Intelligence sharing is not a Trump innovation

The New Neo Posted on by

When the news report that Trump had shared some intelligence information with the Russians first broke, I wondered whether other presidents had done much the same thing with other countries, or whether this action was unprecedented. My guess was that other presidents had indeed done roughly similar things, but that we tended not to hear about them in the press—either because leaks were less common then, or because the president[s] in question were Democrats, or both.

I’m glad that this National Review article has come along to shed some light on the subject. In it, Deroy Murdock describes several other incidents of the sort, including one in 2011 in which President Obama gave Russia secret information about Britain’s missile system. Murdock relates a good (although rhetorical) question:

Obama’s treaty was amazingly cold as it back-stabbed America’s cousins, from the Scottish Highlands to the white cliffs of Dover. The secret U.S. cable originated in “Mission Geneva.” Dated February 25, 2010, it summarizes a meeting that had occurred on February 9 between American and Russian arms negotiators, including decisions on submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Item No. 13 detailed “an agreed statement on the transfer of Tridents II SLBMs to the United Kingdom.”…

“So, let me get this straight,” says Steve Baldwin, former Republican whip in the California state assembly, who brought this travesty to my attention. “Trump shares intelligence with Russia about ISIS, a third-party terrorist group that both countries are fighting. All hell breaks loose. But Obama gives secrets about British nuclear missiles to Russia with no obvious benefit to the West, and our media ignore it?”

Precisely.

The Left’s volcanoes stayed dormant as Obama rejected London’s express wishes, betrayed America’s closest NATO ally, and helped Vladimir Putin and his admirals count the nuclear-tipped missiles that shield the heirs to Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

This may be the ugliest example of an American president donating state secrets to an unsavory, unfriendly government, but there are plenty more precedents for such executive action that predate Trump.

Please read the whole thing. And send it to any liberals on your list to whom you’re in the habit of forwarding articles.

This lengthy article is also worth reading (hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”). It goes over some familiar territory related to how Trump’s election was a revolt against the “elites.” The author is an extremely anti-Trump conservative, but he has this to say about Trump’s intelligence revelations to the Russians:

The president and his top foreign policy advisers, who were present during the conversation, say he didn’t [reveal any compromising details]. The media and Trump’s political adversaries insist that he did, at least implicitly. We don’t know. But we do know that when this story reached the pages of The Washington Post, as a result of leaks from people around Trump who want to see him crushed, it led to a feeding frenzy that probably harmed American interests far more than whatever Trump may have said to those Russians. Instead of Trump’s indiscretion being confined to a single conversation with foreign officials, it now is broadcast throughout the world. Instead of, at worst, a hint of where the intelligence came from, everyone now knows it came from the Israelis. Instead of being able to at least pursue a more cooperative relationship with Russia on matters of mutual interest, Trump is once again forced back on his heels on Russian policy by government officials and their media allies””who, unlike Trump, were never elected to anything.

Now, suprisingly, John Brennan, the former chief of the CIA under Obama, finds himself at least somewhat on Trump’s side:

What I have found appalling is the number of leaks that have taken place over the last several months,” former CIA Director John Brennan said…“This needs to be stopped.”

Brennan said Trump made a “serious mistake” when he reportedly shared sensitive intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in an Oval Office meeting in early May. But this mistake wasn’t sharing intelligence; it was violating the protocol for doing so. “I shared intelligence with the Russians when I was the director of the CIA,” Brennan said. “But you share that through intelligence channels, and you make sure you word it in such as way as to not reveal sources and methods. President Trump didn’t do that [NOTE: that’s according to the press; that part of the story has been vociferously denied by everyone who was present].”

Brennan said the press coverage of Trump’s impromptu intelligence reveal was “hyperbolic” and possibly more damaging than anything Trump revealed. “The damage that was done is what was leaked in the aftermath, what was put in the media. The real damage to national security is the leaks.” He suggested, without saying so explicitly, that news accounts revealed more sensitive information than Trump did.

