It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD

[Foxfyre]

Normally I wouldn't use Matt Taibbi (Hate, Inc.) as a source, but since Real Clear Politics featured his essay on the Mueller investigation today, I read it and it is pretty much spot on. Except for the 'death blow for the reputation of U.S. media' comment which I think probably won't be the case. It should be of course, but a sizable minority of Americans no longer care about truth, honor, fairness, or accuracy when it comes to politics. Those people will continue to greedily feed on ANYTHING the media reports that in any way presumes to makes President Trump, Republicans, conservatives and such look bad. They don't CARE whether it is true or not.

But otherwise Taibbi makes some salient points.

Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media. . .

(In a current NY Times):

It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole…​

This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting “We don’t need to read the Mueller report” because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: “Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?”

The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like itself made galactic errors by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach, trying to be true to “history’s judgment” on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020. . .​

It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD

So what do you think? Who got hurt the most in this Mueller investigation?

President Trump?
President Trump's family?
The Republicans?
The Democrats?
All the people sucked into the investigation?
The Media?
The American people?
None of the above?
Or none of the options fit so I'll explain it in my post:

 

[Oddball]

The whole nation got hosed by the hoax/coup attempt.

A whole slew of the instigators and "investigators" need hard time.

 

[candycorn]

Trump is hurt quite a bit. The investigation highlighted that he has surrounded himself with felons and all of the shoes have yet to drop; his link to Wikileaks has not yet been tried and will likely sing like a canary if convicted.

As for the media, we’ve had media over-reach for a full generation. Fox News reported that WMDs were found in Iraq. Those who think FOX is credible seem to have found a way to excuse it. Any mis-step that was made will be rationalized much in the same way supporters of the Blob have rationalized every ridiculous lie, every breach of etiquette, and every failure. I think what may happen is that the marketplace for 24/7 is becoming too saturated with bitterness and you’ll likely see another “crossfire” type program become fashionable again. Although I suspect it will be more like H&C than it was with, say, Gergen and Shields. The constant parade of political operatives shouting at each other with an anchor in the middle will likely fall by the wayside.

You may even see a new news station arise out of the fray launched by the media sites (Politco, Politifact, The Hill, FactCheck.org, fivethirtyeight.com and others). It will likely be on a subscription service like HULU or Netflix.

Taibbi? He’s fantastic.

 

[Oddball]

Trump is hurt quite a bit. The investigation highlighted that he has surrounded himself with felons and all of the shoes have yet to drop; his link to Wikileaks has not yet been tried and will likely sing like a canary if convicted.

As for the media, we’ve had media over-reach for a full generation. Fox News reported that WMDs were found in Iraq. Those who think FOX is credible seem to have found a way to excuse it. Any mis-step that was made will be rationalized much in the same way supporters of the Blob have rationalized every ridiculous lie, every breach of etiquette, and every failure. I think what may happen is that the marketplace for 24/7 is becoming too saturated with bitterness and you’ll likely see another “crossfire” type program become fashionable again. Although I suspect it will be more like H&C than it was with, say, Gergen and Shields. The constant parade of political operatives shouting at each other with an anchor in the middle will likely fall by the wayside.

You may even see a new news station arise out of the fray launched by the media sites (Politco, Politifact, The Hill, FactCheck.org, fivethirtyeight.com and others). It will likely be on a subscription service like HULU or Netflix.

Taibbi? He’s fantastic.

 

[beagle9]

The whole nation got hosed by the hoax/coup attempt.

A whole slew of the instigators and "investigators" need hard time.

If found to be a treasonous coup for the purpose of attempting to shape the nation into something it is not, and to place it into line with a minority of Americans way of thinking on what they wanted the nation to be (against the majority), then everyone who was involved or continues to be involved in the coup should be removed from their offices in government immediately, and should face indictment, and charges if evidence strongly suggest it.

