Driving Your Adversaries Crazy: More Anti-Trump Media Blunders

First, the supposed “17 agencies” of the U.S. government who agreed that the Russians had interfered with the 2016 presidential election.

The New York Times and Associated Press this week quietly issued major retractions in stories concerning alleged Russian interference in last year’s presidential election.

For months, Democrats have tried to connect President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to Russia’s alleged interference in last year’s election. The most prominent narrative has accused Trump of “collusion” with the Russians, although no concrete evidence has proved the claims correct.

One of the other prominent claims, one touted by many Democrats, has been to say all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia attempted to interfere in the election.

Last Sunday, the Times ran a report titled, “Trump’s Deflections and Denials on Russia Frustrate Even His Allies,” and claimed that “all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community” had confirmed Russia orchestrated cyberattacks to interfere in the election.

The Associated Press made similar claims in stories on April 6, June 2, June 26 and June 29.

Losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton even made the claim during a debate last October and fact-checking website PolitiFact ruled Clinton’s claim to be completely true.

However, as fate would have it, not all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies made that claim nor had they confirmed it. In fact, only four agencies did: the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and the office of the director of national intelligence.

That fact forced the Times and the AP to issue retractions and corrections.

The Times wrote in a correction on Thursday: “A White House Memo article on Monday about President Trump’s deflections and denials about Russia referred incorrectly to the source of an intelligence assessment that said Russia orchestrated hacking attacks during last year’s presidential election. The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”

While the AP wrote in a similar correction on Friday: “In stories published April 6, June 2, June 26 and June 29, The Associated Press reported that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have agreed that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump. That assessment was based on information collected by three agencies – the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency – and published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which represents all U.S. intelligence agencies. Not all 17 intelligence agencies were involved in reaching the assessment.”

Trump reacted to all this by asking:

Since the Obama Administration was told way before the 2016 Election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017

By the way, if Russia was working so hard on the 2016 Election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn't they stop them?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017

The Meeting That Didn’t Happen

From Brietbart:

A Breitbart News investigation has led to the correction by the Associated Press–which originally resisted–of the fake news it printed as deeper questions of responsibility, accountability, and journalistic ethics consume the AP heading into Fourth of July weekend.

This time, the Associated Press invented an imaginary meeting between EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, and then alleged that some kind of impropriety happened as a result.

Under the headline “EPA chief met with Dow CEO before deciding on pesticide ban,” the AP’s Michael Biesecker alleged that some super-secret covert meeting occurred between Pruitt and Liveris—and that awful things came as a result of that meeting.

The problem with Biesecker’s piece, which ran over the Associated Press wires on Wednesday evening, is that as Breitbart News has confirmed from both sides: No meeting ever occurred, despite one appearing on Pruitt’s schedule. Sure, both were at the conference and briefly shook hands when introduced, but they never had a “meeting” because of scheduling conflicts.

“Administrator Scott Pruitt did not meet privately with Andrew Liveris, the CEO of Dow,” Liz Bowman, the EPA’s spokeswoman, told Breitbart News. “The AP article is inaccurate and misleading. Despite multiple attempts to provide the Associated Press with the facts, this article has not been corrected.”

Lies? Fake News?

So we have an out and out epidemic of bogus stories from the Mainstream Media, all tending to discredit the election of Donald Trump and his Administration. We have documented more here and here.

Is this “fake news?”

The concept was invented by the liberal media during the 2016 election season to claim that fake news was responsible for the election of Donald Trump. And it was deployed to attack all conservative media.

But soon enough the tables were turned and conservatives, along with Trump himself, flung that epithet at the Mainstream Media.

Poetic justice.

But genuine fake news is stories that are known to be false by the people who write them. They are intentional frauds, in other words. Classic example: the story that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump.

In fact, what we have from the Mainstream Media is not intentional lies but rather a radical lowering of journalistic standards, fueled by the loathing media people feel toward Trump. Since they so badly want stories reflecting badly on Trump to be true, they fail to show the skepticism and careful sourcing good journalism requires.

