying it like it's all one word, usually tied to "Playboy Playmate" with a visible sense of loathing and a class-based air of disgust. 

We've suggested a different formulation: "adult woman not Donald Trump's wife." But these hounds from Hell have been selling Approved Blue Storyline hour after hour and day after day. 

It's what they're paid to do by their corporate owners.

Wallace has no way of knowing if various parts of Daniels' testimony are true. It may be that everything Daniels said was true. It may be that various things pretty much weren't.

As a compromise, Wallace did what she and her most favorite friends did all day and all night. They went on the air and behaved as if they knew that everything Daniels said was accurate.

We have a new word for Wallace and Rubin and Lawrence to learn. That new word is "allegedly." 

As actors, they aren't inclined to use that word. In the old days, top journalists would.