Flustered Rachel Maddow defends Russia investigation as Durham probe shifts to criminal inquiry

[Zorro!]

HOW BAD DOES A DEMOCRATIC TV HOST HAVE TO BE TO GET THIS TREATMENT FROM THE WAPO?

“She was there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings — a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry.”​

How bad? Rachel Madcow bad, that’s how bad.

 

[IM2]

Zerohedge? Mad Magazine has more credible news.

Yawn! Horowitz said the FBI had proper predication to investigate regardless of the dossier. And the dossier has nothing to do with why trump has been impeached.

In a sense that's true. The impeachment was all about politics and desperation. Not about anything else.

The illegal acts by the Obama FBI are another thing.

The impeachment is about trumps misconduct. The Obama FBI never existed. Just like there is not supposed to be a trump FBI. trump is trying to make it his FBI and that is the problem.

 

[IM2]

Who exactly did you think every AG's boss is?

The Constitution of the United States is the AG's boss. The AG (before Barr) was an independent agency upholding the law of the land as defined by that Constitution. The Ag is appointed by the President and approved by Congress but is not a member of the exec staff.
You got distracted because that shyster Barr spends more time making excuses for breaking the Constitution than upholding it and traveling around the world looking for dirt on American institutions in an effort to render them impotent to fight Presidential corruption while looking for reasons to indict perceived Presidential critics at Presidential whim-of-the-day.

Sucker!

WTF? How is being the president's "wingman" synonymous with your quote: "The AG (before Barr) was an independent agency upholding the law of the land as defined by that Constitution."?

Silly nonsense. NO Agency in the Executive Branch is "independent" of the President. Contemptible Eric "The With" Holder, even describe himself as Obama's Wing-man.

Obama didn't just spy on Trump.

“More than all past presidents, Obama uses 1917 Espionage Act to go after reporters.”

Congress was responding to incidents of German espionage before the declaration of war. In July 1916, German agents blew up the Black Tom munitions dump in New York Harbor. The explosion was loud enough to be heard from Connecticut to Maryland.

The Espionage Act was passed with bipartisan support in a Democratic Congress and strongly supported by Democratic President Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson wanted even more. "Authority to exercise censorship over the press is absolutely necessary," he wrote a senator. He got that authority in May 1918 when Congress passed the Sedition Act criminalizing, among other things, "abusive language" about the government.

Wilson's Justice Department successfully prosecuted Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate who received 900,000 votes for president in 1912, for making statements opposing the war.

The Wilson administration barred socialist newspapers from the mails, jailed a filmmaker for making a movie about the Revolutionary War (don't rile our British allies) and prosecuted a minister who claimed Jesus was a pacifist.

German-language books were removed from libraries, German-language newspapers forced out of business and one state banned speaking German outdoors.

It was an ugly period in our history. It's also a reminder that big government liberals can be as much inclined to suppress civil liberties as small government conservatives -- or more so.​

How very true!

In the New York Post, Michael Walsh asks, how does Eric Holder, Obama's alter-ego, survive his innumerable scandals?

PJMedia is fake news that has consistently failed fact checks. Obama did not spy on trump, that was determined almost 3 years ago.

 

[bullwinkle]

Silly nonsense. NO Agency in the Executive Branch is "independent" of the President

So the DOJ is part of the executive branch? How about the Supreme Court? The President appoints justices and Congress affirms. Does that mean they are a part of the Exec branch? Does being part of the Exec branch mean loyalty to the man over the country? Does that mean checks and balances noted in the Constitution are Constitutionally null and void?

 

[Zorro!]

Silly nonsense. NO Agency in the Executive Branch is "independent" of the President

So the DOJ is part of the executive branch?

Yes.

How about the Supreme Court?

No. The Judicial Branch is covered in Article III.
The Executive Branch is covered in Article II.
The Legislative Branch is covered in Article 1.

There is NO Federal power that is not within one of those 3 branches.

...The President appoints justices and Congress affirms...

Yes. The Political Branches stand for elections, the Judicial Branch does not.

... Does that mean they are a part of the Exec branch?...

No. They are a separate Co-Equal Branch.

... Does being part of the Exec branch mean loyalty to the man over the country?...

No. If you think that the President asks you to do something that violates the country, you resign. You don't engage in sedition.

... Does that mean checks and balances noted in the Constitution are Constitutionally null and void?

Separation of Powers IS the check and the balance.

 

[Zorro!]

BECAUSE SHE’S A LEFTIST AND THE MEDIA LENDS HER RESPECTABILITY AS SUCH: Again We Ask: Why Isn’t Rachel Madcow Treated Like Other Crazy Conspiracy Theorists?

Erik Wemple of WaPo accuses Madcow of “a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry” in coverage of the Steele dossier, in which she “pumped air” into the accusations, but largely ignored contrary information.

Rachel Madcow gets the nod as the Worst Media Person for 2016-2019. She deserves that title not because she’s anti-Trump deranged — so are most of the hosts and guests on MSNBC and CNN, and large numbers of reporters and opinion-makers at major newspapers.