 

[Pogo]

Normally I wouldn't use Matt Taibbi (Hate, Inc.) as a source, but since Real Clear Politics featured his essay on the Mueller investigation today, I read it and it is pretty much spot on. Except for the 'death blow for the reputation of U.S. media' comment which I think probably won't be the case. It should be of course, but a sizable minority of Americans no longer care about truth, honor, fairness, or accuracy when it comes to politics. Those people will continue to greedily feed on ANYTHING the media reports that in any way presumes to makes President Trump, Republicans, conservatives and such look bad. They don't CARE whether it is true or not.

But otherwise Taibbi makes some salient points.

Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media. . .

(In a current NY Times):

It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole…​

This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting “We don’t need to read the Mueller report” because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: “Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?”

The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like itself made galactic errors by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach, trying to be true to “history’s judgment” on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020. . .​

It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD

So what do you think? Who got hurt the most in this Mueller investigation?

President Trump?
President Trump's family?
The Republicans?
The Democrats?
All the people sucked into the investigation?
The Media?
The American people?
None of the above?
Or none of the options fit so I'll explain it in my post:

Um... I don't believe it's out is it?

Seems to me this is much more a worry to the Rumpbots than anybody else. That's all I've seen today, premature sighs of relief.

Whatever.

 

[Pogo]

Trump is hurt quite a bit. The investigation highlighted that he has surrounded himself with felons and all of the shoes have yet to drop; his link to Wikileaks has not yet been tried and will likely sing like a canary if convicted.

As for the media, we’ve had media over-reach for a full generation. Fox News reported that WMDs were found in Iraq. Those who think FOX is credible seem to have found a way to excuse it. Any mis-step that was made will be rationalized much in the same way supporters of the Blob have rationalized every ridiculous lie, every breach of etiquette, and every failure. I think what may happen is that the marketplace for 24/7 is becoming too saturated with bitterness and you’ll likely see another “crossfire” type program become fashionable again. Although I suspect it will be more like H&C than it was with, say, Gergen and Shields. The constant parade of political operatives shouting at each other with an anchor in the middle will likely fall by the wayside.

You may even see a new news station arise out of the fray launched by the media sites (Politco, Politifact, The Hill, FactCheck.org, fivethirtyeight.com and others). It will likely be on a subscription service like HULU or Netflix.

Taibbi? He’s fantastic.

Is that David Tennant? Hard to tell.

 

[LoneLaugher]

Who doesn’t know that MTt Taibi earns his wage from being a contrarian?

Pay attention. Until the report is released, any claims regarding who got hurt by it are stupid.

But having several members of your administration indicted and convicted is never a positive....unless you ask a fucking moron.

 

[konradv]

The whole nation got hosed by the hoax/coup attempt. A whole slew of the instigators and "investigators" need hard time.

37 indictments isn't a hoax, it's a trend.

 

[Foxfyre]

The whole nation got hosed by the hoax/coup attempt.

A whole slew of the instigators and "investigators" need hard time.

If found to be a treasonous coup for the purpose of attempting to shape the nation into something it is not, and to place it into line with a minority of Americans way of thinking on what they wanted the nation to be (against the majority), then everyone who was involved or continues to be involved in the coup should be removed from their offices in government immediately, and should face indictment, and charges if evidence strongly suggest it.

But unfortunately Mueller apparently didn't look into that. Yes, there are many who should be immediately removed from the system, but for most of them, we will need to depend on the voters to get it done. And unfortunately, most of the voters get their information from a 100% biased, dishonest, and propaganda spewing media.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

The whole nation got hosed by the hoax/coup attempt. A whole slew of the instigators and "investigators" need hard time.

37 indictments isn't a hoax, it's a trend.

How many of those were Americans involved in russian influence in the 2016 election?

That would be a big fat ZERO!

 

[McRocket]

Russiagate is this generation's WMD?

Well that is a ridiculous comparison.

One was an American political semi-nothing (in the end).