And of course, Trump’s excoriation of the media simply reinforces the loathing, and leads to more journalistic blunders, which gives Trump more material which which to attack the media.

It could be seen as a brilliant strategy on Trump’s part to discredit his critics. Except we don’t think the terms “Donald Trump” and “strategy” fit together. Trump is not Machiavelli. In terms of strategizing, he’s not even your average cribbage player. But when he pops off, it drives his adversaries crazy.

That is a political asset. It’s not the one we’d most like to see in a president, but it’s not a trivial one.

Finally: New York Times Cares About Anti-Semitism

The media, of course, tends to report things that fit their favored narrative, and the favored narrative of the liberal mainstream media is that the Trump campaign and Trump presidency has empowered the forces of bigotry in American life.

Of course, since they can’t actually quote Trump saying anything anti-Semitic, they have to resort to that evasive verbal formula.

Thus the mainstream media has enthusiastically reported a spate of anti-Semitic attacks and threats against Jewish institutions.

But similar attacks have happened for years under Obama. And they have gone virtually unreported.

Thus the website of the Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner explains how “Making the New York Times Care About Antisemitism” is “Trump’s Big Achievement.”

President Trump has been in office for barely a month, but he already deserves credit for at least one major accomplishment: He’s gotten the New York Times to discover a new interest in intensively covering antisemitism.

What am I talking about?

Consider the following brief recent history of vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and their coverage, or lack of it, in the New York Times.

Then, following, is a long list of ant-Semitic incidents during the Obama Administration that the New York Times failed to report, or reported summarily with no attempt to tie them to any larger theme.

To summarize: Ten Jewish cemetery desecrations, of which two — one of which was outside the US — were covered by the New York Times. Both times the Times bothered to cover the attacks, the newspaper did so in a way that minimized the potentially antisemitic aspect of the attack.

In November of 2016, Donald Trump was elected president.

In February 2017, there were two attacks on Jewish cemeteries. About 200 tombstones were affected at a graveyard near St. Louis, Mo., and about 100 at one in Philadelphia, Pa.

The Times responded in a markedly different way than it did to the earlier, pre-Trump attacks, which it had either ignored or minimized. One Times news article about the Missouri attacks carried the bylines of two Times reporters and was accompanied by two images shot by a Times-commissioned photographer. The article prominently noted that critics said the attacks “were an outgrowth of the vitriol of last year’s presidential campaign and Mr. Trump’s tone during it.” The Times reinforced this point with not just one, but two op-eds commenting on the attack, both of which were accompanied by additional photographs and carried headlines reaching speculative conclusions about the motive: “The New American Anti-Semitism” and “When Hate Haunts a Graveyard.”

Yes, the media report what fits their preferred narrative.

What happens when something radically contradicts their preferred narrative? They minimize or downplay it. Thus when the perpetrator of several of the phone threats against Jewish institutions was discovered to be an anti-Trump leftist, ABC News failed to report that.

And of course, the mainstream media have been little concerned about anti-Semitism where is is most overt, and most mainstream: on college campuses.

[Update]

Likewise, CNN completely failed to report the leftist, anti-Trump political views of the perp.

The “Living Constitution:” Trashing the Social Contract

An essay from The New American, a rather questionable source, but the essay itself is spot on:

This brings us to the opposition to President Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Judge Neil Gorsuch, who The New York Times actually calls a “Nominee for a Stolen Seat.” In reality, the Times advocates a perversion of judicial philosophy that long ago had stolen Americans’ birthright.

The paper complains that like Justice Antonin Scalia, Gorsuch “is an originalist, meaning he interprets the Constitution’s language to mean what it was understood to mean when it was written….” Leftists prefer the Constitution be considered a “living document,” interpreted to “suit the times” (and the Times). This just guarantees a dying republic.

Why? Consider: Imagine I violate the language of a contract to which you and I are party. You take me to court, but the judge determines that the contract can be interpreted to suit the times. You may object and say the “times” are being interpreted to suit me, but the judge is in my pocket.

Oh, he justifies this by saying he’s a “pragmatist.” Feel better?

