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Home » Jeffrey Goldberg tries to engineer an “October surprise” in The Atlantic

Jeffrey Goldberg tries to engineer an “October surprise” in The Atlantic

The New Neo Posted on by

And Kamala Harris does her best to amplify it:

That’s the heart of Kamala Harris’ message: (a) the Kamala-friendly press either publishes what amounts to gossip from unnamed Trump-haters about something Trump supposedly said (usually without checking with other sources present at the time, or without publishing their actual denials), and/or distorts and uses truncated quotes to publicize and misrepresent something Trump said in public (b) Harris and other Democrats, as well as the rest of the Democrat-favoring press, repeat the gossip and/or the mischaracterization of the public quote as though it’s the truth (c) repeated often enough, it becomes part of the myth of Trump=Hitler that so many people believe, a myth that has been carefully constructed over the years through a series of these lies and misrepresentations by the press and Trump’s opponents.

Here’s an article about Goldberg’s story, and the many denials of its truth by people involved:

Goldberg’s dishonest hit piece is the latest in a long line of far-left outlets lying and deceiving the American people before a major election.

Mayra Guillén, the sister of fallen soldier Vanessa Guillén, whose family was featured as proof in Goldberg’s piece, slammed the outlet and Goldberg for exploiting her sister’s death.

“Wow. I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics — hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members,” Mayra stated. “President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”

Mayra’s comments come after Goldberg claimed that Trump displayed “contempt, rage, parsimony, racism” at the thought of helping the Guillén family pay for Vanessa’s funeral. Vanessa was bludgeoned to death by another soldier at Fort Hood, Texas, and her family was invited to the Oval Office to meet with Trump. Her death was also the impetus for military reforms for women at bases at the state and federal levels.

According to Goldberg’s article, upon hearing that the funeral cost $60,000, Trump said, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f-cking Mexican!” and told Mark Meadows, his chief of staff at the time, “Don’t pay it!” The Guillén family is of Mexican origin.

While Goldberg’s claims are sourced by “contemporaneous notes” and “a witness,” they were disputed publicly by senior members of the Trump administration who were actually in the room at the time of the alleged incident.

“Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false,” Meadows said on social media. “He was nothing but kind, gracious, and wanted to make sure that the military and the U.S. government did right by Vanessa Guillen and her family.”

Goldberg’s smear piece is in line with his 2020 lie, the “suckers and loser” hoax that was also heavily rebutted by nearly everyone involved, which he originated late in the election season as well. Conveniently, Democrats have since been rolling that hoax out every time Trump mentions the military, as they did again in the aftermath of Trump attending the Arlington National Cemetery ceremony.

The Atlantic used to be a fairly reasonable publication, but that was many years ago. It’s owner is now Laurene Powell Jobs, who has very deep pockets that are at the service of the left. You can see the value of such propaganda if you go to Maya Guilen’s Twitter page and read the replies to her tweet. I’d estimate that half of them swallow the Atlantic article whole and call her at best a naive and conned dupe of Trump, and half support her and excoriate The Atlantic.

And if you want to see a transcript of what Harris actually said to amplify Goldberg’s reporting, go to this post. Her speech displays the typical stuff we’ve come to expect of this campaign, and it is even likely that the Goldberg piece was pre-coordinated with the Harris people. Harris’ speeches and ad-lib remarks are big on the “bloodbath” and “dictator on day one” and “fine people on both sides” truncated quote false accusations, as well. Her predecessor Biden loved to use them, too.

NOTE: I deplore the use of the anonymous source, which has become ubiquitous in these hit pieces. I wrote a long post about anonymous sources and what’s wrong with the practice. You can find it here.

ADDENDUM: I need to add this:

… Goldberg claimed Natalie Khawam, Guillén’s family attorney, told him the Army and donations ultimately covered Guillén’s funeral.

Khawam replied thusly:

ADDENDUM II: Trump’s campaign replies:

Trump campaign responds to Kamala Harris’ presser where she said Trump “invoked Hitler.”

“Kamala’s dangerous rhetoric is directly to blame for the multiple assassination attempts against President Trump and she continues to stoke the flames of violence all in the name of politics.”

