SOME PROFESSIONAL NEWS: Thursday was my last day at Crooked Media, today I launch a new, independent venture. It’s called Off Message and I hope you’ll join me by subscribing.
Good morning. The president admitted that the North Star of his coronavirus response is keeping the number of confirmed cases artificially low by not testing people and I don't think a single major media outlet treated it as a story unto itself.
Someone with Biden’s ear please tell him he’s about 4 months away from going down in history as the president who lost democracy without throwing even a half-hearted punch.
Lindsey Graham just falsely told a bunch of reporters that Democrats are never subjected to accusations of sexual misconduct, and warned them that if Kavanaugh fails, Republicans will gin up false accusations against future Democratic nominees to even the score. Wow.
Quietly contemplating the fact that a woman who accuses the president of rape says she has DNA evidence to corroborate the allegation, and the president, who denies it, has enlisted DOJ to help him avoid providing the DNA evidence that, if he weren’t lying, would exonerate him.
Remember when Barack Obama won the presidency in a landslide, then won reelection by a healthy margin, and conservatives disagreed with the direction he tried to take the country, but they all withheld criticism, because, you know, love it or leave it?
Schiff stunned the room just now when he informed senators that JUST TODAY, as Trump’s lawyers argue in the Senate the House should’ve gone to court to enforce subpoenas, DOJ lawyers argued in COURT that judges have no place to enforce subpoenas because of the impeachment power.
It's wildly irresponsible of cable nets to just carry raw footage of Trump rambling slander for 20 minutes, even if they try valiantly afterward to correct the lies. He wants to inject lies into the discourse, but there's no reason to do it for him.
Trump keeps accusing Ocasio-Cortez of calling the people of the US "garbage." She didn't call Americans garbage. Rejecting incremental politics, she said people shouldn't have to settle for proposals "10% better than garbage."
This is not what Beto O'Rourke said. It's what Ted Cruz said Beto O'Rourke said. If mainstream journalism had working norms for dealing with bad faith, the story would be that Cruz lied about Beto. Instead, CBS reprints Cruz's lie as though it were true.
Media fixation w/ blackface (“was he dressed as Michael Jackson?”) obscures the more damning point: anybody who voluntarily chooses to celebrate the evil & bigoted KKK is unfit for public office. Media should be asking: did you select that picture to represent what you believe?
The White House disseminated doctored footage, also disseminated by Infowars, to smear a reporter. This will sound quaint, and has been true for sometime, but Sarah Sanders needs to resign and should be unwelcome in public life.
Further analysis: video is absolutely doctored. You can see the edit when the clips are side by side and slowed down to quarter speed. See for yourself:
I really would like a blue state to do the Texas-style-abortion-ban-but-for-guns thing, with an open stipulation that the purpose isn’t to ban guns but to delegitimize the Supreme Court.
About 20,000 Americans become infected with COVID-19 each day and another 1,000 die. Those numbers would likely fall fast and far if Trump simply wore a mask in public and told others to do the same. He refuses. For some reason this isn't a political scandal.
Hilarious that this all started because Paul Ryan refused to hold a vote on the unanimously passed Senate CR while he was still Speaker, then gave up the gavel and skipped town, leaving everyone else behind to clean up his mess. What a wonk, what a boy scout.
Brian Kemp is a true villain. Years from now, his supporters on the right–pretending not to see all this, but quietly hoping it works–will lie about where they stood and claim to have opposed him when it mattered.
Has Biden done the traditional thing where he threatens to withhold tornado disaster relief until governors of affected states praise him, or rake their forests or whatever yet?
The thing is, I was at the
@JustinTrudeau
news conference, and he went out of his way to try to downplay tensions. He didn’t attack
@realDonaldTrump
in any way, other than restate Canada would retaliate for tariffs. Not sure what
@larry_kudlow
means re: “stabbed” US in the back
Haha, the joke is that he had large debts that mysteriously disappeared shortly before his nomination, the White House lied and said the the debts were from baseball ticket purchases, and he refused to disclose how he accrued and extinguished or discharged the debts. Lol.
Conservatives will pretend “unity” means Democrats have to let them keep ill-gotten gains, leave saboteurs in positions of power, but nobody has to pretend to believe them.