The analogy is apt because, in essence, the Constitution is the contract the American people have with one another. It specifies the rights (of the people) and powers (of the different governmental arenas) of those party to it. It does have one significant flaw, however.

For it to work as intended, people must actually abide by it.

When they don’t, our very rights are in jeopardy.

Another analogy was drawn by Chief Justice John Roberts when, during his confirmation hearings, he said his job was only “to call balls and strikes.” Expanding on this, judges can in fact be likened to baseball umpires, while the players are the people, the game’s ruling body is the legislature and the rule book the Constitution.

Now, if a rule is thought inadequate, it’s the ruling body’s role to change it. Of course, the players, umpires or anyone else may lobby passionately in that regard. What, however, if an umpire considered the rule book living and said, “With the great pitchers in these times, three strikes are insufficient; I’m giving the batter four strikes”?

He’d be fired. And would it help his cause if he added an intellectual veneer to his cheating, saying “You don’t understand! I’m not a radical like those originalists! I’m moderate — a pragmatist”?

No, he’s a bad umpire — and he’d be history.

Likewise, all the terms describing justices — constructionist, originalist, moderate, pragmatic — are part of a pseudo-intellectual rationalization obscuring a simple truth: There are only two kinds of justices, good justices and bad justices. Good justices rule based on the founders’ original intent.

Bad justices don’t.

They put a spin on the Constitution to prove “by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white,” as satirist Jonathan Swift put it, so they can impose their agenda from the bench.

Some will say we mustn’t be hamstrung by a 200-year-old document. This gets at the big lie. There is a lawful way to make the Constitution “live:” the Amendment Process.

Yes, it can be long and difficult. This ensures that before our national contract is altered, the vast majority of those party to it (the people) agree on the change. “Living-document” judges, with an intellectual veneer and a sneer, usurp this power. The people are to decide when and how the Constitution will live — not five unelected lawyers.

Those who trade the rule of law for the rule of lawyers, to facilitate an unconstitutional agenda, tread a dangerous path. Their corruption of the establishment has led to precisely the kind of anti-establishment movement we see today. After all, if a game is judged and won or lost fairly, both sides can accept the outcome. But what happens when the vanquished know the judges fixed the contest for the other side?

That is the stuff revolutions are made of.

The living-document lie can be gussied up as “pragmatism” or something else, but it’s not a legitimate legal philosophy. We can have a living constitution or a living constitutional republic — but we cannot have both.

We don’t think the judges should literally always rule according to “original intent.” Sometimes previous Supreme Courts have made such a mess of the law that doing that would be like trying to unscramble an omelet. But what judges should not ever do is base their decisions on their policy preferences, violating each and every defensible rule of construction. That is indeed what most of the “landmark” decisions of the late 20th century did. We don’t need more of that.  We should, in fact, never vote for a presidential candidate who promises judicial appointees who will do that.

A Really Stupid Attack on Trump

So Donald Trump won’t say that he accepts the outcome of the 2016 election.

The liberals have gone berserk. The New York Times huffed and puffed about “Donald Trump’s Contempt for Democracy.”

But of course, if leftists claim that an election outcome is illegitimate because it was “bought” by “monied interests,” these same people have no problem with that.

Wisconsin leftists, for example, have blamed the Koch brothers for pretty much every election they have lost in the past few years.

And of course, a lot of liberals said Bush as not legitimately elected in 2000. “Selected not elected” they said. Was that an attack on democracy? No, it was just an opinion about the election. If Trump goes around saying that the election was unfairly “fixed” for Hillary, that’s his right. Only if he recruits troops and stages a revolt is there any threat to democracy.

[Update]

Who was one of the people saying George Bush was “selected not elected?”  Hillary Clinton.

Two Murders -- Two Media Standards

From Maggie Gallagher on Real Clear Politics:

Abdulhakim Muhammad, Pvt. Long’s killer, had his reasons for engaging in cold-blooded murder. He was retaliating against these soldiers for the U.S. military’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the mistreatment of Muslims, this young man said. This was an act of domestic terrorism -- a protest against the American conflicts abroad.

