Jen Rubin leaves the WaPo
I can’t say I’ve ever “gotten” Jennifer Rubin. Since I go back a long way in the blog world, I remember briefly meeting her around 2006 or 2007 at some PJ get-together. At the time, she was nominally on the right and was supposedly a political changer, having once been on the left or at least a Democrat. Her previous work was as a labor lawyer, but she wrote for the Weekly Standard and had a several-year-long stint at Commentary online. Her main topic back then, as I recall it, was Islamic terrorism. She was a hardliner on that, as well as pro-Israel.
I didn’t read her stuff much because I found it to be somewhat boring. But it seemed straightforward and there was nothing especially wrong with it. Then in 2010 she was hired by the WaPo and for a while things went on as before. But somewhere along the line Trump Derangement Syndrome set in, big-time.
My thought about Rubin back then – and it remains my thought – is that she never underwent a real political conversion to the right and never was a conservative. Her “conservatism” was focused on Islamic terrorism in general and also on Israel, and as far as I can tell she retains those views while otherwise being essentially a garden-variety leftist.
So now Rubin has said good-bye to the WaPo. Owner Bezos seems to be wanting to tack slightly more to the right, and she’s made this announcement:
Veteran Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin said Monday she is leaving to join a startup — and blasted the Beltway broadsheet’s billionaire owner on her way out the door.
Rubin, an outspoken critic of President-elect Donald Trump, had recently publicly attacked the paper and its owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for appearing to seek to get into the Republican’s good graces.
“Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy,” Rubin wrote in her resignation note.
Here’s where she’s going: to a new site called “The Contrarian.” Of course, it is highly likely she left theWaPo because otherwise she’d have been booted. You can find a list here of others who are supposedly going to be writing at the site, too. It seems to be positioning itself as a rival or perhaps adjunct to The Bulwark, the anti-Trump group started by once-conservative Bill Kristol.
Here’s some of the flavor of what The Contrarian is about – self-righteous Trump Derangement all the way:
Our pre-election warnings that Donald Trump posed an unprecedented threat to our democracy were often treated as alarmist. However, the election of an openly authoritarian figure who traffics in conspiracies, lies, unconstitutional schemes and un-American notions, has moved the United States to an inflection point. The future of our democracy, and what Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth” hangs in the balance. And yet corporate and billionaire media and too many in the political establishment persist in downplaying the threat and seeking to accommodate Trump and his radical agenda. We refuse to follow the herd.
Unlike most corporate or billionaire media, The Contrarian will not offer Trump the benefit of the doubt. We will not normalize him. We will not engage in false equivalence. We will not excuse enablers in the media, government or business. We will not infantilize his supporters nor treat them as victims; we will confront them with the consequences of their presidential pick.
Trump is no ordinary politician and will be no ordinary president so the response must be extraordinary. His insane pronouncements—be it a premature and utterly false declaration that the New Orleans terrorist had just come over the border or a threat to annex the Panama Canal and Greenland—cannot be ignored or treated as hyperbole. They reveal a warped mind and dangerous agenda that would take America down the road of other authoritarian states such as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
There seems to be some sort of market for this sort of thing. I’m not it, though.
[NOTE: This blog has made very little mention of Rubin over the years. All I could find were two brief references to her opinion on Obama – not in favor of him – and one on Romney when he was running for president.]
Sounds like this group will have just as much influence as the Bulwark and the Dispatch, which is to say, not very much.
Jen Rubin and Mickey Kaus briefly had a podcast on Ricochet.com, a center-right forum. Briefly and before Trump. Ricochet’s audience did not really feel comfortable with her.
Jen Rubin has left the Post. Wait — you mean she was still there? I thought she left months ago, when Bezos had to cut dead wood. Ain’t wood much deader than Jen Rubin.
Her appearance with Bill O’Reilly years ago was comedy gold.
I liked Rubin in the early 2000s. She seemed pretty reasonable. Ironically in those days she got a huge number of vicious comments from the anti-war, anti-Bush side.
I was surprised at how viciously anti-Trump she turned.
“There seems to be some sort of market for this sort of thing.”