“The real damage to national security is the leaks,” Brennan said. “These individuals who still stay within the government and are leaking this stuff to the press need to be brought to task.”

Yes, they do.

A historical note: Nixon tried to “bring them to task” back in 1971, but the landmark 1971 case New York Times Co. v. United States ruled otherwise. I plan to talk about that soon in another post.

[ADDENDUM: More information can be found here (from 2011) on what forms the basis for the NR article. The information was obtained from Wikileaks:

Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.

Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.

The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called “special relationship”, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website…

A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain’s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia’s support for the “New START” deal.

Although the treaty was not supposed to have any impact on Britain, the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK’s Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US.

Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers said: “This appears to be significant because while the UK has announced how many missiles it possesses, there has been no way for the Russians to verify this. Over time, the unique identifiers will provide them with another data point to gauge the size of the British arsenal.”

Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, said: “They want to find out whether Britain has more missiles than we say we have, and having the unique identifiers might help them.”

There were many other articles written about it at the time.]

The worst media attack on a president ever?

The New Neo Posted on by

In Trump’s speech yesterday at the Coast Guard Academy, he said many things.

He talked about not giving up:

Over the course of your life, you will find that things are not always fair. You will find that things happen to you that you do not deserve and that are not always warranted. But you have to put your head down and fight, fight, fight. Never, ever, ever give up. Things will work out just fine.

He made it clear that he’s not backing down, that he’s proud of his accomplishments so far as president, and that he’s being treated unfairly by the media. I’ve written quite a bit about that last topic myself. But Trump added this:

Look at the way I’ve been treated lately ”” (laughter) ”” especially by the media. No politician in history ”” and I say this with great surety ”” has been treated worse or more unfairly.

There’s no question that he’s been very badly treated. He may even be correct that no politician in US history has been treated worse. But I’m not so sure of that, although the attacks on Trump are notable for how early they have reached fever pitch. But Lincoln was attacked by the media with great ferocity. Nixon certainly was, as well. The media considered Reagan a dunce, and a dangerous one at that. And in more recent history, George W. Bush was a constant target (Rathergate, and the “Bush lied” meme, just to take two examples).

But when reminded of the media attack on Bush, I couldn’t help but recall that Trump was fully on board with it. In this 2015 post of mine I wrote about Trump’s own attacks on Bush: he wished that Pelosi had impeached Bush for lying about WMDs, he said that he couldn’t even imagine a worse president than Bush, and he called Bush “evil.” The most committed leftist could not have done better in slavishly following the MSM attack line on Bush.

But now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I have to say that it doesn’t matter in terms of what’s going on now with President Trump and the press. The press is determined to take him down, and they will do anything and say anything to accomplish it, and in that they have many willing accomplices.

Robert Mueller as been appointed special prosecutor for the Russia/Trump investigation

The New Neo Posted on by

I think it was inevitable that something like this would be happening:

My decision (to appoint a special counsel) is not the finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement announcing the special counsel.

“I determined that a special counsel is necessary in order for the American people to have full confidence in the outcome,” he said.

Special prosecutors are often a step down a slippery slope, because they tend to lead investigations that go on and on and on till they finally find something to prosecute, although it may be a tiny offense and a small fish. However, in this case I’m mostly in favor of the appointment because I actually think Rosenstein is correct, and that this may be a way to achieve a somewhat calmer state in which the press is not the chief prosecutor of a sitting president.

Who is Mueller? He was appointed by President George W. Bush, confirmed unanimously by the Senate, and took office as FBI director just one week before 9/11, serving his 10-year term in that position. He continued in the office for two years beyond that at Obama’s request, and was replaced in 2013 by Comey.

How objective will Mueller be in this role? I cannot predict, but I caution that when Comey first took office he was uniformly praised as incredibly intelligent and fair. We all know how that worked out. But one can hope. Erick Erickson thinks Mueller’s appointment is a very good thing, and he offers his reasons why here.

