To anyone criticizing Cassidy Hutchinson for working in the Trump WH: just Stop.

She’s 25 now (per AP and NYT).

In 1973, John Dean was 34.

🧵 She probably applied “around” and took the first offer to work on the Hill. Most people start with home state reps.

She has only known a conservative America (at federal level) for most of life. (Obama was in the WH but McConnell blocked everything.)

🧵2

Cassidy Hutchinson is a hero.

She is going to get the full threat/hate treatment visited upon Christine Blasey Ford in 2018 when she testified against Brett Kavanaugh. One big difference: THIS committee cares about her safety unlike Mitch McConnell.

🧵

https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1541854571865186306

There could very well be an element of self-protection in Hutchinson's testimony, given the email and text message record. I want to believe that she is cooperating because she chose a career in public service not self-aggrandizement.

🧵2

I’m tapping my toes, @seattletimes, waiting for investigative reporters to tell us who funded Kennedy’s media tour, who recruited this part-time coach for his role in the movement determined to turn the US into a “Christian nation.”

https://twitter.com/kegill/status/1541557168784125952

“Christian nation” is in quotation marks for a variety of reasons not the least being that the right-wing GOP is not espousing the teachings of Jesus.

It’s telling that this news parody is a tweet from the PR side of COMCAST > NBCUniversal, an ENTERTAINMENT company.

There is ZERO news value here, @LesterHoltNBC @NBCNews

US media: please STOP amplifying, normalizing serial liars (Inspector General reports++). “Russian state media…are lauding Russian President Vladimir Putin and his order to send troops to…Ukraine, and [are] using commentary from…former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to further support his actions.”

AND YOU’RE HANDING HIM A MIC @NBCNews
news.yahoo.com/russian-state-…

Current state of NEWS MEDIA focus, driven by Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” + grasping for $$$

“Endemic delusion”

Case in point: #TruckerConvoy
🧵1
science.org/content/articl… Even @ScienceInsider is waffling in the hede: “some scientists”

With a nod to politics rather than public health by including a political scientist near the top.

NO quotes from public health arguing to open things up.

And THIS near the bottom:

🧵2

Elmer Stewart Rhodes III is an ex-Army paratrooper; worked for Rep. Ron Paul in 2008; graduated from Yale Law School; and was an AZ SC law clerk.

These credentials (including full name) should be mentioned early in any story to show him as the privileged White guy that he is.

https://twitter.com/will_bunch/status/1493625564011323394

The Montana Supreme Court disbarred him after it “found that he'd abandoned clients in Arizona, a 2015 court order shows.”

So much for oaths and honor, right?

nbcnews.com/politics/polit…

Why are US media not raising questions like @Garossino has in @NatObserver about @gofundme and the Canadian #trucker protest? 🚩
#Ottawa #cdnpoli
attn: @Will_Bunch

https://twitter.com/garossino/status/1493106560414806022

Not a registered charity 🚩
Not non-profit 🚩
Not a trucking organization 🚩

Yet: “At the time of its suspension, the convoy campaign had racked up approximately $10.1 million in just over two weeks… impossible to achieve organically within Canada.”

nationalobserver.com/2022/02/04/opi…

The best account of @SoundTransit #applecup fiasco is THEIR blog post, which Google doesn’t consider news.

Although it looks like a template for “news org” reporter-as-stenographer stories, only @UrbanistOrg links to it:

🧵1

soundtransit.org/blog/platform/… Also, only @UrbanistOrg notes this deflection/finger pointing: an unamed “contractor had failed to fully implement the construction drawings.”

No mention of @SoundTransit responsibility to INSPECT.

🧵2

theurbanist.org/2022/02/11/tra…

Classified documents removed from the White House. Constant circumvention of public White House phone records.

TFG demonstrates a pattern of behavior that is criminal; he should be in prison not running for 2024 on lies.

@5DollarFeminist

abovethelaw.com/2022/02/trumps… Or starting yet another social network that news media will amplify rather than contextualize.

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1491862746035630085

“Some of them get paid to have takes. We get paid to end this pandemic.”*

@DrLeanaWen, how much does @cnn pay for your “takes”?

Do you pitch @washingtonpost or did they $olicit this?

Transparency is imperative.

WHAT STATE OF EMERGENCY? #covid19

https://twitter.com/DrLeanaWen/status/1488650213497704451

There is no national US state of emergency on #COVID19, @DrLeanaWen, except the one that loosens purse strings and makes it easier for public health to, you know, do public health. Not one imposing behaviors.

statnews.com/2020/03/13/nat…

News orgs too often center political news on “lies, damn lies and polls” [h/t, “lies, damn lies and statistics”].

