What a bizarre misreading this is. I wrote a NYT bestseller establishing that an Alfa Bank advisory board member helped write Trump's pro-Russia foreign policy in April 2016—a richly supported, still-unrefuted allegation. I wrote almost nothing on "pings." news.yahoo.com/remembering-jo…
(PS) The other remarkable thing about far-right takes on Alfa Bank: does everyone understand that (a) the pings did happen, (b) no one *ever* said they knew what they were, and (c) the FBI investigation was inconclusive? This is simply an unsettled issue that'll never be settled.
(PS2) There's nothing sadder, in all of US media, that a far-right Trump-Russia victory lap. *None* of these laps are ever based in any substantive refutation of either federal investigations or actual past journalism—it's all tilting at windmills that the right built themselves.
(PS3) To be clear, while the article above is a Yahoo! News link, it's a far-right National Review op-ed. (And yes, I know National Review wasn't always far-right—but its descent into deranged Trump-Russia denialism was the straw that broke the rabid elephant's back, as it were.)
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(🔓) PROOF UNLOCKED: America’s Video Game Scandal Continues: More Evidence of Deception By Grading Company WATA
I thought I was done reporting on this—but apparently it wasn’t done with me. I found a video from a few days ago that required I write this. sethabramson.substack.com/p/americas-vid…
1/ In the video—which I was watching because it was an interview with an independent journalist who’s done some great video game journalism, @karljobstgaming—the interviewer admits, during prep before the interview starts, to being friends with the head of WATA. And it matters.
2/ The problem was that I recognized this guy from an episode of Pawn Stars in which he appeared alongside the WATA head, Deniz Kahn. The two men showed no indication of knowing one another. I’d seen WATA a pull a stunt like this before, so I decided to investigate a little bit.
(1 of 3) I hate when journalists make up rules about how journalism works and claim—from a position of supposed authority—that everyone agrees with them. Here's what Brent Cunningham, former deputy editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, says about how "off the record" works:
(2 of 3) "The generally accepted rule is that off the record must be invoked in advance. So if, for example, George W. Bush says to you, 'Let’s go off the record here—I really did make up all that stuff about WMD in Iraq,' you can’t quote him on that."
Maggie Haberman disagrees.
(3 of 3) Maggie Haberman says that every journalist knows—except, apparently, the former deputy editor of journalism's top watchdog publication—that a reporter must *verbally agree* to former President George W. Bush speaking OTR before he is *allowed* to do so.
(🔐) BREAKING NEWS: A Secretive Meeting That Trump Attended in December of 2020 May Explain Both Trump's Role in the January 6 Insurrection and Why General Milley and China Feared Trump Would Start a War
1/ Donald Trump's domestic insurgency has changed *profoundly* in the last 48 hours. The reason that "Treason" keeps trending on Twitter is because the Trumpists now believe that they have proof of a "deep state" anti-Trump conspiracy *and* collusion with China by Trump critics.
2/ There's no limit to what the Trumpists think this new information will allow them to do. They plan to use General Mark Milley as a scapegoat for almost everything that happened following the November 2020 presidential election. His testimony on September 28 will be a sh*tshow.
I was thinking a lot today about how rarely those who work in public-facing spheres think about what they actually hope to accomplish that's special and meaningful for others and that they're uniquely capable of offering.
Many in public-facing spheres look at what they think worked in the *past* in trying to appeal to people *now*.
They're not perpetually renewing the question of what *special* contribution a) folks would be gleefully surprised to encounter that b) a new voice can uniquely offer.
The reason Trump only lost the popular vote by millions in 2016 rather than the tens of millions he should've is because he was a novelty. These sad Trumpists trying to ape him are pathetic—and don't have a clue what they're trying to accomplish or who they could do anything for.
So is what we learned in California tonight that Republicans running on an ANTI-VAX / PRO-VIRUS platform might *not* be the winner absolutely no one thought it was?
PS/ To be clear, I do agree that to the extent Trumpist Republicans can *hide* the fact that they're sleazy seditious death merchants, they *can* still win elections. I'm saying that as long as voters receive the intel that Trumpists are selling DEATH and INSURRECTION, they lose.
PS2/ Larry Elder had neither the ability nor inclination to hide that he's a sleazy seditious death merchant, so he lost. Yes—California. But at this point the loss looks to be 30+ points.
I think if Trumpists fail to cloak their intent elsewhere, they'll lose, if more narrowly.
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