American discourse, American Babel!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2024

Spotless minds serviced by Fox: It's a very well-known story from a very well-known book. The leading authority on the story starts its lengthy account of the matter in the manner shown:

Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures.

According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shinar (Lower Mesopotamia), where they agree to build a great city with a tower that would reach the sky. Yahweh, observing these efforts and remarking on humanity's power in unity, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other and scatters them around the world, leaving the city unfinished.

According to the ancient story, Yahweh devises a way to stymie the productive capacity of humanity—of the human race. Yahweh "confounds their speech," creating a world in which "they can no longer understand each other."

This explains "the existence of different cultures." That would of course help explain the existence of different warring cultures. 

In the modern age, we've reached the point where the so-called "democratization of media" has created a similar state of affairs right here in our bifurcated American nation. Also involved is the corporate journalistic strategy on own as "segregation by viewpoint."

In the aftermath of November's election, it may be worse than it's ever been. 

We Americans are now living in an unmistakable type of Babel! Consider Brian Stelter's report about the way the Fox News Channel has chosen to cover—or has chosen to refuse to cover—the controversies which surround the nomination of Pete Hegseth to head the Department of Defense.

For the past few years, Hegseth has been one of the three co-hosts of Fox & Friends Weekend. At this site, we've puzzled about his performance on that show on a fairly regular basis.

Now he's involved in a great civil war concerning his nomination! Unless you're watching the Fox News Channel, where, according to Stelter's analysis, this is what millions of spotless minds currently aren't being told:

Scandalous? Not on Fox

What's a media outlet supposed to do when its longtime host is picked to run the Pentagon, and then a series of eyebrow-raising news stories trigger doubts about his appointment? If you're Fox News, evidently, you just pretend the stories don't exist.

Fox, which employed Pete Hegseth for a decade, has not covered the past week's controversies involving Donald Trump's nominee for defense secretary at all, according to SnapStream and TVEyes database searches. The omission is potentially significant because Fox is the top TV outlet for Republicans, and Hegseth's confirmation hinges on Republican senators.

On Fox, Hegseth's former colleagues aren't raising alarms about the allegations or defending him from the charges—they're just not talking about the issue at all. On Monday's edition of "Special Report," Chad Pergram said Hegseth's confirmation "could be a problem" because "he faces problems about his personal conduct." What problems? Pergram didn't say. Neither has any other Fox show—there have been no on-air or online mentions of the recent revelations by The New York Times and The New Yorker. 

Stelter continues from there. At Mediaite, Colby Hall cites Stelter's report, then explores this silence further:

Brian Kilmeade Calls Out the ‘Volume of Personal Attacks’ on ‘Our Buddy Pete Hegseth’

The challenging position that Fox News hosts find themselves in covering many embarrassing allegations against their former colleague Pete Hegseth was on full display Tuesday morning.

[...]

Fox News opinion hosts have primarily ignored the entirety of Hegseth’s controversial nomination. However, [Brian] Kilmeade mentioned it Tuesday morning while interviewing Trump’s spokesman, Jason Miller, during the 7 AM hour of Fox & Friends.

“We saw a lot of people on Capitol Hill, little by little; I know Pam Bondi was up there yesterday, and Pete Hegseth was up there yesterday,” Kilmeade opened.

“I think the volume of some of the personal attacks on some of your, some of the nominees is stunning, including our buddy Pete Hegseth, who wrote a book about the Pentagon, served 20 years in the military, has been decorated—chose the infantry after an Ivy League education. You’ve seen what he’s able to accomplish for veterans.”

Fox News viewers were likely left confused by the mention of “personal attacks” without any specifics being included in this show or any other that’s been on Fox News.  “But does the volume of the attacks surprise you? And does it make the president—does it make the president waver or wonder?” Kilmeade asked of Miller, who flatly said “no” before standing behind Hegseth’s nomination.

You can watch the videotape of Kilmeade's performance at the Mediaite link. Kilmeade has been performing this type of journalism for more than two decades at Fox.

