JOURNALISTS, all day yesterday: Trump assaulted his Secret Service agents and grabbed the wheel of the presidential limo!!! Headline news. Smoking gun!!!!
SECRET SERVICE AGENTS: That never happened.
JOURNALISTS: That was never an important part of the testimony.
As any lawyer will tell you (if being honest), few things are less reliable than a proceeding with no adversarial component. These hearings have zero.
One can assign whatever blame one wants for that, but perhaps it means journalists should be...skeptical...of assertions there.
If, yesterday, you followed conservative journalists or analysts -- and really, why would anyone do such a thing: just block and ignore them -- you'd have heard instant skepticism even over the physics of Hutchinson's claim that Trump was able to grab the wheel of the "Beast."
Maybe parts of Hutchinson's story is true (although the part that got the instant attention and calls for prosecution -- Trump assaulted his agents and grabbed the wheel of the Beast! -- was highly dubious on its face), but *journalistic* skepticism, not cheerleading, is needed.
This (👇) is exactly what happened: largely due to Twitter dynamics.
If, as a journalist, you don't *instantly* join the liberal mob -- if you wait to see how facts emerge -- you stand accused of sin.
But if you jump on board, applause, virality and cable bookings are yours.
It's literally impossible to count how many times during the Trump years some *blockbuster!* Russiagate event materialized - the thing that was going to be the fatal blow - and journalists spent all day on Twitter reflexively peddling it, only to watch it fall apart over and over
For many (I'd say: most) corporate journalists, "Twitter" = "liberal Twitter" = "the only constituency that matters."
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I can't believe that establishment Democrats pretend to believe in things that they don't really believe and/or care nothing about in to keep their gullible liberal followers captive, in line and reverent. Biden had a decades-long record on abortion liberals chose to ignore.🤷♂️
This announcement that Biden is likely to nothing after Dobbs provoked a huge army of liberals bitterly denouncing Dems as deceitful and worthless: the same people who always appear every 2 years to sermonize that the supreme moral duty is vote for Dems:
If you pledge in advance your blind and unconditional loyalty to a political party and their leaders -- they will always have your vote no matter what you do -- it's quite irrational to expect they will listen to you or care about your desires and complaints.
Here's Ilhan Omar's communication aide expressing the standard liberal-left view that journalists shouldn't speak with or interview influential people absent full agreement: odd given that it would mean his boss was never interviewed by mainstream journalists.
This tweet from Ilhan Omar's communication aide also reflects the idiotic, and xenophobic, views that: 1) what happens in the US doesn't affect the world and 2) US citizens who live on foreign soil have no stake in the outcome of political debates. My marriage is based on US law.
And that's to say no thing of the now-standard belief among White Straight Male Good Liberal Allies that they own all marginalized groups, our debates and lives, and our views. Freddie deBoer wrote the perfect (and most hilarious) essay on such cretins:
For the lingering group of American citizens and British subjects who, each time it's time for a new war, believe that the US is devoted to fighting for freedom, democracy and a "rules-based international order" (😂) and to vanquish tyranny and despotism:
But did they spend thousands of dollars on fake Facebook groups and Twitter bots to influence the elections in Colombia? Get back to me when the US does *that*.
Tens of thousands of people - including journalists - pretending Corbyn's meaning is that Brown was wrongly decided and Plessy should have remained, even though he's so obviously making the exact opposite point (decades of precedent shouldn't shield bad decisions from overrule).
Jesse, reputation aside, is a devoted lib Democrat. Listen to his 1-hour show in 2020 on why nothing is more urgent than voting for Biden. But he's able to point out the deliberate misreading of Cornyn's tweet because he believes in reading comprehension:
What's so bizarre about this amateur but common error - claiming there were 6 votes to overrule Roe when there were only 5 - is the same NYT published a long article on how Roberts is now powerless since he refused to overrule Roe, but the other 5 did:👇
There are 5, not 6, votes on the Court to overrule Roe. I'm unsure what the motive is for claiming otherwise, but it obscures this dark irony:
The 5th vote to overrule Roe came only because RBG refused to retire under Obama, allowing Trump to replace her with ACB (the 5th vote):
I mean all you have to do is read the majority opinion (which devotes multiple paragraphs to heaping scorn onto Roberts for refusing to overrule Roe), or Roberts' own opinion, devoted to arguing why the MS law should be upheld **without overruling Roe**. Roberts:👇