Tag Archives: Michael Tomasky

Will ABC, Muir and Davis Stop the “Sane-Washing” of Donald Trump?

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In the last debate, barely 10 weeks ago, Joe Biden’s performance was so bad it was the only talking point in the smoking aftermath. But … had he performed less badly there would have been a larger, more vigorous conversation about the performance of CNN’s moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.

Amid the Biden wreckage Tapper and Bash were generally credited for running a smooth, straight forward, professional ship. They successfully deflected (muted) complaints that they did nothing to fact check Trump’s usual blizzard of lies and absurd exaggerations. “Not our job,” was basically their response.

Leading up to this evening’s Harris-Trump face-off, the issue of where smoothly professional, above the fray, just-asking-the-questions-here, let-the-viewers-decide journalism separates from acknowledging the reality everyone fully understands is a hotter, more salient topic than it was 10 weeks ago. Trump has gotten that much more incoherent and vulgar. Namely, to re-state the obvious, we aren’t tuning in to Dwight Eisenhower going face-to-face with Adlai Stevenson. (They never debated FWIW.)

One of the candidates this evening has built an astonishing cult of personality by violating every tradition and protocol of normal politics. This obvious fact (again) powerfully suggests that the smooth, Big J journalism embodied tonight by ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis needs to adjust to a significantly, substantially different fact of life. A reality that bears little resemblance to the polite and orderly decorum of their grandparents, much as they and we might wish otherwise.

Within the (likely shrinking) circles of people who care about sustaining a vibrant press there has been a flurry of debate recently over mainstream journalism’s “sane-washing” of Donald Trump. The complaint ties directly to the unambiguous fact that after a decade of wrestling with the man’s act professional fact gatherers still have not figured out a way to respond to someone leading a revolution of 60-70 million people despite and/or because he has no respect for the truth … as well as unabashed contempt for the profession asking him questions.

Examples of the current debate can be found in: Margaret Sullivan’s post on “sane-washing.” A Michael Tomasky column in The New Republic. Greg Sargent, also in The New Republic. And a substack piece by James Fallows that is generally credited for reigniting this controversy. (HT to Jim Boyd for that one.)

The gist of it all is that professional journalists are — for a variety of reasons — reluctant (or is it “trepidatious”?) to describe what they hear Trump say and see him doing. Reluctantly certainly to report in the kind of specific language and vernacular understandable to general reader/viewership. To call a lie a :”lie”, or to describe a comment as “incoherent” or, god forbid, “utter nonsense”, contradicts their training and fundamental ethos.

They have been taught — and hired for their current jobs — with the virtues of propriety and “fairness” firmly in mind … even when “fairness” means distorting the obvious reality to make it appear more proper.

If not outright fear, journalists like Tapper, Bash, Muir and reporters at regional outlets like the Star Tribune and local TV have credible reasons for trepidation. Reporting and fact-checking daily on Trump’s ludicrous lies, blithering incoherence and constant vulgarity risks instantaneous and irrational blowback from Trump’s public. Blowback from his base frequently comes disturbing threats of violence and — more significantly — puts the reporter and paper/TV station in the position of devoting dozens of hours and human resources defending itself from attacks. Attacks on their reputation that increase the likelihood of financial consequences in terms of lowered ratings, fewer subscriptions and impact on shareholder value.

The fact Trump understands the mainstream media’s self-imposed restraints on its coverage of him hardly makes the situation better. He knows they’ve tied themselves in knots in order to preserve their status of “fairness” and “balance.”

What I’ll be looking for from Muir and Davis tonight are questions to Trump (in particular) that focus on his most consequential lies and bar stool bombast.

For example:

Will they ask him, first if not early in the evening, what basis he has for still claiming the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen”? And will they respond by noting that 63 courts and his own election guru said otherwise?

Will they ask him if he will accept the results of this election … even if he loses?

Will they ask him how exactly he intends to deport 10-12 million immigrants and what he means when he regularly refers to the process as being “bloody?”

Will they ask him to explain how tariffs, essentially a sales tax paid by American consumers, will improve the financial well-being of middle-class Americans?

Will they ask him why he re-posted an on-line “joke” that Kamala Harris provided sexual favors to advance her career?

And of course, with a nod to journalistic fairness, they should put the same questions to Harris … .

However it goes tonight, the question of how professional journalists, some famous and very well paid, continue to cover a rogue operator like Trump will remain vital to the health of not just their profession, but this “democratic experiment”, as the wonks like to call it.

I fail to see how maintaining the attitude that, “We’re not going to ask the most pertinent and obvious quesation out fear of being criticized”, reinvigorates a floundering profession.

The job of reporting “without fear or favor” comes with risks. It comes with having to tell people things they don’t want to hear, and being called names (and worse) for it. It’s not a business you get in to because you really, really want to be liked.