David Copperfield once made the Statue of Liberty disappear. The four co-hosts of Fox & Friends perform such tricks as this.

People watching Fox & Friends don't know that they're being clowned. That said, this sort of conduct is general over the Fox News Channel.

In this way, the channel helps maintain the eternal sunshine of its viewers' spotless minds. The New York Times performs an oddly similar service when it refuses to tell its readers about the depth of this problem—when it refuses to tell its readers about what happens at Fox.

We're living in an American Babel—a Babel of corporate creation. For the record, the cable news channels which serve Blue America are also a part of this problem, if only by their own refusal to report on the conduct at Fox.

Like Yahweh, the people who run these cable entities have created a modern type of Babel, in which populations can no longer understand each other—in which they might as well be speaking wholly different languages, so different are the types of information to which they are exposed.

A final point, and this is important:

Sometimes, viewers of the Fox News Channel are exposed to types of information which are withheld from Us! The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our rapidly expanding modern Babel involves a type of existential crisis, and the separation of our various American populations is only becoming more vast.

A BLUE LAGOON: How did we ever lose to this guy?

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2024

Let's take a look at two lists: "How did we ever lose to this guy?"

Initially, the question as stated in the form of a joke. It first appeared in 1988, on Saturday Night Live, with Candidate Dukakis wondering how he could possibly be losing to the vacuous Candidate Bush.

By this November, the potential of that hidden prophecy had bobbed to the surface at last. To those of us in Blue America, we had just lost the White House to the most disordered candidate in political history. if by a narrow margin.

According to Cook, this is where the numbers stand with almost all votes counted:

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024
Candidate Trump: 77,176,074 (49.82%)
Candidate Harris: 74,777,835 (48.27%)

That's where the numbers stand at this point in time. Somehow, we did in fact lose to that guy—and in the end, he will have received more than 77 million votes!

How in the world did we lose to him? Over Here, in Blue America, inquiring minds should presumably want to know. Different explanations have appeared, including many variants of this eternal crowd-pleaser:

This is why Kamala lost: because Trump fans are nuts...There's something about Trump that makes a lot of people see him not just as a Republican politician, but as the savior of the nation. It's crazy.

Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton said that only half The Others belonged in the basket of deplorables. Sometimes, we Blue Americans now make it sound like all 77 million Others are crazy or possibly nuts.

It' a time-honored form of explanation. On the other hand, it leaves us, the people of Blue America, with nowhere we can go. If all those people are crazy and nuts, there's nothing much that we can do to improve our electoral lot.

How did we manage to lose to that guy? The question now rests on our shoulders. For ourselves, we've long assumed that Candidate Trump is clinically disordered in a significant way—but we're willing to accept the fact that tens of millions of neighbors and friends don't see it quite that way.

(Also, that every journalist in our admittedly brilliant Blue America has agreed that this obvious possibility must never be discussed.)

Why did so many people manage to vote for Candidate Trump? By Friday evening, November 8, Tim Alberta of The Atlantic had started to sketch the possible shape of a possible explanation. 

In our view, he offered a decent starter list. Now for a bit of framing:

Culturally, Alberta hails from Red America. Politically, he's long been anti-Trump. Imaginably, his cultural origins may help free him from certain prejudices and predispositions which may prevail Over Here. 

On Friday night, November 8, on the PBS program Washington Week, the gentleman offered these starter thoughts, as we noted three days later. He spoke with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic:

ALBERTA (11/8/24): As someone who has spilled a lot of ink on Donald Trump's lies over the past decade–

GOLDBERG: A couple of books worth.

ALBERTA: –a couple of books worth, I just want to say this when we talk about propaganda. Arguably, the three most determinative things in this election were propaganda from the Democratic Party. 

Number one: "Joe Biden is fine and totally fit to be president for another four years." He wasn't. 

Number two: "The border is closed. It's under control. There's nobody coming in."  That was not true. 

And number three: "Hey, don't worry about inflation. Prices are fine. Bidenomics! Everything's great. You guys don't know what you're talking about. Actually, the economy is in great shape." 