“She is despicable and her grotesque behavior proves she is wholly unfit for office.”

True. And she already holds the vice presidency of the United States.

ADDENDUM III:

David Harsanyi weighs in with an excellent article. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s not that the Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief, Jeffery Goldberg, has the journalistic ethics of a drunk National Enquirer reporter. It’s that the entire media spreads his gossip without a hint of skepticism.

A new hit piece from the Atlantic, reminiscent of an old hit piece from the publication, reported that former President Donald Trump belittled a dead soldier and praised Hitler’s generals (and what self-respecting piece about Trump doesn’t mention der Fuhrer?)

The first thing to remember is that Goldberg could literally make up any quote from an alleged “anonymous” source, and he would face no repercussions. No major outlet will challenge the veracity of his shoddy work, which breaks numerous journalistic norms, because his accusations are aimed at the right target. The media, after all, is now the democracy-saving business.

The owner of the famed magazine certainly doesn’t give one wit about its integrity either. The Atlantic, which loses tens of millions of dollars every year, is owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, who isn’t worried about the magazine’s 164-year tradition of “challenging assumptions and pursuing truth.” Rather, as she explained to her ”close” and “genuine” friend, Vice President Kamala Harris, at an event not long ago, she wants to lift up “cultural narratives” that will create “a more just and equal society.”

Goldberg’s 2024 narrative is suffering from the same problems his 2020 “suckers and losers” hit piece did. Anonymous sources make claims that a bunch of on-the-record people contradict. There’s a 0% chance that any reputable newspaper, 10-20 years ago, would have run a story about a president demeaning fallen American servicemen based on an anonymous source without any corroboration. …

Similar to [Goldberg’s 2020] “suckers and losers” piece, not one person is on the record confirming the event. Meadows denied it happened. Guillen’s sister and the family’s lawyer denied it happened. Guillen’s friend denied it happened. Ben Williamson, a White House communications person who was there, told Goldberg that Trump “absolutely did not say that” and “that is not true.”

You can believe him or not. However, what did Goldberg do? He wrote that Williams “didn’t hear Trump say it,” which tells you plenty about the integrity of the piece.

Exactly. Please read the whole thing.

Comments

Jeffrey Goldberg tries to engineer an “October surprise” in <i>The Atlantic</i> — 31 Comments

  1. The amazing thing is that there’s no word salad here.

    Harris has FINALLY hit her stride!

    (And none too soon.)

    Nope, she can’t articulate policy worth a damn—What policy? Don’t need no steenkeeng policy!—but when it comes to blaming her opponents of being Nazis, it’s pure eloquence!

    N.B. Seeing that Trump is a hyuge supporter of the Israel, I guess it goes without saying (in Kamalot) that the Jewish State is a Nazi entity…but then we already know that….

  2. They’re also reactivating John Kelly’s Trump-praised-Hitler accusation from 2020 and 2021, but apparently Kelly has recovered memories of a new example, fortunately since there’s only a couple of weeks to go.

    The media is pretending it is new and shocking.

  3. The Atlantic used to be an excellent publication, with a long and storied history. My mother had subscriptions to it and to Harper’s – which basically were the same kind of thoughtful, literary magazine. She could never decide which one to give up, and so kept them both, for decades – as did I. But Harper’s went all lefty in the aftermath of 9-11, so I bagged it, and then Atlantic, after their crackerjack editor, Michael Kelly died when covering the second Gulf War in 2003.

    I also despise anonymous sources for stories like this. Any reporter who depends on “highly placed anonymous sources” to relay nasty tittle-tattle like this out to be put in the stocks in a public place so that we can all throw garbage at them.

  5. That sure looks like a campaign speech delivered from the Vice President’s residence. Hatch Act anyone? Or does the Hatch Act only apply to Republicans?

    Any Hatch Act experts around here?