Have We Finally Found a [Bleep]-Up That Matters?

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NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 3There was a telling audience reaction to a moment in “Saturday Night Live’s” opening skit last week. “Weekend Anchor” Michael Che was playing Lester Holt interviewing Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump about the firing of James Comey. At one point Baldwin/Trump blurts out that yeah he fired him because he was rooting around in this Russia stuff. To this Che/Holt looks around, as though talking to his crew, “Is that it?” “Did I get him?”, meaning that — come on, folks — Trump clearly admitted obstruction of justice.

But then he quickly realizes, no. “No? So nothing matters? Is that right? Nothing matters?”

To which the “SNL” audience (99% of them sneering-at-real-‘Murican urban elites) responded with a laugh of cathartic recognition, as though a deeply shared suspicion had been pushed out into the light of day. “Nothing matters.” That’s what you and I have been  thinking. I.e. Is there nothing Trump says or does — and this was before dropping that “highly classified”/code word intelligence on the Russians in the Oval Office — that is appalling enough, stupid enough or legally indefensible enough to make a dent in his core support?

The hope is this latest fiasco — bragging to the Russians about the “great intel I get” (as though they’d be surprised the President of the United States gets juicy information) — will do the trick.

Maybe. But I doubt it. After the pussy grabbing stuff last fall, we all thought he was doomed. I mean, what politician could possibly survive that?

Over at The Daily Beast this morning, Michael Tomasky speculates on the polling numbers necessary to push your Paul Ryans and Mitch McConnells out of the Trump support ICU. Basically, and I agree with this, he says that when (not if) Trump’s support drops into the 20% range, (George W. Bush territory), he will have shed pretty much all the tribal Republicans. This would be the crowd that really should have known better, but rationalized Trump as a better choice than Hillary Clinton on the grounds of her “corruption”. (In reality it was more likely the fact she was female, her last name was Clinton and they would sooner have their fingernails pulled out than vote for a Democrat.)

The stereotypical Trump voter — ill-educated or ill-informed or “left behind” or roiling with grievances or all of the above — constitutes maybe 20-25% of last November’s GOP voting bloc. Pissing them off is perilous to most Republican candidates. But, as I’ve said several times before, the name of the Ryan-McConnell game is not about making the lives of those sad stereotypes better, it is about providing service to the people who fund their careers. And if enough of those people fall away to drive Trump’s numbers down into the very low 30s or (oh my bleeping god!) the W-like 20s, they will have no choice other than to take the gamble and consent to the independent prosecutor (linked to the FBI investigation with full subpoena power).

At that point, and I’m repeating myself I know, Ryan and McConnell will have accepted that because of Trump’s astonishing laziness and incompetence they have no chance of getting “tax reform” through Congress, or even fully repeal Obamacare. (And always remember that Obamacare repeal is mainly about returning the $600-$700 billion in taxes the wealthy are paying to keep it going. Obamacare repeal is a tax relief play, with health care only as collateral damage.)

There have been several excellent analyses written recently about Trump’s endurance in the face of unequivocal incompetence. One of them was former Milwaukee conservative radio host Charlie Sykes’ piece in … The New York Times, very ironically titled, “If Liberals Hate Him Trump Must be Doing Something Right.”

Sykes, never an Alex Jones/Mark Levin nitwit, has gone over to the dark side as far as many Trumpists are concerned. Sykes is out of the William F. Buckley school of conservative thinking, which among other things involves reading books written by people other than Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and assembling, you know, facts to make an argument.

Complaining that conservative media, which has incited and sustained the Trump base, has lost all connection to traditional conservative values, (we can still argue the quality of those values), Sykes writes …

“What may have begun as a policy or a tactic in opposition has long since become a reflex. But there is an obvious price to be paid for essentially becoming a party devoted to trolling. In the long run, it’s hard to see how a party dedicated to liberal tears can remain a movement based on ideas or centered on principles.

Conservatives will care less about governing and more about scoring “wins” — and inflicting losses on the left — no matter how hollow the victories or flawed the policies. Ultimately, though, this will end badly because it is a moral and intellectual dead-end, and very likely a political one as well.”

And, “As the right doubles down on anti-anti-Trumpism, it will find itself goaded into defending and rationalizing ever more outrageous conduct just as long as it annoys CNN and the left.

In many ways anti-anti-Trumpism mirrors Donald Trump himself, because at its core there are no fixed values, no respect for constitutional government or ideas of personal character, only a free-floating nihilism cloaked in insult, mockery and bombast.”

A lefty moonbat like myself couldn’t have said it any better.