This is propaganda to millions of Americans who said, "None of that is true, and therefore, I don't trust you."  They might not trust Trump, but they don't trust Democrats either.

So said Tim Alberta! He said he's written at length about "Donald Trump's lies." But he said he'd spotted some possible problems with Blue America's messaging too.

We Blues! According to Alberta, we'd said that President Biden was totally fit, when he plainly wasn't. We'd said the border was under control, when it plainly wasn't.

We'd also said that the economy was in great shape. In Alberta's view, we had even possibly cost ourselves votes when we kept saying that!

With that, we had a bit of a starter list—a possible list of possible ways those of us in Blue America may have helped earn our way out. A few days later, a second traitor to his class stepped forward with his own list.

The second list of possible reasons appeared in the New York Times. It had been compiled by another figure from the cultural or political right who had been aggressively anti-Trump, basically right from the start.

He'd ended up voting for Candidate Harris. But like Alberta, Stephens thought that we the Blues may have helped earn our way out!

Online, his column carries an acerbic headline. But as his column starts, he again describes the question facing Blue America—The Problem We All Live With:

A Party of Prigs and Pontificators Suffers a Humiliating Defeat

A story in chess lore involves the great Danish Jewish player Aron Nimzowitsch, who, at a tournament in the mid-1920s, found himself struggling against the German master Friedrich Sämisch. Infuriated at the thought of losing to an opponent he considered inferior, Nimzowitsch jumped on the table and shouted, “To this idiot I must lose?”

It’s a thought that must have crossed the minds of more than a few liberal pundits and Democratic eminences late Tuesday night, as Kamala Harris’s hopes for winning the presidency began suddenly to fade.

How, indeed, did Democrats lose so badly, considering how they saw Donald Trump—a twice-impeached former president, a felon, a fascist, a bigot, a buffoon, a demented old man, an object of nonstop late-night mockery and incessant moral condemnation? The theory that many Democrats will be tempted to adopt is that a nation prone to racism, sexism, xenophobia and rank stupidity fell prey to the type of demagoguery that once beguiled Germany into electing Adolf Hitler.

It’s a theory that has a lot of explanatory power—though only of an unwitting sort. The broad inability of liberals to understand Trump’s political appeal except in terms flattering to their beliefs is itself part of the explanation for his historic, and entirely avoidable, comeback.

Oof oof oof oof oof oof oof! Ow ow ow ow ow! 

In fairness, let's be fair. The columnist was Bret Stephens, a man of the center-right. In fairness, he'd been aggressively anti-Trump pretty much right from the start and basically all the way down. 

As a general matter, Stephens thinks that Donald J. Trump is something like "an idiot" too! But for him, the story doesn't end there.

As with Alberta, so too here! This was a person from Red America—but a person who had long rejected Red America's overall view of Donald J. Trump.  Is it possible that some sort of double vision lets him see those of us in Blue America in a way which may elude many of Us?

According to Stephens, some of the way we lost to that guy falls back directly on Us.  He said there are things we aren't seeing about our defeat, and he tracks this alleged blindness to the world's most ancient reason:

He said there are things we Blues aren't seeing because, all too often, we can't quite see ourselves.

As the column about us prigs continued, Stephens listed various ways we allegedly earned our way out. It seems to us that some of his claims don't quite make sense—but in our view, some of his perceptions and claims do make unfortunate sense.

Alberta had offed a starter list; Stephens now added to it. Tomorrow, we'll turn to Stephens' list of reasons—to his explanations for the way we managed to lose to that guy, if only by 1.5 points. 

In our own view, the story of this dangerous defeat tracks back to the mid-1960s. Unsurprisingly, we ourselves were physically present when the story began! 

That said, the story doesn't end there. In our view, it also involves some of the unexplained behaviors of the Biden Administration, much as Alberta seemed to say back on November 8.

We Blues now face an ancient choice—the lady or the tiger! We can continue to say The Others are crazy and nuts—although, as far as that goes, who isn't?