Meanwhile, one day earlier, George Tiller, a late-term abortion doctor in Wichita, Kan., was gunned down in church. His murderer, a disturbed man named Scott Roeder, “wanted a scapegoat,” his ex-wife said. “First it was taxes -- he stopped paying. Then he turned to the church and got involved in anti-abortion.”

Two men, two murderers -- two lost boys trying to recover dreams of manhood in two violent and disturblingly similar acts.

Is God sending us a message?

At The New York Times, one story is front-page news; the other is buried in the back pages.

Which one is buried and which one on the front page?

You don’t even need to ask.

Biased Use of Quotes in the Media: New York Times

From the Media Research Center’s “Times Watch” blog: the way in which the paper shows its liberal bias with the use of quote marks.

Insight check here: how does the following paragraph frim the Times show bias?

The economy has emerged as the top concern of voters in the presidential race, supplanting terrorism and the Iraq war as gasoline prices and unemployment have gone up and housing values and stock prices have gone down.

Their differences on the economy are every bit as stark as the difference on the Iraq war, where Mr. Obama favors beginning to withdraw United States troops while Mr. McCain wants to keep them there until they achieve “victory.”

Mr. McCain wants to extend the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, cut corporate taxes and keep capital-gains taxes low. The tax cuts he promotes as benefiting the middle class include doubling the size of the exemption people can claim for each child. And his call for repealing the alternative minimum tax, while it would still help some middle-class taxpayers, would still largely benefit the wealthy: some 80 percent of the benefit would go to the top 10 percent of earners, according to the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

Mr. Obama wants to let the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy lapse, and he wants to raise the tax on capital gains and dividends and to tax the windfall profits of oil companies. He also wants to keep the estate tax, which many Republicans deride as the “death tax,” on people with estates valued at more than $3.5 million; Mr. McCain would exempt people with estates valued at up to $10 million and would impose a much lower tax rate. Mr. Obama wants to use some of that money to pay for his middle-class tax cut and for the elimination of income taxes on retirees.

There is, of course, plenty of bias here, including calling the Tax Policy Center “a nonpartisan research group.”

But the thing that stands out is that Republican concepts and talking points (the death tax, victory in Iraq) are put in quotes.

But Democratic concepts and talking points (the wealthy, excess profits) are presented as though they are objectively defined obvious facts.

New York Times Under Fire for Hiring Conservative Bill Kristol

Via Shack Sounds Off, another example of just how committed liberals are to the airing of a diversity of views, and just how tolerant they are of differences of opinion.

When the New York Times hired Bill Kristol as a columnist, they ran into a firestorm of criticism. The Comments Editor of The Times of London puts the issue in perspective in an “Open Letter” to New York Times readers:

Dear Friends,

I understand that your newspaper of choice has asked William Kristol, the conservative commentator, to provide an opinion column for the paper.

Since I am the op-ed editor of what you Americans call The Times of London, I have followed the controversy that the appointment has caused with great interest.

And with my mouth wide open.

Apparently many of you are outraged to hear of this new columnist. You have been writing in. And the Public Editor has written a column criticising the appointment.
Excuse me, but what on earth is going on?

A quality newspaper should have columns reflecting a wide variety of opinions, even those uncongenial to the majority of its readers. While the bulk of a paper’s columnists may reflect the publication’s character and view, there must always be space for an alternative opinion.

Thus, for instance, while my paper supported the decision to invade Iraq (which happened to be my view too), many of our columnists (in fact probably a majority) did not concur.

It would never occur to me when selecting an individual columnist to be concerned that some readers might not agree with some of his positions.

And considering that Kristol represents a large strand of American opinion (even if it is a smaller strand of NYT reader opinion) it is entirely unremarkable that his columns should be commissioned.

A great national newspaper is not a reality television show, subjecting its columnists to a telephone vote before running their columns. Nor is being hired to write a column equivalent to being appointed to the Supreme Court, requiring Senate confirmation.

Even when the column appears, drumroll, in the The New York Times.