[ADDENDUM: Mueller has actually been appointed special counsel, not special prosecutor, but the differences are very minor:

The terms are largely interchangeable to refer to someone appointed to investigate allegations that could involve a conflict of interest within the Department of Justice. But the manner in which they are appointed and why has changed over time. ]

RIP, Roger Ailes

The New Neo Posted on by

Roger Ailes is dead at 77:

Roger Ailes fell last Wednesday at his oceanfront home in Palm Beach, Florida, and hit his head, according to a report from the Palm Beach Police Department. Ailes suffered “serious bleeding” from the fall and was “not completely alert,” the report said.

A source told ABC News that Ailes slipped into a coma while being treated at the hospital and died. The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office will conduct an autopsy this afternoon.

I had two quick thoughts on hearing of his death and the manner of his death. The first was how young 77 now seems to me. The second was that the way he died seems a metaphor for what happened to him recently at Fox.

Ailes was a media giant who changed the face of news broadcasting but has been credibly accused of sexual harassment:

Ailes…studied radio and television production at Ohio University…

After graduating in 1962, he started working on the “The Mike Douglas Show,” which gave him “a keen eye for production,” …Ailes went into politics after meeting President Richard Nixon, who made an appearance on “The Mike Douglas Show” in 1967…

Ailes went on to advise President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and then”“Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1988 for their election campaigns…

In 1996, Ailes helped launch Fox News, which dramatically changed the media landscape. However, last summer he left the channel after former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson accused him of sexual harassment in a lawsuit. Other women at Fox News, including former host Megyn Kelly, have said that Ailes sexually harassed them during his tenure at the cable news channel.

Shortly after his resignation, he reportedly returned to politics. Sources told ABC News he was advising Donald Trump during his preparation for the presidential debates, although Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks denied Ailes’ involvement at the time.

“He is not advising Mr. Trump or helping with debate prep. They are longtime friends, but he has no formal or informal role in the campaign,” she told ABC News in a statement last August.

Not a happy day for Trump, either, I’d guess. Ailes was his ally in a media world that is almost entirely arrayed against him.

The history of the anonymous source: blame it on Watergate

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a very slightly-edited copy of an early post I wrote on this blog (May, 2005)—twelve long years ago, and it does not seem like it was only yesterday. But I think you’ll see how very relevant it still is today. Some of the links in it have died in the interim. But I’ve kept them in, just to show you where I got the information.]

To the best of my recollection, the newspapers of my youth attributed every quote to an actual named person–not that I was paying a whole lot of attention at the time to subtleties like that. Now, however, it seems as though articles are often merely glorified gossip columns full of anonymous commentary–a sort of “he said, he said” kind of journalism.

The only thing we know for sure is the identity of the article’s author. We are asked to take the facts on trust, without a chance to evaluate the source of the remarks. This over-reliance on the anonymous source gives both the journalist and his/her informant an overwhelming power, and takes away our ability to judge the veracity of what we are being told. I believe it’s one of the most pernicious trends in journalism.

This practice seems to be the logical development of a phenomenon that started with Vietnam and became stronger with Watergate. As I’ve written earlier, during that era many people’s attitudes towards the government and the military became more negative, while their attitudes towards the press became correspondingly more positive, in a sort of reciprocal seesawing movement. As trust in the press grew, it seems that the time-honored journalistic methods of sourcing, previously acting as a system of checks and balances against the power of the press, were now considered unnecessary.

The most famous anonymous source of them all, of course, was Deep Throat of Watergate fame. He was not only a seminal figure in Nixon’s denouement (and thus a hero to liberals everywhere), but he was so renowned that he had his own nickname, taken from a popular porn flick. It turns out that Deep Throat had another claim to fame: he was the trailblazer in the practice of relying on anonymous sources, now so commonplace in today’s journalism.