  7. Surely you mean Hatchet… (since, as you say, Hatch only refers to Dem junta opponents…)
    – – – – – – – –
    And lest one forget:
    “[E]very Republican candidate for president has been compared to Hitler by Democrats since 1944.”
    In…
    https://instapundit.com/679460/
    E.g.,
    “MARCH 18, 2016;
    “FORMER WAPO LEGEND CARL BERNSTEIN INADVERTENTLY EXPLAINS TRUMP’S RISE. Carl Bernstein Rejects Comparing Trump to ‘Principled’ Barry Goldwater”
    https://instapundit.com/229455/

  8. Whatever else it is, I don’t think Harris’s tactic is going to work. Trump is the most known quantity in American politics right now. The voting public has already factored all of this in – both Trump’s crazy mouth and the way Democrats attack him for it.

    Look, I would never vote for Harris, but I have considered leaving the top of the ticket blank or voting third party. This accusation wouldn’t move the needle for me, even if it were true. I know who Trump is and I doubt there are many in America who don’t. Like I said, it’s already factored in.

    To me, this smacks of desperation. Harris is losing, and Democrats know it.

  10. This was all over Drudge this morning complete with a huge picture of Adolf. I stop by there just to see what the nut cases are up to.

    I guess those suffering from TDS it’s all good. But the extremes they’re now going to I would expect to turn off the more mentally stable.

  11. physicsguy – I think they’re beginning the Kubler-Ross stages of grief and have arrived at anger.

    If Trump does win, I wonder how much of their ire will be turned at those in their own party whose idiotic (and idiotically ineffective) lawfare boosted Trump in the GOP primaries. Meddling in GOP primaries to the benefit of MAGA candidates has become the standard Democratic Party playbook. Maybe they will think twice next time? (Probably not.)

    Re: Drudge – I’m old enough to remember when he was our nutcase!

  12. All I can say, Bauxite, I hope you don’t live in swing state. If so, your non-voting is essentially a vote for Harris.

    FL early voting opened up yesterday. I was the 170th at the polling place to vote. We live in rural west side of Jax but in a gated community. Our community is 40% black. Average house price over $750k. Many of our black neighbors are LEOs and vets. The west side of Jax is majority black, while east of I95 is white..the beaches. It will be interesting to see how urban Duval vs rural Duval votes as well as east of I95 vs west of I95.

  13. I saw a thumbnail on youtube claiming its a bombshell that The Apprentice was partly scripted. They are so desperate. I voted Orange today. Hope my vote gets counted.

  14. As for Harris being desperate or knowing she’s losing, I don’t think we’re seeing that. I think we are seeing the same bedwetting and knickertwisting the Dems in the media always have in the last month or two, even with Obama after his first debate with Romney. These people are hive minds who live for drama.

    For now they have to pretend they are worried–and maybe they really are–but if they didn’t seem to be worried we’d see the election for the farce that it is and stop giving our consent to living under the government produced by that farce. But in the end it comes down to the Fortification of MI, PA, and WI. That Fortification, unlike the Great Wall of China, will be visible from space. Its blatantness and the ensuing media triumphalism will be dialed up to eleven, so that we never forget who our masters are.

    Once we all see that we’re living in a banana republic–some of us don’t see it yet–we’ll all adjust our behavior accordingly. And I don’t think they’ve thought through what that looks like: when most middle-class people stop following rules, picking up their trash, paying all their taxes, or doing business with anyone they don’t know personally.

  15. Notice Harris said Trump is “increasingly unhinged and unstable.” Somebody ought to ask her where she studied psychology or psychiatry, and if she got the “diagnosis” from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or if she just pulled it out of her ass.

  16. The ending in that film doesnt make sense sutherlands character went to investigate, then he got podded?

    Drinker pairs that film with lucas thx 1138 the dystopia that starred duvall as tales of anomie current and future the latter a very huxleyan existence

    Speaking of films that dont need to be remade the jackal with eddie redmayne?

  17. The jackal was an artefact of the particular time the early 60s even if it was shot a decade later the mystery was in who this mystery assassin was and what motivated him

    Of course we know forsyth was no mere reuters stringer both there and with odessa files

  18. Mark esper no trump fan, disputes it

    Goldberg we recall was part of those reservist who wouldnt serve because reasons he trusted hamas prisoners to make sure that they would hold to the 67 borders

    Some of his reporting re kurdistan in the run up to the iraq war was faulty the ones about hezbollah were a little too praiseworthy see the triple frontier

  19. “[E]very Republican candidate for president has been compared to Hitler by Democrats since 1944.”
    ______
    I couldn’t find a quote concerning Ike, but then, my search wasn’t working right. Anyway, surely that would be a bit of a stretch.