The most remarkable aspect of this bizarre controversy has been the performance of the paper’s ombudsman Clark Hoyt. Well, it was remarkable to me at least. Mr Hoyt argued that Kristol should not have been appointed (or at least that he, Hoyt, wouldn’t have appointed him) because Kristol had been a fierce critic of the NYT, and had argued, at one point, that the paper should be prosecuted for an aspect of its coverage.

The job of a reader’s editor, surely is to defend the rights of its readers, all of its readers. It is not to start picking a “Fantasy Columnist” team to reflect his own politics. What of people who agree with Kristol? Do they not deserve the protection of the reader’s editor?

And as for Hoyt’s statement that:

This is not a person I would have rewarded with a regular spot in front of arguably the most elite audience in the nation.

Isn’t this the most pompous sentence you have ever read in your life?

Anyway, you are fortunate that The New York Times carries many great columns. If Kristol offends you I have a brilliant technological solution.

Turn the page.

I wish you well from this side of the Atlantic.

Daniel

New York Times Bias In French Election

Anybody reading the New York Times coverage of the recent French election would have had no problem knowing which candidate that paper favored. From the Media Research Center:

Paris-based New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino continued to nurse her long-standing grudge against Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-on-crime presidential candidate of France, in two stories, one before and one after Sarkozy routed Socialist candidate Segolene Royal to win the presidency. Before the vote, she fretted that “while Ms. Royal has pledged to protect and unite France, Mr. Sarkozy has often taken a ruthless us-against-them attitude” and complained: “In this election, authority apparently is deemed to be more important than compassion.” After the election, she declared that “the election was a triumph of raw ambition, efficiency and political sleight-of-hand.”

Sciolino wrote in Saturday’s “France to Vote After Presidential Race’s Scorching Finale”:

He has gambled -- apparently successfully -- during the campaign that by turning hard right he would win over supporters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the head of the extreme right National Front who made it into the second round of the 2002 election but made it into only fourth place this time.

While Ms. Royal has pledged to protect and unite France, Mr. Sarkozy has often taken a ruthless us-against-them attitude, stressing there is no place in France for young people who do not respect the law or for immigrants who do not embrace French values.

In Montpellier on Thursday, where he made his last campaign speech, Mr. Sarkozy railed against those who do not like him. ‘People accuse me of encouraging public anger,’ he said. ‘But who’s angry? The thugs? The drug traffickers? I can assure you -- I do not seek to be the friend of thugs.’

In this election, authority apparently is deemed to be more important than compassion.

Sarkozy’s win was Monday’s lead story, and Sciolino remained hostile:

Ms. Royal had repeatedly appealed to the women of France to vote for her in a show of female solidarity. But Mr. Sarkozy, a conservative who made his reputation as a hard-line minister of the interior, got the majority of the women’s vote, according to Ipsos, an international polling company....

He also struck a conciliatory note, reaching out to the huge swath of French people who seem to fear him, especially in the country’s ethnically and racially mixed suburbs, where he is accused of fueling tensions with his provocative language and an aggressive police presence....

With his raw, often divisive rhetoric, Mr. Sarkozy will have to change course to neutralize deep-rooted hostility against him, particularly in the tough ethnic suburbs.

About 2,000 people gathered at Place de la Bastille in central Paris to await the election results, with some burning an effigy of Mr. Sarkozy before tearing it apart.

But within two hours of the polls closing, the scene had degenerated into violent clashes between the police and several hundred people in the crowd who smashed windows and set one vehicle on fire....

The election was a triumph of raw ambition, efficiency and political sleight-of-hand.

It doesn’t occur to the Times that there might be something wrong with people who, when they face losing a democratic election, turn to violence.

In their leftist world, it is Sarkozy’s responsibility to placate the thugs.

After all, the violence is from the left, so it is righteous!

It must be galling to the American left, so used to invoking the hostility of the supposedly so civilized French against George Bush, to have a generally pro-Bush and pro-American candidate win.

It was, of course, a bad argument to make in the first place. There is nothing about the nation of France that gives it any particular moral authority.

But it was an important argument to the effete liberals, and now it has been ripped away from them.