I had suspected all along that Watergate might be at the heart of it, but it was difficult to document when I first tried to do some online research on the subject. I finally struck pay dirt with this article from American Journalism Review. It’s hardly up-to-date (it was written way back in 1994), but it was the only discussion of the history of anonymous sources that I could find. It turns out Watergate was indeed a watershed in the use of this practice:

Although confidential sources predate Watergate, they were infrequently used before that celebrated story, which produced the most famous unnamed source of all time. Deep Throat, whose identity remains a mystery*, helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein bring down Richard Nixon in 1974. After that, the use of anonymous sources flourished, with many reporters considering it sexier to have an unnamed source than a named one.

Unfortunately, it’s only gotten worse since then. See this, if you want to remember the good old days:

“Of course, you talk to everybody when you begin a story,” says Philip Scheffler, a senior producer for CBS’ “60 Minutes.” “Off the record. On the record. In the record. For background. Not for attribution no matter what. But it’s not the raw notes we are talking about. We are talking about what goes on the air.” And “60 Minutes” does not use anonymous sources on the air.

Would that that last sentence were still true!

And how about this guy:

There’s not a place for anonymous sources,” says Allen H. Neuharth, founder of USA Today and chairman of the Freedom Forum. “I think there are a few major historical developments that happened in journalism ”“ the Pentagon Papers, maybe Watergate ”“ where anonymous sources had a more positive influence than a negative impact. But on balance, the negative impact is so great that we can’t overcome the lack of trust until or unless we ban them.

Where is Mr. Neuharth now [as of May, 2005]? Retired to Florida and eighty-one years old–which makes him something of a dinosaur, I guess. As recently as 1998, though, he was still speaking out against the use of the anonymous source, which he calls evil. Here’s an excerpt from a 1998 interview with Neuharth [emphasis mine]:

Traditionally journalists were taught to believe in accuracy above all else. And that changed. I think it changed with Watergate, and I think the anonymous source is the most evil thing that newspapers and the media have adopted or adapted in the last 25 years [said in 1998]. It started with Watergate, (when) journalists coming off college campuses (were) determined to be (Bob) Woodward or (Carl) Bernstein. They believed that because of Watergate’s successes there was dirt under every mat in front of every office. They came out as young cynics. The journalists of my generation were taught to be skeptics. And there’s a hell of a difference between a skeptic and a cynic. All you need to do is be accurate and fair.

Sounds about right to me.

Back when that 1994 American Journalism Review article was written, there was apparently a great deal of variation in the rules for using anonymous sources—some papers used them liberally at the time, and some vary sparingly or not at all. My impression is that the use of anonymous sources seems to be something like alcohol—seductive and habit-forming. In that 1994 article, everyone keeps talking about going on the wagon and curbing the practice, but very few have actually done so. Apparently it’s too enticing to give up, for so many reasons: getting a sensational story, beating the competition, laziness, habit.

Is there any hope, short of Mr. Neuharth coming out of retirement? Well, in 2003 a group of eighteen well-known journalists were brought together by Poynter to make recommendations about improving journalism. They came up with this set of extremely sensible-seeming rules for the use of anonymous sources. If followed, they would eliminate a lot of trouble:

Ӣ Anonymous sources should be encouraged to go on the record.

”¢ We should weigh the source’s reliability and disclose to readers the source’s potential biases.

Ӣ The more specific we can be in describing the source in the story, the better.

Ӣ Anonymous sources should not be used for personal attacks, accusations of illegal activity, or merely to add color.

Ӣ The source must have first-hand knowledge.

Ӣ Journalists should not lie in a story to protect a source.

I don’t know why these guidelines haven’t been widely adopted [NOTE: I may not have known when I wrote that back in 2005, but I certainly feel that I know now, in 2017]. I guess the bottom line is that journalists have become far too addicted to the easy fix that anonymous sources provide.

Like all addictions, this calls for a 12-step program, right? I even have a name for it: ASA, Anonymous Sourcers Anonymous.

That’s how the post ended in 2005. My suggestion about ASA was tongue-in-cheek; I didn’t seriously think for a moment that the press really wanted to give up the use of the anonymous source. But looking back, what I wrote still seems naive of me at the time. The anonymous source is the bedrock of the MSM political agenda, and the MSM’s pretense of objectivity is now tissue-paper thin. The reputation of the press is also far lower than it was in 2005, but its pro-left anti-right agenda continues—not just unabated but intensified.