We can say The Others are crazy and nuts. Or we can consider testing a wider perspective:

Is there possibly something we Blues might have done which may perhaps have helped bring on this dangerous defeat? We humans may not be wired to think such thoughts, but can we possibly overcome the power of pride and prejudice?

Can we emerge from our Blue Lagoon. from a backwater of our own making? 

Tomorrow: The second list

What does a "cable news" Stepford sound like?

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2024

The Big Weekend's Stepfords declaim: We're so old that we can remember when Donald Trump's naming of Kash Patel was seen as major news.

That takes us all the way back to Saturday. Yesterday, President Biden pardoned Hunter Biden and the naming of Patel quickly turned into old news.

On Sunday evening's Big Weekend Show, the Stepfords said intriguing things concerning each of these matters. We now live in two different Americas. Over the course of the next few days, we'll try to fill you in. 

A BLUE LAGOON: Have the gods of plague finally come for Us?

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2024

Flashing on Camus: In yesterday's offering, we reported a statement by Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe—a statement we regard as truly remarkable.

Boothe made the statement on Saturday evening's edition of The Big Weekend Show, a clown car-adjacent Fox News Channel production. This was the statement in question:

BOOTHE (11/30/24): Joe Biden took a stage at the end of July [2021], CNN Town Hall, telling Americans that if you got the vaccine, you wouldn't get the virus. So we were lied to the entire time, and Dr. Fauci is corrupt and evil and was the person spearheading a lot of those lies.

Dr. Fauci is evil! Given the cultural climate of the time, we regard that statement as deeply dangerous. In fairness, we'd have to say this:

In the past few years, we've watched a lot of these Fox News Channel TV shows.  On the basis of that experience, it seems to us that Boothe went beyond a line which is normally observed by that channel's army of scripted commentators, who appear on the channel's "discussion" programs to parrot the channel's corporate line.

In our own report, we focused on the physical danger involved in Boothe's remarkable claim that Dr. Fauci is "evil." In this subsequent post, Kevin Drum focused on the part of Boothe's statement in which she claimed that "we were lied to [about Covid] the entire time" by people like Dr. Fauci.

We strongly suggest that you read every word of Kevin's subsequent post. For ourselves, we flashed on a iconic literary text as we read his report. 

For the first time in several years, we flashed on Camus' La Peste (The Plague)—for example, on this passage from his famous allegory (Stuart Gilbert translation):

CAMUS (page 36): The word “plague” had just been uttered for the first time. At this stage of the narrative, with Dr. Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be allowed to justify the doctor’s uncertainty and surprise—since, with very slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townfolk. Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that come crashing down on our heads from a blue sky. 

"There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet somehow plagues and wars take people equally by surprise," Camus writes as he continues.  In short, we humans find it hard to see what's happening when the gods of plague finally come for us. 

We tend to assume that plagues only happen to other people in other, distant locales. 

La Peste (The Plague) is an allegory.  Camus describes a literal, rat-borne plague infesting the city of Oran. He lets this literal plague represent the moral pestilence which swept through Europe in the years before World War II.

A bit later, still on page 36, Camus describes the way the people of Oran, Dr. Rieux included, initially failed to see that a plague had now come for them.  You see that passage below.

For our money, the judgments in this passage about "the humanists" are too harsh. That said, this is Gilbert's translation, and we think the passage captures one aspect of our current time:

CAMUS: In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard...

[O]ur townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions. 

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences. 

Indeed, even after Dr. Rieux had admitted in his friend's company that a handful of persons, scattered about the town, had without warning died of plague, the danger still remained fantastically unreal...

In certain ways, we think the judgments offered there are too harsh. Still:

In our nation's present circumstance, a certain type of plague may have come for us. Being human, we humanists in Blue America may have a hard time seeing some of the ways we ourselves have contributed to the onset of this plague.

In our view, what happens each day and night on the Fox News Channel is a type pf pestilence. That said, the onset of this plague has been enabled, again and again, by the behaviors of those of us in Blue America.

Being human, we tend to find it hard to see this part of the situation. For ourselves, we tend to regard that as a form of "true belief" or as a form of "denial." 

