In its coverage of the story of the leaks about the Democratic National Committee and Bernie Sanders, the Washington Post has covered many angles, including the possible preference of Russia for Mr. Trump being a factor in the leaks. However, the WaPo has had no coverage of one interesting fact to emerge, which is the cozy relationship between two of its prominent staffers and the DNC. Even if you think that no journalistic ethical boundaries were crossed, just the tone of the relationship is smarmy. It makes me want to say to the journalists and the Democratic staffers, “Get a room.”
As for the DNC itself, I am reminded of Richard Nixon’s Committee to RE-Elect the President, which went by the appropriate acronym, CREEP. Given the dirty tricks that the DNC contemplated against Mr. Sanders, imagine what they have been doing to Republicans.
UPDATE: It appears to me that the Post is (a) really going out of the way to stress the Russia angle and (b) that this is probably in coordination with the DNC. But I never thought that linking in the public’s mind the words “Russia,” “email,” and “Clinton” was a good plan for the Democrats. Mr. Trump seems to agree.
My sense was the opposite with the Wikileaks is if this is the most embarrassing stuff on thousands of e-mails, then this is fairly mild stuff. Notice the dirty tricks to Bernie Sanders went correctly went nowhere and yes the press coordination is a little eye-rolling here.
I would be more concerned that somebody are hacking private e-mails here. I sure you would defend any company with thousands of e-mail and a few embarrassing turn up.
According to your hypothetical, defend a firm doing their best against a corrupt progressive press? Of course.
I’ve written some of those embarrassing e-mails. When you do a great job designing something you test it. Some tests aren’t great. It is part of being awesome, but you wouldn’t want the jerks at 20/20 to get hold of them and let their house lawyer read them while pretending to be an objective observer.
Also, you’d probably not find many firms with high-level e-mails (not low-level griping) saying “This is our key function, let’s do the opposite while pretending we are doing it.”
And if you did find such e-mails, and showed it wasn’t the investigative journalists fabricating, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find “us” defending them.
There are touchstones like when a morning show edits a 9/11 call to promote a racial narrative, or an evening show where they strap model rocket motors to gas tanks (if they ever did any actual research they’d know to just keep repeating the test until they got positive results 😉 ). These touchstones are more than just finding a bad e-mail here and there. They poison the well. When your product is truth, you better protect that.
Of course, I don’t like any media manipulating the story for a narrative. I figure in the long run you end losing, get caught, and many times get fired like Dan Rather. At this point, people don’t trust CBS like they once did. I just learn to ignore that media!
And unfortunately everybody has written embarrassing e-mails and I follow the advise that every e-mail could go on front of the NYT. So I will tone down the language.
It isn’t so much about them fabricating. And they move on to the next narrative so fast that nobody loses their job.
A good example was when Ben Carson “lied” about getting a scholarship to West Point. You don’t report that Ben Carson lied, you report that person X Saif he lied. Then you get off the hook.
That is why with Trump there are so many stories about McCain slams Trump’s comments in response to Khan, but it is hard to figure out what wad said before someone is already slamming him for the next thing.
If someone hacking private emails is the concerned here, we should be very concerned that a Secretary of State chose to expose a vital government organization to this risk by choosing to locate her server at the technological equivalent of her “garage” instead of under strict government protection. This may indeed be the most important angle of this otherwise connected story.
Here’s one aspect of those Wikileak exchanges that I’ve not seen addressed by the mainstream media: In discussing whether the DNC should question Sanders’ Jewishness or lack of religion, one response read:
“True, but the Chair has been advised not to engage. So we’ll have to leave it alone.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/hacked-emails-show-democratic-party-hostility-sanders-40822731
One would like to know who, exactly, was advising the Chair of the DNC what or what not to do in an ostensibly fair primary election between two competing candidates. The only reasonable conclusion I can come up with is that Wasserman-Schultz was taking orders from the Clinton Camp.
If someone has a more reasonable interpretation, I’d love to hear it.
It strikes me the Chair made a reasonable decision here probably for a variety of reasons. Given that in May there was a Democratic concern that:
1) Trump wrapped up the nomination in early May, it gave him more time to run against HRC. They did not like HRC having to run against Trump and Bernie at the same time.