A huge stain on professional political journalism that Variety got this right when so many outlets that specialize in politics got it wrong, and now won’t reflect on why.
Remember when Kavanaugh pretended he didn't know whether the "Bart O'Kavanaugh" character in Judge's book was based on him, but then it turned out his nickname in high school was Bart?
Remember when Bill Clinton said hi to Loretta Lynch on a tarmac once when he wasn't president or under investigation and every single Republican pretended to believe it was an outrage?
Well, anyhow, Matt Whitaker is the attorney general.
This thing where the social feeds of major news orgs just repeat Trump's lies and disinformation without noting that what he said is false should be the easiest problem in the world to solve, and yet it persists. Abject professional failure after abject professional failure.
"Axios has obtained a spreadsheet that's circulated through Republican circles on and off Capitol Hill—including at least one leadership office — that meticulously previews the investigations Democrats will likely launch if they flip the House."
The partial list via
@axios
:
Just catching up on a few hours worth of news and unless I misread something, it seems like approximately [checks notes] the entire Republican Party joined a [checks notes again] international conspiracy (???) to [checks notes one more time] defraud the United States?
When Twitter banned Trump I thought it was a face-saving move. But their rationale was oddly precise. Then Google and Apple banned Parler. Then Amazon kicked it off the open web. They’re not scared of boycotters. They’re scared their services are being used to organize an attack.
New:
@RepJasonCrow
’s office has released a readout of his conversation with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, which includes this—“Secretary McCarthy indicated that DOD is aware of further possible threats posed by would-be terrorists in the days up to and including Inauguration Day”
After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time.
Listen closely. She says “since the pandemic began in 2021.” The pandemic began in 2020. That isn’t a goof. It’s an intentional Orwellian lie. Trump loyalists keep inserting versions of it wherever they can.
Ilhan Omar: Stephen Miller is a white nationalist.
Overwhelming majority of U.S. Jews including members of Miller's own family: Yes it's true, he is a disgrace.
All of the white nationalists: how dare this Muslim contend that a Jew could be one of us.
I see that the head of the Farrakhan Fan Club,
@IlhanMN
, took a short break from spewing her usual anti-semitic bigotry today to accuse a Jewish man of being a “white nationalist” because she apparently has no shame.
Everyone who works in politics knows he and Republicans wish harm on the country under Democratic presidents, and even try to engineer it. But most reporters feel professionally obligated not to say this, so it’s helpful for to have Trump here saying it out loud.
“They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
If a real reporter at an outlet with real standards lied like this, they’d be at real risk of losing their job. On the right, this is generally considered a job well done.
Obama didn't actually mention Trump's name, but Trump and his friends at Fox knew the statement was about Trump because every official statement that's like "don't be a degenerate racist" is about Trump, and everyone knows it.
“Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook. President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of Control. Mass shootings were happening before the President even thought about running for Pres.”
@kilmeade
@foxandfriends
Right now,
@SpeakerRyan
is gearing up to temple his eyebrows, and confess that actually he didn’t have a chance to see the press conference, and he’s focused on a non-existent legislative agenda.
Schiff's response to the bottom-feeding bad faith of Republicans on his own committee calling on him to resign, starting at about 1:30, is outstanding.
1. Compel disclosure of Trump's tax returns.
2. Pass Mueller protection bill.
3. Remove Devin Nunes from HPSCI.
4. Pass censure resolution.
5. Subpoena his business records unless he liquidates his assets.
6. Impeach and remove.
“We are protecting the sanctity of life and the family” says president who had unprotected sex with a porn star right after his youngest son was born, and then paid her hush money so she wouldn’t blow up his presidential campaign in the final days.
If you want to stop school shootings, it’s not enough just to vent and march. It’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points
.
@marcorubio
congratulations on endorsing the Doral corruption just in time for Trump to reverse himself and humiliate you again. Look forward to you doing the exact same thing next time around.
"As a candidate, I promised that we would protect coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions and create new health care insurance options that would lower premiums. I have kept that promise,"
@realDonaldTrump
writes for
@usatodayopinion
.