  22. Another former model is accusing Trump of sexual assault, with an Epstein cherry on her sexual assault sundae. This is supposed to have happened in 1993! Not going to share the link. Really lucky she recovered the memory when she did, why it might have been too late to swing the election if it took another 30 years.

  23. @Eeyore:Anyway, surely that would be a bit of a stretch.

    Not that much more than when Churchill compared Attlee and Labour to the Nazis in 1945. I did find that Stevenson compared himself to Jesus Christ in 1952 when he accepted the Democratic nomination….

    The main thing I learn from reading those speeches is how much we lost by moving to the banana republic model of government.

  24. I remember Steve Hayward doing a similar deep dive back in 2016 and coming up with FDR talking about Dewey and the Republicans having a ‘whiff of fascism’ (IIRC) in 1944 *while Americans were still dying in the fight against real Fascists*. Truman used similar language against Dewey as well so it doesn’t surprise me at all that the Democrats would use it against Eisenhower.

  25. I saw something briefly about this supposed conversation in which Trump praised “Hitler’s generals”. I would think that if this Kelly person really wanted to paint Trump as a Hitlerite, he might have slathered on some more suggestive specifics, such as having Trump glorify Keitel or Model specifically for their Knot-see “virtues”.

    Now as it happens, I have a bit of a soft spot for Guderian, so if Trump had meant him in particular as an example, I might have been able to get on board with it all. But as it stands, no.

  26. If John Kelly heard this and didn’t resign immediately, and then tell everyone within shouting distance that Trump wasn’t fit for office, then he’s not very honorable and lacks integrity.
    That Kamala would hold a special media session just to say what she said, without providing a long list of confirmation statements from “other sources”, tells me this was nothing but vile political propaganda, and she’s a horrible prosecutor.

  27. Honestly at this point I think the media should be able to find some new fake scandals; as long as they’re uncritically running people’s lies why don’t they run different lies.

    I’m so bored with “Trump admires dictators” and “Trump is a pervert” stories. I guess they figure that if the first 50 reiterations of basically the same story didn’t do it, the next 50 will.

    Some suggestions:

    Trump put a dog carrier on top of his car, forcibly cut a fellow student’s hair, and kept women in binders.

    Trump stole the head of a whale carcass and drove off with it.

    Trump kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.

    Trump IS the Lindbergh baby and that’s why he’s a Nazi.

    Trump partied with Brett Kavanaugh and Mike Judge in the 1980s; they assaulted Christine Blasey Ford and wrote a fictional version of the incident into an episode of “Beavis and Butthead”, which Trump successfully pressured MTV not to air.

    Trump raped Crystal Mangum on a broken glass table at University of Virginia and Haven Monahan at a lacrosse party at Duke.

  28. Trump’s enemies have told so many lies and concocted so many lawfare cases against him that he is in my mind immune. If I see him do something evil with my own eyes, I might believe it, but the Dems and the media have earned a rating of zero credibility.

    There is a well-established principle that applies here: “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.”

    Or perhaps “FIUFIO”!

  29. Let us not forget Anne Applebaum’s recent Atlantic article plowing the same ground, no doubt another attempt at October surprise:
    ____________________________________________

    Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini

    The former president has brought dehumanizing language into American presidential politics.

    –Anne Applebaum (October 18, 2024)
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-authoritarian-rhetoric-hitler-mussolini/680296/
    ____________________________________________

    I am sad about this. Applebaum wrote the best book in English, “Gulag: A History” (2003), on the inhuman Soviet Gulag system since Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” was translated.

    I thought she was one of the Good Guys.

  31. @huxley:I thought she was one of the Good Guys.

    It seems like very few people who make a living writing for national media are “the Good Guys”. They may have found it profitable to appear to be such at one time. I’ve been disappointed too.

    I’m sure Anne Applebaum will tell you that Trump has much worse in store for everyone than Stalin had, and she might even believe it.

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