The press and the president: fooling some of the people

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s one of the most famous saying in American history (whether Lincoln said it, as reported, or not):

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

True, and wise.

However, if you stop to think about it, the success of a “fool the people” gambit rests on how many of the people you can fool how much of the time. And—unless you can fake sincerity very well—to be really, really good at it, sometimes it helps to be able to fool yourself.

The press coverage of Trump’s first week as president (seems like a lot longer, doesn’t it?) has been an almost unrelieved litany of horrors. There are certainly things to criticize; for example, I think Trump would have done much better to have talked with the Mexican leader before taking a hard line in public. But—as someone who’s been hard on Trump myself—I find the coverage to have been abysmal and deceptive way too often (here’s a pretty good Vox analysis of one example).

The press has often been able to fool enough people enough of the time to make them want to continue doing so. What’s more, some of the people fooled work for the press. In other words, to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To those who think Trump is evil incarnate, everything he does is evil.

But at a certain point people get tired of it. At a certain point, the “some” of the people you can fool may start to be a smaller number. Has that point been reached?

Two pieces today at Powerline by John Hinderaker make an interesting juxtaposition on the subject. First we have a post entitled “Press pretends to fact-check Trump, but only misleads readers.” It’s about exactly what the title says it’s about. The second is entitled “Voters like what Trump is doing, and they can’t stand the press.” An excerpt:

Despite the Left’s howls of outrage, or maybe in part because of them, voters like what President Trump is doing so far. Rasmussen currently finds 59% of likely voters approving of Trump’s performance. That is a Reaganesque level that he won’t be able to sustain long-term, but it suggests that most voters are comfortable both with the direction of Trump’s policies and with his iconoclastic style…

During the eight years when the notoriously dishonest Barack Obama was president, did the Times ever characterize anything he said as a lie? Not to my knowledge. Why not? Because he is a Democrat, and the Times is a Democratic Party newspaper. I’m not going to spend my time searching the archives, but I would be surprised if the Times has ever referred to anything said by Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi as a lie, either.

Steve Bannon is right. The Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and so on, constitute an opposition party when a Republican is in the White House. That is their prerogative, but they should stop pretending to be shocked”“shocked!”“when people notice.

The press is indeed shocked when people notice. They are used to their bias not being noticed, or used to its being noticed only by “some of the people” constituting a smaller group than at present, and a group that is quite conservative.

Once this distrust of the press hits the mainstream middle-of-the-roaders, watch out. You mmight get something like a President Trump. And you might even get a President Trump about whom the press can weep and wail and not get much traction with the public.

That’s not necessarily a good thing, by the way. It would be a far far better thing if the press covered all politicians well and covered them fairly. But at the moment, that’s merely a dream.

State Department: did they resign or were they pushed?*

The New Neo Posted on by

Right now I don’t have several free hours to take on the task of trying to sort out the confusion in this story, as evidence by the first three headlines listed at Memeorandum:

—From the WaPo: “The State Department’s entire management team just resigned.”

—From Talking Points Memo: “Report: Entire State Department Management Team Fired By Trump Admin.”

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” David Wade, State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry, told the newspaper. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

—From CNN: “Trump administration asks top State Department officials to leave.”

Legal Insurrection’s Mary Chastain writes:

No one knows for sure if Kennedy left on his own or if someone pushed him out. He had taken on the responsibility to help the transition to the Trump administration. Him leaving surprised many in the department. One officials told the Post that all of those people “had previously submitted their letters of resignation, as was required for all positions that are appointed by the president and that require confirmation by the Senate, known as PAS positions.”

But Ambassador Richard Boucher, a former State Department spokesman under Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, said that usually the old team stays put to help the new team transition smoothly. He cannot believe these people left such important positions unmanned…

And at Hot Air, John Sexton writes:

Patrick Kennedy was the person working behind the scenes to downgrade classified emails found on Hillary Clinton’s private server. When the first SECRET email turned up on Clinton’s server, Kennedy intervened three different times to ask the FBI to change its mind about the classification…

In addition to his role as fixer for Clinton at the State Department, Kennedy was ultimately responsible for decisions regarding security at the Benghazi consulate. The review board did not find Kennedy responsible for the decision to cut security, but chargé d’affaires Gregory Hicks testified he believed Kennedy should have been held at least partly responsible.

As far as I can see, we still don’t know the sequence of events.

