Yeah, I actually read Fox News just to see how different it views the world than everyone else. It’s really a completely different world. Woodward’s book is in the top 3 stories on pretty much every website including foreign ones. It’s not currently mentioned at all on the Fox News site. Their top story is about scam Veteran’s charities followed by one that alleges Chuck Schumer organized the protestors at Kavanaugh’s confirmation. It’s just a complete Bizarro world there.
Who was it? John Miller? David Dennison?
I think we’re in the classic “putting straw on the camel’s back”. Every drip of incompetence is another straw. Sure, the camel is still standing, for now. But someday, a straw will be one straw too many and the camel will be broken. Then, we’ll have many people (including Republicans) loudly proclaiming how relieved they are that our national ordeal has ended.
That is the point when Republicans will suddenly be in a hurry to impeach the unindicted co-conspirator Donald John Trump. They will be hoping the American people forget or forgive the Republicans’ complicity with corruption and evil. But we must not let it be forgotten nor forgiven. Democrats must not let their relief extend to allowing corruption and evil go unpunished. Every single bad actor must be exposed and prosecuted.
We have a lot of housework ahead of us.
It’ll more likely make them think he’s playing 13-dimensional chess. Once you’re very firmly locking into a certain belief, contrary evidence often makes you cling to that belief even more strongly.
Incompetence, not “incontinence.” You’re not going for a grody mixed metaphor here, whew.
Nah, for this we need Armando Iannucci of “Veep” and “The Death of Stalin”. He’s a master of political absurdity of the highest order.
I doubt many people in Trump’s base are ever going to read Woodward’s book. Or any book for that matter.
That was too easy. For shame!
Bizarro world though it may be, Fox News is a highly effective propaganda tool. The purveyors of misinformation at Fox know exactly how to spin stories to maximize the human desire for outrage in a way that, say, Rachel Maddow does not. And unlike CNN which provides so much static with talking heads just repeating the day’s buzzword outrage at eath other that it may as well just be the White Noise Network, Fox has a consistent point of view. Every time CNN or MSNBC pundits react to some incidentally positive (or at least not destructive) thing that Trump has done with the, “Maybe this time he’s actually going to be presidential,” line such as after bombing Syrian airfields I have to wonder if they are really that stupid or if they’re just trying to look even-handed by giving the appearance of balance with false equivalency and restrained criticism.
And this isn’t anything new—Catholics have been preacticing this for centuries with “papal infalibility”—but the degree of blatant counterfactualism with Trump is something new in the modern discourse. Trump will literally change his story in the middle of an interview and his boosters will follow along as if there is no disconnect. As an experiment on neurosocial dynamics this presidency is fascinating; as executive leadership of a nuclear-armed world power it is horrifying.
Iannucci would never produce something this badly implausible. His previous work like In The Loop and VEEP was well grounded in political reality. (I talked to a former Congressional intern who said that VEEP is pretty much dead on in antics of the Congressperson she worked for including the profane insults and staff infighting.) The Trump administration is on another level entirely, where anyone vaguely competent or trying to do their job in service to the country at large us summarily dismissed while Trump shits out tweets about Colin Kaepernick in serial with threats of nuclear attack. This is some Spitting Image material.
Stranger
To be fair, since the Catholics made papal infallibility an official doctrine, the Popes have only invoked it once (the bodily assumption of Mary, in 1950.) Trump claims infallibility at least twice a week.
someone still working for Trump says a lot of senior White House folks are resisting him from inside:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html
Oh FFS! Spare me the protestations that they are doing “God’s work” in keeping him from, oh I don’t know, starting nuclear war with Belgium. They are complicit soldiers in this nightmare and should each have their own spot when the gallows are being constructed (so to speak).
I think it’s safe to say that was not written by Sarah Sanders.
I wonder if anyone would try to match that writing style to figure out who wrote it.
I’m not really a fan of anonymous op-eds from within the White House; it makes it easy for the Times to be labeled fake news. Put a name to it next time and hopefully persuade them to resign shortly before or after publication.
Trump was an anonymous source for stories about himself - he used the fake name John Miller when talking to the press. And of course “Mr. Miller” always said great things about Trump.
From the “Resistance” op-ed:
Dude, make up your fucking mind. If DJT, Turle McConnell, Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders all think that you are a weaselly traitor, just maybe you should pay heed to this rare example of bi-partisanship.
someone noticed the word “lodestar” in the op ed and then found 3 times Pence used that word. I don’t think it’s Pence but that word is not common at least from what I know.
The phrase “off the rails” is used by both the anonymous writer and John Kelly in Woodward’s book. But then again, that’s probably the name the West Wing staff’s softball team at this point.
Whoever wrote it should let it sink in and then quit and go public Monday morning or sooner, before repubs start lying about having hearings.
This is a train that was already running downhill in a tunnel with no lights and the brake lines cut. An anonymous op-ed is not going to magically fix the brakes. Left as is, this is not going to end the way people are hoping.