Based on the presentation skills not evident in their announcement video, if these two make any significant money on this venture it will be because they are a front for something funded by someone with deep pockets, like a Soros.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Yes, that’s often the case.
She’s a “Contrarian” in the sense that things that she supported in the past, she’s now opposing when Trump does them, and things that she always opposed she now supports.
This old tweet has generated some interest:
Mayor Karen Bass
@MayorOfLA
Thank you Ambassador
@NormEisen
for your continued support and mentorship in the world of ethics and transparency and to the ethics teams at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Metro for collaborating with us on an event solely dedicated to governmental ethics.
https://beverlypress.com/2024/04/bass-convenes-conference-focusing-on-government-ethics/
5:09 PM · Apr 21, 2024
·
262.9K
Views
I would have thought that the most important ethical responsibility of the Water Deparment would be making sure that there was enough water, but that’s just me …
Has there been a single case of a “conservative” who joins the WaPo or NYT and remains so? None since Safire, and it’s a long list. What’s unclear is the direction of cause and effect. Probably both directions: Those who join are more pliable and eager to please, and once there they fold like a cheap suit.
“We will not infantilize his supporters nor treat them as victims; we will confront them with the consequences of their presidential pick.”
Oh no! Who knows what to do?
How about confronting them with the consequences of their actions…
Mark thiessen former bush speech writer hasnt been terrible (he had a mild bout of orange man skepticism but it passed) at the times you have douthat who is often dissapointing
I’m still not clear what Trump has ever done that could be considered “authoritarian”. It seems to me that it’s never been fully articulated by anyone in the NeverTrump camp, journalist or politician, at least not that I’m aware of. I guess it’s a “if you know, you know” thing.
Rubin’s focus at the Post in 2010 was flacking for Mitt Romney. Her “conversion” to conservatism seems to have happened somewhere on the Interstate while she was moving from California to Virginia in 2005, and it was very sudden: she’d gone from being an entertainment lawyer supporting Kerry and working with big Dem donors in 2004 to writing for the Weekly Standard in 2005.
She was repeatedly called out while at the Washington Post for saying whatever it took to try to make Mitt Romney look good, and not really believing any of it, as revealed in the campaign postmortem she wrote, where she criticized things in retrospect that she’d praised at the time.
Someone who really likes the Mitt Romney style of GOPe “conservatism” saw to it she was plucked suddenly from obscurity and given a national audience. Whoever that is, they probably don’t care for Trump any more than anyone who really approves of Mitt Romney does, and that would explain why she kept her position at the Post as long as she did.
But the Washington Post ain’t a charity and 24/7 Trump-bashing isn’t drawing eyeballs like it did. I don’t know if whoever put her in place is bankrolling her new thing or not, but it doesn’t seem likely.
James Sisco:
He became president and did what presidents do – executive orders, etc. He wasn’t supposed to ever have been elected, and his opponents have never gotten over the fact that he was president and is slated to become president again.
Niketas:
You might say Rubin was “plucked from obscurity” to write at the WaPo, but I would say it wasn’t really obscurity. She was very well-known in the blogosphere, and when she was writing for Commentary a great many people read her stuff. The WaPo was considered the Big Leagues, but she was very up-and-coming in the popular minors prior to that.
What’s more, she was hired by the WaPo in November of 2010, long before Romney was a candidate. So that’s not why she was hired. I don’t recall her writing for him that early.
@neo:She was very well-known in the blogosphere
How did that happen? How did someone who was a Dem with no blogging experience one year suddenly start writing for the Weekly Standard the next year and be “well-known in the blogosphere” two years later, as a conservative?
she was hired by the WaPo in November of 2010, long before Romney was a candidate.
Romney had run for the nomination in 2008 and was certainly expected to seek it again for 2012, is my memory.
I don’t recall her writing for him that early.
I’ll try to find out and post links, or cheerfully confess I’m mistaken if I can find her archives and they have no such thing that early.
James Sisco (8:03 pm) said: “I’m still not clear what Trump has ever done that could be considered “authoritarian”.
He fought back (and still does). To them, that’s “authoritarian”. For them, you see, the only acceptable response to their bullsPit is to knuckle under, if not grovel, and to apologize for having a viewpoint that contravenes their Acceptable Narrative.