We also still don’t know whether this matters or will have a positive or negative effect on State Department business. My guess? Positive.

[NOTE: The title of this post is a reference to this Richard Thompson song.]

The myth of the myth of the illegal voter

The New Neo Posted on by

President Trump’s talk of voter fraud causing him to lose the 2016 popular vote has unleashed a storm of criticism with two main points. The first is that his accusation is undermining our democracy. The second is that his claim of a significant amount of illegal voting is absurd.

Let’s deal with the first issue first. It’s pretty clear why he’s talking about this. The media and the left have been busy little beavers trying to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency—and therefore our democracy— almost since Election Day (and the only reason they didn’t do much of it before he was elected is that they were certain he wouldn’t be elected).

“The Russians hacked the election!” was one favorite meme for quite a while. No proof was ever offered that releasing Hillary’s emails (the real accusation, not a “hacking” of the election) affected the election’s outcome. But that didn’t stop them from going on and on and on about it.

And lately we have the undermining of democracy (actually, the republic, to get technical about it) by the MSM and Democrats giving great significance to the fact that Trump “only” won the electoral vote and not the popular one. But of course the popular vote is irrelevant, because that’s not the way presidential elections are won, nor is the popular vote the vote that candidates campaign to win. But again, that didn’t stop Trump’s opponents from constantly talking about it.

Trump’s “well, the popular vote was hacked—by illegal voters” is therefore in the nature of a retaliatory attempt to undermine the significance of his loss of the popular vote. He obviously feels the need to keep striking back at the memes that undermine his victory and his validity as president.

That brings us to the second issue—the actual content of his claim. Is it absurd? I contend that we really don’t know. I’ll go on record right now as saying that I actually don’t think that there were enough illegal votes to account for Hillary Clinton’s margin in the popular vote. But you know what? That’s just my best guess. I don’t know, you don’t know, Trump doesn’t know. And all the journalists stating that Trump’s claim is absurd? Why, they don’t know.

Have you ever heard people say, “I can always tell when someone’s wearing a hairpiece”? No. You can always tell when you can tell—in other words, when it’s obvious. How would you know about all the people with undetectable hairpieces who might be passing by looking perfectly normal? The point of a hairpiece is to be unnoticeable.

As Powerline’s John Hinderaker points out:

Here in Minnesota, there is no possible way for anyone to know how much voter fraud occurred last November. Minnesota is a same-day registration state, and more than 500,000 voters register on the day of a presidential election…

Voter fraud is concentrated among same-day registrants, and nearly all illegal ballots are cast for Democrats. Hillary Clinton reportedly won Minnesota by around 45,000 votes. This means that if 10% of those who same-day registered also voted illegally (non-citizens, convicted felons, already voted in another state, etc.), Donald Trump probably carried the state. But the result can’t be changed because Minnesota doesn’t have provisional voting. The votes of the 500,000 to 600,000 people who registered on election day have been counted.

Do I think it is likely that Trump carried Minnesota? No. But we probably will never know, and we certainly don’t know now. Trump’s investigation into voter fraud is long overdue.

Well, there have been studies before (although I have no idea whether any have dealt with Minnesota). They haven’t found anything significant in terms of voter fraud. I’ve read many such reports over the years, and I remain unconvinced that we know to what extent fraud is happening (see this for one look at the problem).

Trump has another agenda in making his claim, and it has less to do with the past and more to do with the future. And, since he will probably get the chance to appoint a great many federal judges, this agenda has a chance of being upheld in the courts in a way that it hasn’t in the past:

In back-to-back tweets on Wednesday, Trump said the investigation would cover “those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal” and “those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time).”

News outlets reported Wednesday that Trump’s daughter Tiffany, White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin were all registered to vote in two states.

“Depending on results,” Trump added in his tweet, “we will strengthen up voting procedures.”

Former Justice spokesman Matthew Miller said this is exactly the fear of voting rights advocates – that such an investigation will be used to endorse more-restrictive voting laws. “That’s where this is going,” Miller said.

It may indeed be where this is going.

[NOTE: By the way, what did Trump actually say about his winning the popular vote? The best I can come up with is a Tweet of his back in December:

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

But what happened recently to cause all the flurry during the last few days? I believe it was this report:

President Donald Trump asserted in a private meeting with congressional leaders Monday night that he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election if 3 million to 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally hadn’t voted.