The anonymous source is not going anywhere; it’s far too valuable. Not only that, but it has become so standard and so accepted that I wonder whether younger people question its use at all, or realize that things were once very different.

* [NOTE: Coincidentally, only about a week after I originally wrote this piece in May of 2005, “Deep Throat’s” identity was revealed to have been FBI Associate Director Mark Felt.]

The Israeli connection

The New Neo Posted on by

This result, if true, is part of the danger of the “Trump compromised security” story.

I wonder if the NY Times cares.

Of course, if Trump did in fact leak sensitive information of that degree, Israel needs to know it (and we would need to know it, too). But if he did not, the Times may have done incalculable damage in its zeal to get Trump and publish leaks of sensitive material in order to hurt him.

Either way, trouble.

Trump and the Comey memo

The New Neo Posted on by

First, let’s get some semantics out of the way.

Did Trump “ask” Comey to stop the Mike Flynn investigation?

What does it mean to “ask” for something, or to request it? Ordinarily it’s not such a difficult concept to grasp. “Asking” uses language like this:

Please do [fill in the blank] for me.

An order has a different level of demand:

You must [fill in the blank]

Then there’s a desire that something happen, a hope:

I’d really like it if you were to [fill in the blank].

It’s a statement of a wish, but it’s not the same as asking and most definitely not the same as ordering.

But what if you are the president? Are presidents allowed to express wishes to FBI directors, for example? Are presidents’ wishes FBI directors commands?

Here’s what’s been reported by the NY Times (courtesy of its usual informant, anon):

The story said the Oval Office meeting took place in February on the day after Flynn resigned. The existence of the memo, written by Comey “immediately” after the meeting, was shared “with senior FBI officials and close associates,” according to the report.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump allegedly told Comey. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Although the various news outlets involved have characterized this as “asking,” it’s not, even if it happened just that way.

That does not make it okay, however. Presidents are not supposed to interfere with investigations—that would be, if the interference contained certain elements, obstruction of justice. And although I’m not up enough on the law to say for certain whether that includes even voicing a hope, my guess is that such a statement could at least arguably be considered a possible interference with an investigation. And today, Jonathan Turley weighs in on the question of whether the reported Comey memo would constitute obstruction of justice, or even an impeachable offense (that doesn’t need to rise to that level), and he answers “no.”

I wonder how many people agree with him. So far, quite a few legal experts seem to agree that the memo, if true, would not constitute evidence of criminality.

We may find out a lot more about this particular Trump/Comey exchange, however:

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) sent a letter to Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe asking that all Comey memos or recordings related to his meetings with Trump be turned over to the committee by May 24.

The committee “is going to get the Comey memo, if it exists,” Chaffetz tweeted. “I need to see it sooner rather than later. I have my subpoena pen ready.”

There are many smoking guns that could sink Trump, but this one may be the most potentially serious one of all. Or it may turn out to be another case of a media distortion of what actually happened. And even if they are reporting accurately, it would be Comey’s word against Trump’s, because there were no other witnesses to the exchange.

We are in dangerous waters, however, and that is the case whether Comey is telling the truth or not.

[NOTE: Gregg Jarrett makes on interesting point:

Under the law, Comey is required to immediately inform the Department of Justice of any attempt to obstruct justice by any person, even the President of the United States. Failure to do so would result in criminal charges against Comey. (18 USC 4 and 28 USC 1361) He would also, upon sufficient proof, lose his license to practice law.

So, if Comey believed Trump attempted to obstruct justice, did he comply with the law by reporting it to the DOJ? If not, it calls into question whether the events occurred as the Times reported it.

Obstruction requires what’s called “specific intent” to interfere with a criminal case. If Comey concluded, however, that Trump’s language was vague, ambiguous or elliptical, then he has no duty under the law to report it because it does not rise to the level of specific intent. Thus, no crime.

