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Josh Barro

9 Feb, 8 tweets, 1 min read

lol Portman reading from Neera Tanden's tweets, noting that she called Mitch McConnell "Voldemort" and compared Ted Cruz unfavorably to vampires

Rob Portman is upset about Neera's bad tweets and also upset about her deleting her bad tweets? Make up your mind, Rob Portman.

Now he's noting that there are bad tweets she didn't delete! And he asks how she decided which ones merited deletion. Some of the mean tweets about Ted Cruz are still up, he notes. (Maybe she assumed those would be popular with most senators on both sides of the aisle.)

Now he's asking about OIRA and cost-benefit analysis. Boring!

In the future, everyone will be grilled at a a congressional hearing where their bad tweets are blown up on huge posterboards for 15 minutes.

Haha James Lankford notes Neera Tanden produced more tweets during Trump's term than Trump did.

I think the main thing we're establishing here is that a good thing about making Neera Tanden OMB director is that the job will probably suppress her tweeting.

The definitive cartoon about confirmation hearings is still this Dilbert strip: dilbert.com/strip/1991-11-…

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More from @jbarro

Josh Barro

@jbarro

10 Feb

https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1359281525716492289

this person is a reporter?

https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1359281525716492289

Look either it's a serious accusation (in which case it is actually a serious error that Taylor attributed the comment to the wrong person) or it's not a serious accusation (in which case it's not a "scandal" and it's improper for reporters to try to make it into one.)

But this is the way a lot of tech industry coverage is conducted: Not merely aggressive and skeptical, as it should be, but treating tech companies and personalities as the enemy.

Read 5 tweets

Josh Barro

@jbarro

9 Feb

https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1359277625521364995

It is so hard to find good help

https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1359277625521364995

Honestly, I would find it hard to blame Trump for stiffing these guys

Maybe Trump can hire that cat from the viral Zoom

Read 4 tweets

Josh Barro

@jbarro

7 Feb

https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1358411936682115074

How broadly are we expanding this list of words that cannot even be mentioned? It’s becoming genuinely confusing to read accounts of what Bad things were said when they cannot actually be reproduced.

https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1358411936682115074

There is a plausible enough case about the unique role and rhetorical power of the n-word meriting avoidance even of mentions, and with just one such word, that’s not confusing. But if there are going to be dozens of words you’re not allowed to even reproduce, that’s confusing.

Also, if you're going to level an accusation that (you consider to be) serious against someone about what they said, you should be pretty sure about who was speaking.

Read 4 tweets

Josh Barro

@jbarro

6 Feb

Maybe if 150 NYT employees sign an open letter saying it's harmful when the paper runs op-ed columns justifying authoritarian crackdowns on journalists in places where the NYT does business, the paper will apologize for having done that?

It's kind of amazing, the organization does not really appear to have management anymore. Only really acts in response to outside pressure (Caliphate) or inside pressure (McNeil).

I don't know all the details of what happened with McNeil, but it certainly appears that Dean Baquet knew the same things about the incident last week that he knew today, and he reached different conclusions before and now. So when did he screw up?

Read 6 tweets

Josh Barro

@jbarro

5 Feb

https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1357799106547179523

The manner in which Mills brushes past the central error in Caliphate -- a very big error that he presided over! -- makes me quite distrustful of whatever else he has to say.

https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1357799106547179523

He says in this letter that he "helped create and produce" Caliphate. The show's credits give him standalone credit as "producer." When it won a Peabody, he posed holding it with Rukmini Callimachi. washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/medi…