If Dems thought like Republicans, a large group of Biden transition members would show up at HHS on Monday with cameras and reporters in tow to loudly demand full access to the building and transition materials so people don’t die unnecessarily of COVID. And they wouldn’t leave.
Impeach him. Warn witnesses they’ll be vulnerable to criminal contempt charges from a new DOJ as of January 20. Alternatively, do nothing and there will never be a smooth transition of power to a Democratic president, free of attempted theft, ever again.
Why is pretrial detention too harsh for your criminal campaign manager, but absolutely required for every parent at the border whose children you've taken away from them, you detestable crook?
Wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort, who has represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and many other top political people and campaigns. Didn’t know Manafort was the head of the Mob. What about Comey and Crooked Hillary and all of the others? Very unfair!
Wow. "North Korea issued a $2 million bill for the hospital care of comatose American Otto Warmbier...The main U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions passed down from President Trump."
At some point it starts too look like a transnational consortium of authoritarians saw value in having one of their own in control of the U.S. government, and found Trump to be a willing conspirator.
The Saudi and Emirati effort to make US democracy a subsidiary under Trump is hiding in plain sight and is more awkward than Russia given their longstanding investments in the US establishment.
The call was fine as far as I was concerned and also I raced over to the lawyers to report it immediately for reasons unrelated to crimes, of which I did not detect any. Also, I resigned from my prestigious job after four months, having weighed leaving for three of those months.
Morrison's position seems to be that the call was fine and yet he went to the NSC lawyers to talk about it and was worried how bad it would look if it leaked.
The big “scandal” about Obamacare was that Dems secured votes by including provisions (Cornhusker Kickback, etc.) that benefitted lawmakers *constituents*. Republicans have literally bought off their senators with cash.
Dems spent years trying to find a cheat code, a la “Crooked Hillary,” to sear negative impressions of the GOP into voters’ minds, and I love that it was a teacher, through years of experience with misfit children, who was like “have you tried ‘weird’?”
If anyone’s still inclined to
#bothsides
ANYTHING, they should have to explain why Trump and the GOP spent all day protesting and suing to stop vote counts where they’re ahead, while demanding that vote counts continue where they’re behind, while Dems just say count every vote.
Senator Lana Theis accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an attempt to marginalize me for standing up against her marginalizing the LGBTQ community...in a fundraising email, for herself.
Hate wins when people like me stand by and let it happen. I won't.
This will probably get glossed over, but Trump's basic proposition really was lay off me or I'll sabotage the country and make war abroad. It's a profound, extortionate betrayal of his oath.
Seems like the smart thing for Kavanaugh opponents to do now is spend a week driving home the fact that Kavanaugh lied his ass off about a ton of stuff, not just Ford. Make Republicans have to answer for those lies, as well as the assault allegations.
Incredible to me that this stuff only surfaces because the Biden campaign and media watchdog types tweet it out. To the extent it figures into campaign coverage at all (even pre-debate) it’s just ho-hum, in passing, nbd, etc.
Ever since centrists insisted on cleaving Build Back Better in half, the progressive position has been ‘ok you get your bill, we get ours.’ The centrists, in alignment with corporate interests, have been trying to figure out how to blow up the deal for weeks. All out in the open.
“This might be the that last time that you’re on the air, it’s probably the last time we’ll invite you on, are there any apologies you want to issue to anyone?”
A dream final question for a disgraced politician or operative. I hope U.S. anchors see this.
If Warnock goes into the runoff with 50 Dem seats locked in, it takes some of the heat off him and the race, but his victory remains crucial, even with a divided Congress, because it’ll give Senate Dem committee chairs subpoena power.
After spending 4 years spreading conspiracy theories about Benghazi, another four years engaging in a coverup of the Russia scandal, then trying to overturn the election, Republicans have pivoted shamelessly to pretending to care about unity. We should all laugh in their faces.
So first we learned that
@GOPChairwoman
Romney McDaniel fell ill and got instant access to a coronavirus test. Then we learned White House officials were pissed she didn't conceal her illness. Then we never learned the results of the test. Is that right?
Remember when Trump used his daily propaganda briefing to hawk hydrochloroquine, resulting in several deaths and possibly his own personal enrichment, then when it failed as a therapeutic he and his disinformation army just stopped talking about it and everyone moved on?