The other was an erroneous claim that led to the invasion of a country, the near-destruction of it's society, the beginning of chaos in the Middle East and directly led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi's and over 4,000 brave American soldiers.

To compare the two is an insult to those brave soldiers who gave their lives in Iraq.

They are NOTHING alike in either content or impact.

 

[beagle9]

Russiagate is this generation's WMD?

Well that is a ridiculous comparison.

One was an American political semi-nothing (in the end).

The other was an erroneous claim that led to the invasion of a country, the near-destruction of it's society, the beginning of chaos in the Middle East and directly led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi's and over 4,000 brave American soldiers.

To compare the two is an insult to those brave soldiers who gave their lives in Iraq.

They are NOTHING alike in either content or impact.

This nation has got to learn that if it goes to war, then it must go to win. Anything less causes the very thing this poster is using to knock America, and it is because America let's the leftist dictate the way out or propagandas the way out. Time to quit listening to the left, and finish the job, and finish it quickly.

 

[Foxfyre]

It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD

<<snip>>

So what do you think? Who got hurt the most in this Mueller investigation?

President Trump?
President Trump's family?
The Republicans?
The Democrats?
All the people sucked into the investigation?
The Media?
The American people?
None of the above?
Or none of the options fit so I'll explain it in my post:

To answer the questions I pose here, I will say that the Mueller investigation, whether it was right or wrong in the first place, and regardless of the outcome, has been a hurtful process for pretty much everybody. Some by their own doing. And some almost certainly inadvertently and innocently. And the two Americans who may have committed actual crimes, all but one of those crimes have absolutely nothing to do with President Trump and/or his campaign.

And re the one that might possibly involve the president, i.e. alleged illegal use of campaign funds, Michael Cohen is on the record in a highly public congressional hearing, that he did this at his own volition and not at the request or order of the President. And he said this after a very impassioned statement berating the President in very harsh terms and that he owed no loyalty to the President.

Meanwhile, President Trump was harmed grievously by the Mueller investigation via the nonstop dishonest press mischaracterizing, misstating, and extrapolating it into totally dishonest images repeating and Trump haters via talking heads on television, in social media, on message boards repeating that over and over until he was less effective getting his message out and/or getting the truth to the American people. Evenso, he has managed to accomplish a great many good things in his first two years in offfice.

President Trump's family has been maliciously, dishonestly, and hatefully accused in the same way and have managed to retain a good deal off dignity and grace in spite of it. But if you think this has not been destructive and hurtful for them, you have no heart and no common sense.

The Republicans have been hurt, mostly because of their own fecklessness and decisions to not support the damaged President, mostly in the House where principles and integrity were dismissed in favor of misguided political expediency. And I personally believe it was THAT which cost them their majority in the House. It could have happened in the Senate too, but the American people knew how critical it is for the President to have the Senate to get his appointments through.

The Democrats have been hurt by throwing their principles and integrity out the window and showing how politically and personally motivated they really are, and how much they care about power and revenge while caring not at all for the welfare of the country and the American people.

The Americans sucked into the investigation had their names and reputations dragged through the mud, were destroyed financially, and will never have their normal lives back. And with the exception of maybe two, none of them committed any real crime.

The Media that threw journalism, principles, integrity, honesty, and ethics out the window in their zeal to destroy a sitting President of the United States. Maybe the OP is right that they have metaphorically castrated themselves, but alas, some will continue to play to those who don't CARE whether it is fake news so long as it is something they want to believe.

The American people who have been subjected to so much distortion, so many lies, so much dishonesty by the media that so misrepresented the truth of pretty much everything as well as divide the country into warring factions denied so much information about the good that is happening and the what still needs to be done. For this the blame rests squarely on those in the MSM, the left, and social media/message boards that used the Mueller investigation to reinforce their hateful vitriol.

And will everybody now set all this aside and attempt to restore some sense of normalcy, honesty, and integrity to the process?

Apparently not a chance.

