Well, after listening to that Space, I think we should define Frenchism (if it's not already defined). If Trumpism is defined by Donald Trump's personality and ideals, then so should David French's belief system or philosophy be similarly fleshed out. I think Frenchism is a parallel to The Conservative Case for _something the left believes_. Only David finds a way to craft an argument against what Christians, evangelicals, Conservatives, or Republicans are doing as a response, to what the political left did in the first place.

I want to make something clear here. I've been Conservative for over 3 decades, so I've seen countless infighting in my time alone, not just from what came before me. But a lot of Conservatives lose their ideology when they work in politics for money. They don't call the shots. Conservatism is an ideology that predates the existence of these people. It will also outlast them. They can choose to believe in Conservative ideals, or not, or decide which faction suits them best. Or believe in something else and cling to the label. But they don't own it.

Jonah complains about how people took issue with him not being outraged enough, or he's charged with hypocrisy for being less severe against Kessler than he is about other Conservatives. He laments that's it's not good enough that he criticized Kessler.
gfile.thedispatch.com/p/tucker-carls… He didn't actually criticize Kessler. For any reason. Read his tweet, and his subsequent tweets on Kessler. Hell, search through his entire account about outrage at Kessler. Show it to me. I'll wait. I'll save you the time. It's not there.

https://twitter.com/JonahDispatch/status/1385923150211342338

Thread. I'm going to live blog my viewing of the 60 Minutes Interview released by President Trump, with Leslie Stahl. I just watched it, took notes, and will make this thread about that. It's long so I'll post at once so it appears less like spam. Stahl asks Trump what his best domestic policy wins were and he says the economy, unemployment, jobs, stock market price, and he was right Stahl wouldn't boldly tell Biden he's wrong in an interview. Trump gives stats and she says she won't "fact check" him.

Amy Coney Barrett is completely qualified for this position so this will not be an avenue in which Democrats will substantively attack her. They will, however, attack her for her religion. I thought some of these points might be worth knowing. #ACB She is Catholic, as Antonin Scalia was, and 5 other current Justices.

Clarence Thomas
John Roberts
Samuel Alito
Sonia Sotomayor
Brett Kavanaugh

Neil Gorsuch was raised Catholic, is now Episcopalian. Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan are Jewish, as was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The fascinating thing about Tweetdeck is it allows people to view multiple columns side-by-side, so they can track multiple lists, in addition to the Home feed, as well as have something like a Search column. I've noticed some accounts never appear in my Home feed, but in lists. So I follow someone like @realDonaldTrump and I put him in a couple lists which display on each side of the Home feed, so I can see if he ever appears in that Home column. He never does. I can see the moment his new tweet appears in the two lists, but he doesn't in the Home feed.

Just a reminder, The Bulwark and Dispatch currently are trying to service the same niche audience, but once Trump leaves office, only one of them will remain, and it's The Dispatch, aiming to capture the TWS audience of old, and the Bulwark will be shuttered. The only way I can think The Bulwark can survive is by dumping it's remaining semi-conservative writers, who would all scamper to The Dispatch anyways, and become a full-time leftist publication. But I submit that chance is rare given that intellectual space is competition-rich.

Watching this Trump presser, it's amazing to me the quality of the "gotcha questions." Many just aren't good. "You said X 5-6 months ago" - well no kidding, nearly everyone did, and more information came out. Nearly everyone was wrong on predictions in Feb/March. I'm glad I'm out of the market on specific media critiques. It's very time consuming, and is an endless endeavor, with literally no payout beyond the gratification of showing others. That said, I've never seen it as bad as it is now. The polarization of the media is insane.

Today, others are learning what many of us already knew, months ago. Biden and his team cannot handle anything beyond softball questions, and sometimes not even softballs. Imagine being unable to answer fair, but not challenging, questions, from Jake Tapper and Bret Baier. Guess what: one side holding real rallies, the other side virtual ones, will have an impact, too. I know this may come as shocking to those in a bubble, but reality is unavoidable. And dodging it for months on end will hurt the Biden campaign more than they apparently realize.

Fox News doesn't have an advance copy of Woodward's book. Anyone want to bet the other networks do? At a minimum, CNN, as Woodward often appears there. I'm only hearing some bits of the interview audio but these "bombshells" are what we knew already. I don't get the overreaction. We're getting what Trump critics see as the most important bits of information from these audio clips, and they aren't revelatory. At least what I've heard so far. Are we so plugged in that even the press is running with non-news as news?

