Thread by @JewhadiTM

.@Politico Doubles Down on Fake Turnberry Scandal

Occasional Air Force layovers at a Trump hotel in Scotland, which were started under Obama, are a pathetic excuse for an exposé. nationalreview.com/2019/09/trump-…

It’s damned annoying how many watchmen there are to watch the watchmen these days. But in the end the temptation wins. The shaky story gets blasted out to everyone, it falls apart, and the soiled and tattered reputation of the news media acquires another stain.

Short term, no biggie: Reporters know they won’t get fired for being wrong. They get a little dopamine hit of glory from the ersatz scoop, they go on with their lives. They live to fight Trumpism another day.

Did Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier of BuzzFeed suffer for falsely reporting that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress? Nope. Their position is merely that maybe the story will turn out to be true someday.

They haven’t even retracted the story, much less tendered their resignations, much less placed themselves in the stocks of the town square so that passersby can fire tomatoes at them.

(BuzzFeed appended a weaselly note to the original story feebly expressing hope that more information would emerge that would back up their story. That ain’t how it works. You get it right first, then publish.)

Politico reporters Natasha Bertrand and Bryan Bender suspect President Trump has been directing Air Force flights to an obscure Scottish airport and fuel stop in order to generate business for his nearby hotel.

The Obama-era Air Force also used the fuel point (which Trump has no interest in) scores of times, and those troops also understandably stayed at the hotel because it’s affordable and close to the airport.

There is only a scandal here if Trump, or someone operating at Trump’s direction, is ordering the Air Force to do things differently than it ordinarily would in order to benefit Trump. The numbers at issue here are paltry. The hotel is charging $130 a night.

How much of that winds up in Trump’s pocket, 11 cents? Bender and Bertrand inform us in dire tones that Air Force crews have made “at least four stays” at the Trump resort in the last year. How much do four stays at a cheap hotel really mean to a billionaire?

When Politico or any other outlet whips up a fake scandal, the predictable next stage is that even more specious and disgusting things get said by pundits joining the pile-on.

Rachel @Maddow, in her gonzo throw-everything-at-the-wall way, falsely claimed the other night that the fuel stop was charging more for fuel, as though that were a scandal. It turns out the fuel stop is charging ordinary rates, and Trump doesn’t own it anyway.

A John Hirschauer calls B.S. on her. Maddow slandered the military in an absolutely vile manner when she declared the “U.S. military is in on it now,” meaning corruption. Bertrand called Maddow’s take on the matter “perfect.”

.@NatashaBertrand blathered on this morning with this tweet: “BREAKING: Preliminary results of the Air Force’s review of its use of Trump Turnberry shows that the service has lodged crews at the resort up to 40 times since 2015, a figure far higher than previously known.”

Oh, since 2015, eh? Who was president then? The only numbers that might matter are the ones since January 20, 2017, and she doesn’t even have those yet.

The most hilarious and self-defeating detail in this morning’s BREAKING news from Politico is this: “Since 2015, the [Air Force] has lodged crews in the area 659 times, meaning up to 6 percent of those stays were at Turnberry.” Wow, 6 whole percent?

I can only imagine what the president’s directive on this matter might have been. “Get Mark Esper in here now, dammit! Esper, my Scottish resort is in trouble. Take a break from saving the world and save Trump Turnberry!