There is no evidence Comey ever alerted officials at the Justice Department, as he is duty-bound to do. Surely if he had, that incriminating information would have made its way to the public either by an indictment or, more likely, an investigation that could hardly be kept confidential in the intervening months.]

[NOTE II: Here’s another article well worth reading.]

The most satisfying video in the world?

The New Neo Posted on by

Hey, let’s have some pleasant distraction from the cares of the world.

The following video bills itself as “the most satisfying video in the world.” Now, I don’t know whether it’s the most satisfying, but it might just be the most effective clickbait, if not in the world, at least that I’ve seen today. And it does deliver something that I wouldn’t exactly call “satisfaction,” but certainly pleasure and/or interest.

In other words, I wasn’t sorry that I clicked on it. And doing so also had another benefit; it called up a host of related and similarly distracting and interesting videos on the right sidebar at YouTube. So, enjoy, dear readers!

Some personal reflections on the WaPo story claiming that Trump compromised security

The New Neo Posted on by

The first thing that occurs to me is that, even though people distrust the press much more than in years past, the press is still remarkably powerful. When a newspaper such as the WaPo decides to print a story about a president and to frame it in a certain way, that dictates not only what we’ll all be talking about for quite a while, but how vast numbers of people will see it. And when the press is out to get a president—as it has been with Trump—it will ferret out every negative thing it can, and spin it in the most negative way. The attack will be coordinated and relentless, and it will draw at least some blood.

Just think for a moment if the situation had been reversed—if, for example, President Obama (or a President Hillary Clinton) had done whatever it is that Trump is alleged to have done. Crickets. Or, if the news somehow came out, rationalizing and/or sweeping under the rug. Maybe even praise for “resetting” with Russia. Basically, it would not have been reported at all, or if reported it would not have been reported in the same way.

It turns out also that this highly sensitive information Trump is alleged to have divulged is the sort of thing most people would be glad was shared with the Russians. And although that’s not really the issue and doesn’t make revealing classified information right, it certainly could influence the way people receive the story:

[The WaPo] did this with an article citing “anonymous sources” who claimed that the president ”” whether in a fit of braggadocio, stupidity, or in partial payment for Moscow’s meddling with the election the Post leaves to the reader to decide ”” passed on exceedingly sensitive and restricted intelligence to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister in a meeting last week.

The information was so top secret, said the Post, that America hadn’t even shared the information with key allies.

All of this conjured images of Trump letting the Russians in on something really big, like exactly when all the generals take smoko at NORAD (“I tell you Vlad, they’re out there every morning at 9:30 like clockwork. And if they’re talking about what happened on Last Resort, they’re not back at their stations for, like, half an hour, easy.”)

And it immediately set commentators abuzz, with everyone who’d just settled down over the firing of FBI Director James Comey once again demanding Trump’s impeachment, this time for grievously damaging national security.

But as so often happens, the extent of what Trump actually told the Russians reality may be a bit more pedestrian.

The information in question is now said to have been about ISIS plots to sneak a bomb on to an airliner in a laptop, a plot device easily imagined by any Hollywood TV writer or paperback spy thriller author.

And who, pray tell, were these “anonymous sources”? If they constituted people who weren’t at the meeting, how would thy know, and are they guilty of a security breach by telling the WaPo? And if it was someone at the meeting, then who?

Taking a step back in time, there were many reasons I did not want Donald Trump to be the GOP nominee in 2016. I aired them quite fully on this blog during the primaries. After his nomination, I tried to adjust, and have been pleased to note that many of his actions as president have been better than I thought they would be (I have discussed many of those here, too). But one thing that has never changed, and what forms some of the basis of my objection to Trump, has been that Trump has some character and veracity issues that are real and not merely the result of being framed by MSM reportage.

I wrote about that here, too, during the primary. In fact, some of what I wrote lost me some readers over the past year and a half. And I haven’t changed my mind about those things. The doubts about his veracity make him a worse president than he might otherwise be, not a better one. They may make it harder for him to win people over to his side who are not already predisposed to be there. They make the negative stories designed to whip up fear about him in his role as president more believable, rather than less.