Watching WGN America tonight and so far I like what I'm seeing as far as news delivery. Not sure I'll be blogging it diligently but they're covering the Kenosha riots and subsequent protests today pretty darn fairly, even from their on-the-street interviews I'm watching now. 10 minutes in and I'm already seeing FAAAAR less partisan BS than CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. Very neutered monologues, but whoever wrote the reporting understands the language the party networks engage in, and steering clear of it.

Watching CNN's "Newsroom" show this hour, hosted by Brianna Keilar and not only is this host of this show (in the format of news deliver, not opinion) the way she frames the questions is from a POV that systemic racism is a fact and disagreement is denialism. Her first guest is Karen Attiah, the Global Opinions Editor of the Washington Post and the two are in complete agreement. The OP-ED: chyron says "George Floyd is this Generation's Emmett Till." That doesn't sound like an opinion opposite of that of WaPo, or even CNN, editors.

So the Flynn Kislyak calls are going to be framed in the worst possible light to take the edge off how badly they destroy the Team Obama's narrative these were somehow bad calls. It's time to end this charade and free Mike Flynn. We've been goaded for years now about the Flynn Kislyak transcripts, and here they are - completely destroying the narrative we've been fed since 2017. I'm going to revel in this, with no regrets. We were right all along.

@ByronYork As I've explained elsewhere, there were a lot of victims here, and Jeff Sessions was one of them. He was accused of clandestine meetings with Kislyak, that were never substantiated, and those accusations were used to force him to recuse. He was advised to, and did. (more) @ByronYork He tendered his resignation and Trump wouldn't accept it. He finally did, but the damage had been done. There were too many victims of the howling WDC mob, and it just goes to show you should never try to placate them. Where do all the victims go to get their reputation back?

Let's nip this thing in the bud. Peter Alexander asked, not only a loaded question, but a gotcha question. Here's a quick primer on both, and my explanation as to why his question fits both bills. First of all, Peter didn't just ask a simple question. It was a complex one. He didn't merely ask Trump what he'd say to Americans who are frightened. He said "What do you say to Americans who are sacred though?" Then he loaded the question with a number of case statistics.

It's an absurd fiction that everyone in Congress, The Chief Justice, everyone in the national political press, and every major news outlet a) doesn't know the whistleblower's name, and b) are somehow prohibited to mention Eric Ciaramella's name. Nobody REALLY believes this lie. The fact that several of the largest national press outlets have outed Eric Ciaramella either a) implicitly through a ton of details about him (New York Times, CNN), that narrow down to only him, and b) explicitly in some cases (Real Clear Investigations, Fox News). Unbelievable.

As with the 4 days of House Impeachment arguments, I may not catch every bit of the White House Defense, but so far the lawyers for the President are better litigators at trial than the prosecution. They aren't as bound to the text of the pages before them, and are more dynamic. The best way I can try to explain this is that it seems each lawyer wrote their own script for the White House defense, whereas the House Impeachment prosecutors seemed more often to be reading something written for them to read. We're only a few hours in, but this is my hunch.

Absolutely ruthless takedown of the House Manager's 24+ hours of argumentation by highlighting many of the facts omitted over 4 days. The best part? Practically no repetition. The sub-2 hour presentation starts here, about 6 minutes in:
In my mind this brief hearing was a slam dunk. This is literally a debunk session, highlighting as number of things the HMs omitted, even though they had all this information. This question was common: "Why not? Why did the House Managers never tell you this?"

So I watched Nancy Pelosi's speech and none of what she's selling is true. That's the part of politics I don't like, the overselling of something to such an extent that it's patently unrecognizable from reality, like endangering national security and interfering with elections. House Democrats also weren't remotely impartial in the impeachment inquiry so them demanding such from Senate Republicans is laughable on its face. Asking another president for an investigation of what on its face looks like a corrupt act, & literally coercive in nature, is fair.

Just a reminder folks. Here are the two sections of the 5 page Trump-Zelensky transcript that are specific to Joe Biden. Note that everything else has to do with Crowdstrike and the firing of the prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Recall that Yuriy Lutsenko was his replacement. I'm not one to believe the Crowdstrike server was exfiltrated to Ukraine. I do believe there is a political network of sorts in Ukraine whereby the DNC and a variety of private actors, NGOs, NABU, US officials working at the direction of our administrative state for common goals.

I can't be the only one thinking this: Senate Republicans should hold public hearings on every person the Democrat's interview in the House, and have them explicitly explain everything omitted by House Dems that are being either leaked or publically released. @SenateGOP @GOP If the House's impeachment investigation/inquiry is going to boldly partisan, with Republicans shut out of the process, the onus is on Republicans to respond in kind. Abuses by House Dems can't be sat idly by and allowed to continue. The public has a right to know.