A contravention of the Acceptable Narrative is “authoritarian”, as it calls into question their unquestioned (and unquestionable) authority. Yes, it’s Orwellian in its inversion.
Plus, he *mocked* them. No greater transgression can exist. Off with his head . . .
James Sisco:
“I’m still not clear what Trump has ever done that could be considered “authoritarian”.
He was and still is someone who likes the roar of the crowd and spews out hours of often threatening sounding vitriol. His events are reminiscent of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. While I’ve come to view him as a harmless blowhard, I can understand why a lot of people can’t get past his fragile ego, the twisted mouth railing against his enemies in lies and exaggerations, and his very personal attacks against even the most harmless political adversaries, the best example of which was what he did to Ted Cruz. It was inexcusable. In short, his personality really turns off a lot of otherwise rational people who can’t get past it.
I’ve consciously made the decision to ignore everything he says and concentrate on what he does. That’s the ONLY way I can support him. I absolutely can’t stand the asshole, but nevertheless voted for him in 2020 and 2024.
Rubin’s first blog post for the Washington Post was 11/30/2010, so she couldn’t have written much there on Romney or anything else in a month. It is very difficult to get anything from a blog that old, and I haven’t given up looking, but so far I’ve only managed to find her first post.
As for Mitt Romney, on 11/22/2010 he was leading Barack Obama in the polls and had been reported in the news since 2009 as doing the things people running for President typically do that early in the campaign cycle. He may not even have finally decided himself at that date, but his candidacy was taken very seriously by a lot of people, and he had long been laying the ground work for 2012.
NIketas:
Romney had been a candidate in 2008, actually, so it made sense that he might be one in 2012 as well. But I don’t recall him being on Jen Rubin’s radar screen at the time, and I doubt the WaPo would be hiring her back then to shill for Romney. Nor could I find anything she wrote about him prior to his official candidacy later on.
Godwin’s Law surfaces.
Nuremberg ralies?
Well, isn’t that insightful.
Has someone forgotten the FJB “red speech.” And who peddled the Austrian corporal theme, first version which was GWB?
The Furher “working” at McDonald’s or driving a garbage truck? How’s that work for you?
The Other Chuck:
The things you list are things people may find objectionable and for which they may heartily dislike him, but they are hardly “authoritarian.”
And I beg to differ entirely with this one: ” His events are reminiscent of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies.” In what way? Because they feature a person speaking to a crowd of people? That’s about the only thing that is similar. Just to take one example, Trump is humorous, almost like a standup comic, in style. It’s an understatement to say that Hitler was no standup comic. Hitler tended to shriek; Trump does not. Lots of Jewish people attend Trump’s rallies. And the visuals could not be more different. Hitler’s rallies were highly regimented and militaristic. Trump’s are nothing like that.
Nuremberg rally:
Niketas:
It happened all the time, especially in the blogosphere’s early days.
It somewhat happened to me, for example. I had been a Democrat and turned conservative. I started writing and had a fair amount of traffic within a couple of months. Quite early on I used to write for PJ, the Weekly Standard, and was offered a job at a well-known conservative magazine that shall remain nameless (I turned the job down for various reasons).
Just now I searched for anything Jennifer Rubin had written about Romney from before late 2011, and I did a search that was specific to 2007 to 2012. The only reference I found to anything she wrote about Romney prior to that was in this article, which describes the first piece she sold to the Weekly Standard:
And so all I could find about Rubin prior to her being hired at the WaPo was that she was critical of Romney.
My guess is that the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol liked her stuff because he found her simpatico.
“…owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy…”
Silly me, I thought their mission was reporting the news.
I didn’t read the plug for her new rag; I’ve had my fill of that kind of !&#* already.
@ Dax quoting Rubin: “defending, protecting and advancing [our] democracy”
She forgot the adjective.
It’s only democracy when Democrats win.
That’s why they chose that name for their party, I suppose.
Neo, fair enough. You are right about Trumps demeanor at his rallies in 2024. Comparing them to Nuremberg was out of line. My personal distaste for the man got the better of me.