And Madcow’s not the worst at MSNBC — Lawrence O’Donnell is hate-filled and angry, but no one takes his intellect seriously. Madcow, by contrast, managed to defraud her own viewers with pungent conspiracy fear-mongering that has led them down a dark dead-ended alleyway, while maintaining the patina of intellectualism.

We focused on Madcow’s conspiratorial antics in April 2019, shortly after the summary of the Mueller report conclusions was released by AG William Barr, Why Isn’t Rachel Madcow Treated Like Other Crazy Conspiracy Theorists?

MSNBC’s Rachel Madcow has spent over two years pushing a conspiracy theory, yet she is celebrated by many people on the left in politics and media. Why is she treated any differently than say, Alex Jones?​

You don’t have to be a fan of Alex Jones to be disturbed by the fact that he was virtually erased from social media, banned at every level, while Rachel Madcow is free to advance all the crazy ideas she can dream up….

Alex Jones is deplatformed and Madcow is celebrated as an intelligent commentator.

Other than that, what is the difference between them?
​

But don’t take our word for it. Analysis at lefty journals have been among Madcow’s most fierce critics, because her taint rubs off on them.

​

Willa Paskin wrote at the left leaning Slate how seamlessly Madcow transitioned from Russia-collusion conspiracy to Barr-coverup conspiracy theories:

Rachel Madcow’s Conspiracy Brain​

On Monday night, the first night that MSNBC’s Rachel Madcow Show aired after Attorney General William Barr released his four-page memo on the Mueller report, Rachel Madcow was skeptical. Like, extremely, extremely skeptical. In fact, she had 15 questions worth of skepticism about the “the Barr Report,” which she displayed in remarkably tiny font behind her head.​

The questions started with the basics—Had Robert Mueller expected the attorney general to jump in and make a no prosecution, no collusion announcement? Was it appropriate for the attorney general to make that kind of determination at this point in the process?—before taking sudden swerves into the conspiratorial. Robert Mueller had chosen not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment in his report.​

“Well,” Madcow wondered, “why did Mueller make that determination and was it, in fact, a choice?” Was it possible that the special prosecutor had not explicitly described the president’s behavior as a crime in his report because there were plans to indict him as soon as he left office?​

Ross Barkan at lefist The Guardian noted that Madcow built her viewership on Russia-collusion conspiracy theories:

With Trump has come Russia: two years of conspiracy-mongering about whether the president, a real estate mogul and reality TV star consumed with deal-making, conspired with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Robert Mueller’s determination that no evidence exists to prove Trump and Russian colluded to fix the election has exposed, once again, the venality of A-list political punditry. At the top of the heap is none other than MSNBC’s Rachel Madcow….

And Madcow, MSNBC’s ratings juggernaut of the Trump era, is the embodiment of this overzealousness. The Mueller investigation was covered more on MSBNC than any other television network, and was mentioned virtually every day in 2018. No twist was too minuscule or outlandish for Madcow; every night, seemingly, brought another nail in the coffin of the soon-to-be-dead Trump presidency.

There was the time Madcow theorized that Trump was “curiously well-versed” in “specific Russian talking points”, strongly implying press briefings were dictated from the Kremlin. An American missile attack on Syria, Madcow concurred, could have been orchestrated by Putin himself. During a cold snap, the Russian government could shut down our power supply. Putin could blackmail Trump into pulling troops from Russia’s border.

Madcow was not only certain that Russians had rigged the election. On air, she would talk about the “continuing operation” – the idea that the Kremlin was controlling the Trump presidency itself. In more sober times, this brand of analysis would barely cut it on a far-right podcast. In the Trump era, it was ratings gold.

Madcow is much smarter than this. But the siren song of ratings is too difficult for a TV personality ignore, especially when a television network is transformed from an also-ran into a top contender.​

Madcow deserves a special place in the media hall of shame because she has clung to Russia-collusion, and used it to build her audience, long after other mainstream Trump-haters had moved on to other supposed Trump-defects. She just can’t give it up.

Erik Wemple at The Washington Post has a column about Madcow’s obsession, Rachel Madcow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart. After documenting how over years Madcow tried to bolster the allegations in the dossier, Wemple noted that Madcow mostly went silent when the dossier was debunked in the DOJ Inspector General (Horowitz) report:

The case against Madcow is far stronger. When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for the document.

And when large bits of news arose against the dossier, Madcow found other topics more compelling.

She was there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings — a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry.
​

Alex Jones is deplatformed, while Maddow still remains atop the MSNBC heap.

​

Some conspiracy fear-mongers are more equal than others.

 

[Zorro!]

Madcow Argues Statements on Air Should Not Be Taken as Fact in Response to OAN Lawsuit

MSNBC host Rachel Madcow’s defense in court over her claim that One America News is “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda” is that statements she makes on her show should not be considered facts.