 

[Foxfyre]

Meanwhile kudos to Sharyl Attkisson of "The HIll" that has been a publication consistently critical of the President, albeit one of the more objective ones which isn't saying a lot as it perpetuated much of the unsupportable anti-Trump propaganda:

She writes:

With the conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe now known to a significant degree, it seems apologies are in order. . .

. . .We in the media allowed unproven charges and false accusations to dominate the news landscape for more than two years, in a way that was wildly unbalanced and disproportionate to the evidence.

We did a poor job of tracking down leaks of false information. We failed to reasonably weigh the motives of anonymous sources and those claiming to have secret, special evidence of Trump’s “treason.”

As such, we reported a tremendous amount of false information, always to Trump’s detriment.

And when we corrected our mistakes, we often doubled down more than we apologized. We may have been technically wrong on that tiny point, we would acknowledge. But, in the same breath, we would insist that Trump was so obviously guilty of being Russian President Vladimir Putin’s puppet that the technical details hardly mattered.

So, a round of apologies seem in order. . .​

Apologies to President Trump

I won't attempt to characterize Sharyl's piece here as either a heartfelt apology or an effort to rehabilitate her reputation as a journalist. I will take it at face value.

And it is appreciated.

 

[BlindBoo]

Saddam did not reconstitute his WMD program. Russia did interfere with our election and helped the Trump side. Trumps ties to Russia and his and his campaigns lies about those ties made the investigation warranted.

The GOP are masters of spin. Many times during the many fruitless investigations of Obama, they would release their spin before the facts were known. Nearly always, the spin never matched the facts.

 

[Foxfyre]

Saddam did not reconstitute his WMD program. Russia did interfere with our election and helped the Trump side. Trumps ties to Russia and his and his campaigns lies about those ties made the investigation warranted.

The GOP are masters of spin. Many times during the many fruitless investigations of Obama, they would release their spin before the facts were known. Nearly always, the spin never matched the facts.

Trump opposed the Iraq war as a private citizen. Russia did interfere with the election but did NOT help Trump as has been determined by the IG's investigation, the FBI, Congressional hearings, and the Mueller investigation. Their goal was to create as much chaos as they possibly could in our system regardless of who won the election and they were firmly of the opinion that Hillary would win. AND it was the Hillary campaign and DNC who paid for the now discredited Steele dossier that claims dirt on Trump based on what Steele claims RUSSIANS told him.

And whether or not the GOP spun anything re the Obama administration, that was that and now is now. And two wrongs have rarely made a right.

You and all the others who have spewed disinformation re the President for the past two years owe him and the American people an apology.

 

[Votto]

The whole nation got hosed by the hoax/coup attempt.

A whole slew of the instigators and "investigators" need hard time.

But all they do in Washington is investigate.

No one ever seems to be guilty of anything

Amazing really.

 

[Foxfyre]

The whole nation got hosed by the hoax/coup attempt.

A whole slew of the instigators and "investigators" need hard time.

But all they do in Washington is investigate.

No one ever seems to be guilty of anything

Amazing really.

It is time that we the people who put them there start making some serious demands that they do their jobs. ALL of them whether they are elected, appointed, or hired. And we must make it clear that if they continue to do what they want instead of what we want, they will be replaced.

Having said that, their job is NOT to find a crime with which to bring down a sitting President of the United States or anybody else. Yes, if an obvious crime has been committed, that should be investigated, the culpable removed and, if warranted, punished. But nobody in America benefits when their elected representatives spend all or most of their time trying to hurt or destroy somebody.

 

[Oddball]

The whole nation got hosed by the hoax/coup attempt.

A whole slew of the instigators and "investigators" need hard time.

But all they do in Washington is investigate.

No one ever seems to be guilty of anything

Amazing really.

It is time that we the people who put them there start making some serious demands that they do their jobs. ALL of them whether they are elected, appointed, or hired. And we must make it clear that if they continue to do what they want instead of what we want, they will be replaced.

If the last two years told me anything, they're not afraid of being replaced.