Quite a few readers and commenters here would probably disagree with that last sentence of mine. “No, the over-the-top and unfair press commentary makes people more sympathetic to Trump, not less.” And I would have agreed with them—in fact, I did agree with them, until recently—except that President Trump has done too many disturbing things lately that feed into the perceptions of him as a loose cannon and an unreliable reporter of events. And some of those things have nothing to do with media reports, they are his very own tweets.

By the way, can you imagine going back in time to about twenty years ago and reading those last two sentences of mine? President Trump? Tweets?? What on earth??? But here we are, in a world in which Trump is indeed president (and in many ways not doing a bad job of it at all), but is hurting his own reputation with some of his tweets (although I must admit that some of his tweets also help him). And the press would dearly love to destroy him.

I have gotten to the point where, when I scan the MSM outlets or memeorandum for the day’s headline stories, the entire enterprise seems more than ever before like mindless propaganda to me. And whether that phenomenon hurts Trump in the end or helps him, I can’t imagine that such a high a level of jusified distrust and weariness of the media is a good place for America to be.

Talking to the Russians: Trump vs. the WaPo

The New Neo Posted on by

Will the real truthteller please stand up?

In the game of “To Tell the Truth” that we keep playing in the real world of the Trump presidency, whom do you trust more to tell the truth: Donald Trump or the WaPo?

If you answered “neither” you would be right, in my opinion. I certainly don’t trust either.

But, whom do you trust more to tell the truth? Or perhaps I should phrase it this way: whom do you distrust less?

The fact that it’s still a difficult question to answer, no matter how it’s phrased, spells volumes. Which brings us to the current story, the one that Democrats think will really sink Trump, absolutely and positively, and pave the way for the impeachment they’ve been planning since Election Night, when it became clear that the seemingly impossible—a Trump victory—had nevertheless occurred. That story is, as you probably already know (unless you’ve just returned from Planet Xenon), the WaPo’s claim that reliable sources say that Trump improperly revealed some extremely classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador last week, at a White House meeting.

So, did he or didn’t he? Many people have analyzed the information (here, for example). And today, someone I trust more than both Trump and the WaPo—National Security advisor H.R. McMaster—said that the WaPo story was untrue:

National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster denied the story through a written statement and in front of the press. Then today he went before the press again and told reporters that Trump did not compromise any sources or methods to the Russians. He described the discussion as “wholly appropriate.”…

McMaster reminds the press that Tillerson and Powell were in the room as well and no one thought the information was inappropriate. He also said that it’s “wholly appropriate for the president to share whatever information necessary to advance the security” of our country.

The information he talked about was about operations already going on and known to the public.

I am almost certain, however, that in the minds of the vast majority of my liberal friends and relatives (and that constitutes almost all my friends and relatives), the offense of “divulging secrets to the Russians, in whose pocket he is firmly ensconced” has been added to their long list of Trump’s impeachable crimes. The WaPo knows exactly what it’s doing, and it will continue to print any rumor it finds that could hurt Trump, and many people will find it all not just credible but obviously true.

The bigger questions are (1) will more be revealed later that sheds any light on this particular incident?; and (2) who/what does the middle third of the electorate believe on this, the third that is neither reflexively anti-Trump nor reflexively pro-Trump?

Kim Jong-un and Jim Jones

The New Neo Posted on by

Anyone else see a resemblance in the way they operate[d]?

The North Korean leader is operating on a much larger scale, of course. His weaponry is decidedly more advanced, as well. But both tried to instill in their followers a blind devotion, and both depended on blocking information from outside and replacing it with their own insular and paranoid reality. Both also made sure their subjects believed they were threatened by an outside world that was about to pounce on them, and that violence might be necessary—even a preemptive strike—to prevent or stop it.

Most people remember the Jonestown massacre/suicide. But few remember its details or even knew much about them at the time. You can refresh your memory here. You may be surprised at what you read.