Gilbert's translation refers to "stupidity." We think that's not the right word.

When people like Boothe make statements like the statement in question, we're being invaded by a type of pestilence. When Blue America's major orgs avert their gaze from such non-stop behaviors, we humanists in Blue America are in fact playing an active role in this situation.

Here's a further bit of disclosure:

On one topic after another, the men and women of the Fox News Channel have actually been more right—have actually been more insightful—then their counterparts at MSNBC. 

Those of us in Blue America tend to have a hard time seeing that fact. But it remains an actual fact, however much we humanists may be inclined to deny or disregard it.

Early in Camus' famous novel, the men and women of Oran couldn't see what was happening right there before them. It's a bit like that with the blindness exhibited by our own Blue American tribe.

We live in a type of Blue Lagoon. Our own behaviors have contributed to the election of Candidate Trump, but such facts rarely invade our view of the world. 

In the next four days, then never again, we'll try to explain that state of affairs. In our view, the story starts in the 1960s. Also, there's the part of the story which comes to us, live and direct, from the imperfect behaviors of President Biden and other Blue players over the past four years.

We Blues have played a significant part in the onset of the current plague. On the one hand, we refuse to come to terms with the behaviors of people like Boothe. Also, we refuse to see the ways our own tribe's behaviors have helped bring us to this point.

This plague is advancing day and night. When we remain locked in our own Blue Lagoon, we remain a part of the problem.

Tomorrow: A tale of two lists

SUNDAY: Fauci is "evil," one Stepford says!

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2024

Who is, and was, Lisa Boothe? For those who would study the human species, it has become an indispensable "cable news" viewing experience.

We refer to The Big Weekend Show, a Fox News Channel production. The program airs in prime time on Saturday and Sunday nights. 

The program is a perfect forum for seeing the (all-too-human) "Stepford Impulse" of this species in action. Last night, midway through a gruesome hour, one of the Stepfords said this:

BOOTHE (11/30/24): Joe Biden took a stage at the end of July [2021], CNN Town Hall, telling Americans that if you got the vaccine, you wouldn't get the virus. So we were lied to the entire time, and Dr. Fauci is corrupt and evil and was the person spearheading a lot of those lies.

Dr. Fauci is evil! Given the targeted acts of violence now prevalent throughout the culture, it's a remarkable sort of thing to say with millions of people watching—but Boothe was ready to say it.

Who the heck is Lisa Boothe? Fox News profiles her in the manner shown:

Lisa Boothe
Contributor

Lisa Boothe joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in 2016 as a network contributor, providing political analysis and commentary across FNC's daytime and primetime programming.

In addition to her role at FNC, Boothe is the founder and president of High Noon Strategies, a boutique political communications and public affairs firm. She is also a contributing writer for The Washington Examiner.

Prior to her current positions, Boothe was part of the executive team of WPA Research where she led the polling efforts for political campaigns across the country. Additionally, Boothe has led communications efforts for congressmen, senators and Super PACs.

Boothe graduated with a B.A. in political science and government from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Boothe is reported to be 39 years old. She seems to have graduated from the university in question in the class of 2007.

As a general matter, so it goes with Boothe. To our eye and ear, she may be part of a newly emerged subset of the Fox News Channel's endless array of Stepfords. 

We refer to a possible subset of Fox News employees who have recently "toughened" their approach to the news of the day. We could be wrong, but it seems to us that Boothe had long been one of the less aggressive of the channel's many contributors. She was the smiling, telegenic face of a lingering subset—the "kinder, gentler" branch of the Fox News Channel brigade.

That's the way it had seemed to us. Over the course of the past few months, it has seemed to us that Boothe, possibly like several others, has substantially toughened her News Channel talk. 

We could be wrong in that perception—about that perceived change in tone. We aren't wrong about what the remarkable thing she was willing to say on last evening's program.

Dr Fauci is evil, the Stepford star said. At the time, the panel was working from a news report at the Fox News site.