 

 

 

Jim Comey’s Pre-Existing Conditions

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NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 2Sure it’s berserk, (for them, typically berserk), but I’m hoping U.S. House Reoublicans pass their Obamacare-gutting bill today. Why? Because holding the national conversation hostage over whacking adequate, reasonably-priced health insurance for 20-30 million Americans will re-inflame The Resistance and keep the inmates away from tax “reform” and everything else on Steve Bannon’s to-do” list, at least for a while.

The numbers on the so-called bill up for vote today are gob-smacking as usual. They make no sense. But this is what we’ve come to expect from a collection of critters, (today’s “principled conservatives”), far better suited to opposition than, you know, actually running things.

Here are a couple of the top howlers in this bill as it is. The $8 billion (over five years) tossed in yesterday to win support from four “moderate” Congressthings to cover constituents with pre-existing conditions? Well, to paraphrase baseball play-by-play legend Bob Uecker, that comes up “Juuuuust a little short.” Like by roughly, oh, $190 billion. In other words, it’s meaningless.

The other, in terms of who gets screwed most, is this: The top ten states with the most people 40 or younger with pre-existing conditions are all … damn you, you beat me to it … deep red, hootin’ and hollerin’ Trump states. Preggers in West Virginny? That’ll be an extra $17,000 in annual insurance premiums. Really, WTF?

But if this “moral monstrosity” as Nancy Pelosi put it yesterday, does pass, it’ll go over to the Senate for weeks if not months, eating up massive chunks of pundit air supply not to mention the attention of our ADD-afflicted Orange Leader. And by the time the Senate lays eyes on this thing, due diligence conservatives along with you and me, will actually know silly science-y stuff like for example, what’s actually in the bill, how it works and … how much it’ll cost. And at that point wiley old Mitch McConnell, who is all about political survival, (and I do mean all), will have to decide how big an appetite he has for political suicide.

My guess? None at all.

That said, there’s a connection within this all-too familiar madness to FBI Director Jim Comey. Allow me to make it as succinctly as I can.

Comey seemed unusually animated yesterday talking about his options regarding his unprecedented Oct. 28 disclosure about Hillary Clinton’s-mails. There were only two, he said: “Really bad” and “catastrophic.”

So, he broke with the FBI’s rules and went with “really bad” because of the predicament “we” (meaning the FBI) would have been in had Clinton won (which everyone assumed she would) and word leaked out post-Clinton victory that she had … had … well, frankly I don’t know what, unless somewhere in her e-mails was a note to Vladimir Putin proving she was involved in something truly treacherous and treasonous, like colluding with agents of a homicidal international gangster to trash her opponent.

Want to read the best “Why Comey Turned the Election to Trump” piece I’ve read? Here you go.

But what is far, far more likely, and isn’t discussed nearly as much is who Comey feared most and why. I can’t claim originality on this. But when The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky argued that Comey had every valid reason to fear what Congressional Republicans would do to him personally and the FBI it landed with the weight and scent of high plausibility.

The established Republican game plan, going back to the Clintons and Whitewater, is to launch an endless series of investigation and hearings, amplified by their media mouthpieces, until something … anything … gets churned up that damages the intended target, normally a Clinton or a Democrat.  (Notable irony: They never found anything with which to attack Obama.) For example: Failed Arkansas land deal begets Monica Lewinsky and impeachment. And more recently “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi” begets Hillary’s e-mail server.

Democrats either haven’t learned how to play this game or find it too repugnant to seriously consider. And Comey knew that. He already had an insurrection within his New York FBI office. His agents were convinced, probably from listening to Rush Limbaugh on stakeouts in Chappaqua, that the Clintons were dirtier than Carlo Gambino and Comey wasn’t being tough enough. He also had good reason to suspect those agents — retired or otherwise —  were leaking inside information to Trump ally Rudy Giuliani. (Now Comey says he’s investigating that angle too, along with the Russians, etc., etc.) With all those fuses burning Comey made the fateful promise he had no legally valid reason to make, namely that he would keep “Congress” i.e. Republican committee heads, updated on anything new regarding their Enemy Number One, Hillary the Terrible.

In effect it’s not all that different from the kid cowering from a pack of bullies pleading, “Please don’t yell at me. I hate it when you yell at me!.”

To do less, which is to say play by normal FBI/Justice Department rules, Comey would have faced the extreme probability of guerrilla war within his New York office (at least) and a full-fledged Congressional Republican/conservative media attack on both him and the Bureau at large for being a Clinton stooge. Conversely, he had nothing of the sort to fear from Democrats by not mentioning last Oct. 28, “Oh, by the way, we have a criminal investigation going into the Trump crowd for jacking around with the Russians to pervert the election.”

Point being:  The contemporary Republican strategy of reckless, relentless total war, on individuals no matter their status in the DC pecking order and on the most basic logic of legislative cause and effect has a chokehold, (maybe a stranglehold), on all points of critical government function.

But, if you’re paying attention, you already knew that.