2) HRC had a 200+ delegate lead in May and there was no way Bernie could win enough in June to cover that lead. (Also the Primaries left were not favorable to Bernie.)
3) Didn’t Bernie say yes to having a debate with Trump around this time? That would have 2 hours of complaining about HRC.
mmmkay, but…
1) Trump had to beat umpteen people
2) Hillary got a massive head start. Largely Bernie’s relative success was BECAUSE otherwise there would have been no competition.
3) But did he do this because he felt he wasn’t getting a fair deal from the DNC?
The point is that the Chair did not make any decision. The e-mail strongly suggests she was taking orders from someone. Who?
You do recognise the difference, I hope, between
“has advised” and “has been advised”?
So it was HRC who advised that line of attack was bad idea? Well, that sounds like the opposite of Richard Nixon Creep in which you are sensing a victory and let go negative attacks that could backfire.
The one thing I never understood about Richard Nixon in 1972 was the Democrats were running an awful primary and were easy targets. They were self-destructing anyway.
Well, a lot of the Democratic self destruction was partially engineered by Nixon. When one candidate found that someone had swapped the itinerary given to their pilot and that they were in the wrong county they’d assume it was one of their rivals for the nomination and get angry. But really it was Nixon’s dirty tricks division.
“So it was HRC who advised that line of attack was bad idea?”
Exactly. Thanks for confirming that HRC has been telling the DNC Chair what to do all along. Is that her job? I’m not completely sure that her nixing this particular dirty trick is a positive in the context of what appears to be inappropriate interference and control by one of the competing candidates –importantly, neither of whom were incumbent–for the party nomination. The fact that she was in on the idea strongly suggests to me that the whole thing was rigged from the start.
And, setting up Nixon as a comparison isn’t exactly relevant and even if it were, it sets the standard pretty low. Are we to forgive now everything that does not live up to the standard of Watergate?
One of Trump’s big insights is that he understands the level of distrust that has grown in the electorate in regards to the mass media. It is the key to what some have described as his Teflon defense, and he activates that defense by never backing down.
Right now, as I write, he is getting massively attacked over the Khan incident, but he refuses to retreat, and I predict that as this continues over the next week, you will see the Clinton campaign and its surrogates drawn into more and more ridiculous arguments about how Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. I used to think Trump was an idiot, but I now see how he plays the media against the rest of the country.
Funny I see the opposite…That the goal of the Clinton campaign is find surrogates to troll Trump into saying something controversial. Be it Mark Cuban, Michael Bloomberg, Khan family, etc. while they run a fairly positive campaign. My guess they won’t continue pushing the Khan controversy and allowing Trump’s style to create his own problems. Anyway once the Khan dies down they have loads of other Trump statements to troll him on. If Trump made a reasonable statement about the Khan family and let it go, they would have disappeared.
Maybe you’re both right.
The question is whether at some point will the critics be right? Will Trump’s comments ultimately start losing him more support than he gains.
As late as the flap over Russia, the media is still jumping their own shark. Trump did not ask Russia to hack Clinton.
I haven’t looked into the Khan details yet, but I fully expect the media to be wrong again. My first clue is McCain blasting Trump.
My message to the media: Try the truth. It might actually work.
I just realized I’m assuming they have a political agenda.
I think they do, but their first agenda is page clicks.
So, is Trump a skilled troll, or are he and the media simply locked in a feedback loop that the media can’t get out of and Trump simply stumbled into?
So, is Trump a skilled troll, or are he and the media simply locked in a feedback loop.
Absolutely true except, this feedback loop was successful in the Primary. However, it appears to be a problem in the general election where:
1) Your opponent does not have other candidates to contend with. The problem with the 16 other R candidates is they all felt tangling with Trump would end their campaign and help their opponents. Early in the primary Jeb, Rubio, Cruz, Christie, and Kasich were all attacking each other and not Trump. It was real Prisoner Dilemma stuff.
2) The reaction in the general is louder.
3) For all HRC problems, she does run a very good campaign. And with such national exposure for 24 years, she is remained unfazed by Trump which is something none of the other R candidates did.
I’m not sure Clinton is phased by anything, but I will be looking for flashes of rage to corroborate my theory that she has psychopath traits. YMMV.
Regardless, Trump can kind of pivot, or the coverage can pivot around him. Who voters think Clinto is I think is fairly well baked in the cake.