Same old story! The report was written by Andrew Mark Miller, a highly inexperienced journalist with no apparent background in medicine or science. Fox News profiles him in this limited manner:

Andrew Mark Miller
Reporter

Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter for Fox News Digital who covers politics, law enforcement, crime, world events and breaking news.

Before joining Fox in 2021, Andrew was the deputy social media editor and a reporter for the Washington Examiner and covered politics as a freelance blogger and editor for 5 years before that.

Andrew is from Pasadena, CA and received a degree in history from Azusa Pacific University.

Despite an attempt at a search, we can't tell you when Miller graduated from Azusa Pacific. We can't tell you how old he is. Based upon this LinkedIn page, his adult work history seems to have started in 2010.

As would be true of most people, he seems to have no technical background with respect to the topic at hand. That said, this is the start of the report which led Boothe to tell every crackpot in the world that Dr. Fauci is both corrupt and evil.

Warning! Doctored quotation follows!

Fauci ripped over new paper criticizing Trump on coronavirus, promoting natural origin theory: 'Embarrassment'

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the federal government's coronavirus pandemic response, is facing criticism on social media over a manuscript published in a top journal where he maintains his position that the virus originated in nature and cites a debunked claim that President-elect Trump told Americans to inject themselves with bleach to stop the virus.

Fauci, along with researcher Gregory Folkers, published a paper in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal this week with the title, "HIV/AIDS and COVID-19: Shared Lessons from Two Pandemics."

Fauci, who faced intense criticism for his handling of the pandemic, was critical of Trump’s handling of the pandemic in the paper.

[...]

The paper also says that "abundant evidence from top evolutionary virologists and leading scientists in other fields strongly suggests that the virus jumped species from an animal reservoir to humans in the Huanan market in Wuhan, China, and then spread throughout China and the rest of the world." 

The report continues from there. So wrote the inexperienced and likely underqualified Miller. 

For ourselves, we'd be inclined to score the highlighted statement as having been "doctored." Here you see the full statement from the report by Fauci and Folkers:

"Although there remains uncertainty about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and definitive proof is lacking, abundant evidence from top evolutionary virologists and leading scientists in other fields strongly suggests that the virus jumped species from an animal reservoir to humans in the Huanan market in Wuhan, China, and then spread throughout China and the rest of the world."

Citizens, there they went again—and so it long has gone. As best we understand it, the background would be this:

For some time, Fauci has seemed to be saying that the greater weight of evidence supports the idea that the Covid virus "jumped species from an animal reservoir to humans in the Huanan market in Wuhan." He has also routinely said that that assessment isn't certain.

That has been his practice. Also, it has long been the practice in Red America to "edit" Fauci's various statements to keep viewers of Fox News from knowing what Fauci has said.

Now, along comes a player like Boothe, telling every crackpot in the land that Dr. Fauci is "evil." Boothe's amazingly white teeth remain as white as they've always been, but her genial aspect is long gone and it seems to us that her tone has been vastly toughened.

The Stepfords crawl all over the Fox News Channel. Nowhere is that more true than on the comically awful program, The Big Weekend Show.

Sometimes, the comical behavior of this program's array of Stepfords seems to "jump species." It jumps from the merely clownish over to something much darker—to something that's extremely hard to defend and is plainly dangerous.

So it went last night when the smiling presence of: Lisa Boothe gave way to a new, darker tone. Question:

Did any of last evening's Stepfords know what they were talking about when they discussed, or pretended to discuss, the new paper by Fauci and Folkers? We'll guess that the likely answer isn't real hard to conjure.

A final note:

None of this unrelenting journalistic misconduct ever breaks through to the pages of the New York Times. 

Our own Blue America is serviced by a certain number of Stepfords too! At the Times, they've long agreed to keep their mouths shut about this relentless behavior. 

Can a modern nation survive in this way? We always offer the same advice:

Go ahead! Take a good look around!

For extra credit only: Did President Biden misstate the facts about Covid during that July 2021 CNN Town Hall?

Daniel Dale quickly reported that he had, if only to a limited extent. To assess Dale's instant fact-check for CNN, you can click right here.