Trump made the debunked claim, without offering any evidence, at a White House meeting with Democratic and Republican leaders, according to a Democratic aide familiar with the exchange who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Did he say it? My guess is that he did, since it would have merely been a repetition of what he’d claimed more publicly a month earlier. But “a Democratic aide familiar with the exchange who spoke on condition of anonymity” seems a bit shaky for a source.]

Newer better server?

The New Neo Posted on by

I was told by my host that they’re migrating me to a new, different, everything-better server some time this week. I think it may have happened in the wee hours of this morning, because the site was down for a few hours.

So, here’s my question: have you noticed the site loading any faster? (she asks hopefully).

RIP Mary Tyler Moore

The New Neo Posted on by

Mary Tyler Moore has died at 80.

She had kept a very low profile in recent years. Diabetes (Moore was diagnosed at 33) can be a difficult taskmaster and exact a toll as time goes on.

Anyone of a certain age probably remembers Moore very well from her stints on TV, as Dick Van Dyke’s wife Laura and above all as the star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Most remember her very fondly indeed; the show dominated the airwaves for years. Light comedy was her forte, charm her middle name, and she managed to do it all with more than enough grit to avoid any hint of cloying sweetness.

RIP.

So how big was that inauguration crowd?

The New Neo Posted on by

Boy, am I sick of this bigness-of-the-inaugural-crowd business.

But commenter “Hangtown Bob” has called my attention to a photo I just can’t resist spotlighting. It’s interesting on many levels—not just because of how it impacts on the burning question of inaugural crowd size, but because the technology of photographing crowds is so advanced and so detailed. I know, I know; they can see a hair on your nose from outer space, so why not this?

I can’t reproduce the photo on this blog, so you’ll have to go to CNN and fiddle around there with zooms and stuff, particularly way back near the end of the mall.

And unless there’s something I’m not getting, it proves that the crowd really was YUGE.

[NOTE: Oh, and by the way—the public seems to have liked Trump’s inaugural speech, and in particular his “America first” message.]

The Trump train…

The New Neo Posted on by

…has been roaring through lately, hasn’t it?

Let’s see—Trump has been president for less than a week. But as promised, there have been a lot of executive orders, and more are contemplated very soon:

President Trump plans to sign executive orders Wednesday enabling construction of his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and targeting cities where local leaders refuse to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation, according to White House officials familiar with the decisions…

But discussions were ongoing Tuesday about just how far to go on some policies, in particular the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. The 2012 initiative has given temporary protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of people who arrived in the United States as children…

Trump will also potentially bar for 30 days the issuance of U.S. visas to people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen ”” all Muslim-majority countries ”” until new visa procedures are developed. Residents from many of these places are already rarely granted U.S. visas. Trump may ask DHS and the director of national intelligence to evaluate whether immigrants are being adequately screened for potential terrorist ties.

That’s faster activity than I can recall from incoming presidents. But then again, they didn’t have quite as many important executive orders to reverse.

Here’s a tidbit of news further down in the article: “Mexican President Enrique Peé±a Nieto will visit the United States next week to meet with Trump.” I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

I’ve noticed, also, that Trump is looking more tired than usual. More bags under the eyes. Anyone else see that?

Britain’s Supreme Court rules that Parliament must trigger Brexit

The New Neo Posted on by

Today Britain’s highest court issued a ruling:

Prime Minister Theresa May must give parliament a vote before she can formally start Britain’s exit from the European Union, the UK Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, giving lawmakers who oppose her Brexit plans a shot at amending them.

A “straightforward” bill will now be rushed to parliament within days, the government said after the country’s highest judicial body decided May could not use executive powers known as “royal prerogative” to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty and begin two years of divorce talks.

However, the judges did remove one major potential obstacle for the government, saying May did not need the approval of Britain’s devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland before triggering Brexit…

May has said she intends to invoke Article 50 before the end of March but the ruling means the Brexit process is now open to scrutiny from lawmakers, the majority of whom had wanted to stay in the EU…

Those who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU said the vote on triggering Brexit should be a mere formality.

“Any attempt to delay the Brexit process … would be an unforgivable betrayal of the British people,” said Richard Tice, co-chairman of the Leave Means Leave campaign. “The Lords should also follow suit; any delay by them would ensure their abolition.”

It will be interesting to see whether this will happen quickly, or whether substantial roadblocks will be thrown up.