Poll questions shape answers. Poll sample size, composition shape reliability. This Biden/SCOTUS ABC-Ipsos poll flunks both.

(Yes, polls include statistics.)

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1487792676317577217

Question,leading
Margin of Error, enormous: +/- 4.9%

The small sample size meant that ABC/Ipsos could not break out results for Black people. But “only 28%” of nonwhite Americans want Biden to “consider only Black women” for the SCOTUS. The MoA for that stat is even larger.

I remain amazed at (1) thin-skinned TV news people and (2) journalists who refuse to provide sources for photos, videos etc in their tweets.

Three years ago I politely asked @BeschlossDC for the source of a photo. I discovered tonight that he had blocked me. 😂

“No self-governing society can survive [‘an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy’]
by denying that it exists.”

@jayrosen_nyu, I thought you might have commented about Sat @nytopinion editorial.

@nytimes newsroom seems stuck in SOP mode. The @nytimes EdBoard makes this disconnected from reality claim:

“Democrats aren’t helpless, either. They hold unified power in Washington.”
😳🤦🏼‍♀️🥲

🎁 nytimes.com/2022/01/01/opi…

“A very instructive case of how greed is not good, of self-interest run amok, is cancer.”

ABSOLUTELY (types the woman with breast cancer and an MS in ag economics)

“Cancer cells cheat on their body’s biological social contract. “

Article from July 2021

https://twitter.com/AthenaAktipis/status/1476621469048262661

“most economists … have been too influenced by ‘methodological individualism’”

Economics was once a field of philosophy. Lots of math attempted to recreate it as a “hard” science. It is not a hard science. Neither is poliSci.

MARCH: 4% of American adults didn’t trust 2020 election results and were prepared to join a protest that might turn violent. That’s 10 Million Americans. @ProfessorPape @TheAtlantic @bartongellman
🧵/1 JUNE: 8% of American adults agreed “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president” & “use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.”

More extreme; 2x support.

21 million American “committed insurrectionists”
/2

What's causing inflation? Might it be record profits?

A jaundiced view on Wednesday's SCOTUS news; a question for the NRA; US reported the most daily COVID cases since September 15th and about 1,800 deaths

kathyegill.substack.com/p/03-december-… The past few weeks, TV news and newspapers have run lots of stories on inflation. On the political pundit side, those stories have a common theme: inflation up, Biden approval down. What seems totally missing from mainstream news > @business

https://twitter.com/business/status/1465699401867825158

Because the NW probably isn't as familiar to most folks as the Gulf coast, I've annotated this satellite image. That dot in the pink county is approximately where we live (Snohomish County, Lynnwood WA). Seattle is south of us in King County. This is the strongest storm system to ever hit the Pacific NW (942.5 MB). The third most powerful was Thursday. We have rain and wind gusts; the coast has lots more of both; mountains will be getting snow. Heaviest rain/snow in CA.

https://twitter.com/50ShadesofVan/status/1452367758428151808

Someone help me understand how this is not like pre-WWII Germany.
@HC_Richardson?
@KevinMKruse?

🧵

First: school board harassment, 1 #florida #COVID19 @washingtonpost

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/1… First: school board harassment, 2 #Wisconsin #COVID19

upnorthnewswi.com/2021/09/23/my-…

Who is Boris Epshteyn?

@washingtonpost quotes his asinine legal opinion about Pence having “constitutional power” to refuse to certify the election. They provided minimal bona fides for the Russian-born ultra-conservative with financial ties to Russia. washingtonpost.com/investigations… Epshteyn was managing director of *business & legal* affairs at West America Securities Corp until the firm was expelled from the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency in 2013 for holding $24B in unverified Brazilian & Japanese bonds implicated in *fraud*.

Reported wife of Robert Westbury (MN), who is charged with storming the Capitol, falsely claims: “A million people attended January 6th for one purpose…to pray.”

Republican state senator Mark Koran has encouraged $ donations for legal fees.

theguardian.com/us-news/2021/o… Only eight Minnesotans have been charged for alleged involvement in the insurrection, including Robert Westbury, 62, and his sons Jonah, 26, and Isaac, 19. Aaron James is part of Rosemary Westbury’s fundraiser.

twincities.com/2021/10/22/mar…

#thebiglie

In today’s issue of #whoOwnsWhat … the role of @ATT and its TV services (DirecTV) in formation and financing of One America Network @OANN

Special @Reuters report

reuters.com/investigates/s… “They told us they wanted a conservative network,” @OANN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters.

OAN revenue: 90% is from AT&T TV platforms like @DIRECTV