Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy on Monday morning issued an apology for his show having run with a since-retracted story falsely accusing Nashville’s Democratic mayor of engaging in a coronavirus cover-up, admitting that the mayor did not conceal information from the public as alleged.Last week, a supposed bombshell by a local Fox affiliate in Nashville set the conservative media ecosystem on fire. According to the report by Fox 17—a Sinclair-owned station—the mayor’s office allegedly covered up numbers that showed relatively low spread of COVID-19 in bars and restaurants. The clear implication of the story was that the city was hiding the data in order to justify its coronavirus lockdown orders on public businesses.The story, which focused on a selective misreading of emails, was quickly picked up by large right-wing digital outlets such as The Daily Wire and Breitbart and soon found its way to Fox News’ pro-Trump opinion shows. Tucker Carlson—who has become one of the network’s loudest coronavirus skeptics— kicked off his show on Thursday with the story, claiming the Fox 17 report was “conclusive proof” that Nashville officials hid key health stats “for no justifiable reason,” while explicitly calling for Mayor John Cooper’s impeachment.His Fox primetime colleague Laura Ingraham also jumped on the report, claiming it exposed “a sinister COVID cover-up,” comparing it to something “you’d expect from communist China” or “Soviet Russia.” The following morning, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade insisted the emails were proof that “they lied” while saying Cooper “has to resign yesterday.”Fox 17’s explosive report, however, was quickly and easily debunked by other media outlets. The data about the low number of cases at the time tied to bars and restaurants was disclosed at a July 2 press conference. A local Nashville reporter also published a story on the numbers back on August 4. Eventually, the station fully retracted the story.“In a segment that aired earlier this week, we incorrectly asserted that Mayor Cooper's office withheld COVID-19 data from the public, which implied that there had been a cover up,” the station said in a statement. “We want to clarify that we do not believe there was any cover-up, and we apologize for the error and oversight in our reporting.”“We continue to have questions about the level of transparency that the government showed to the restaurant and bar industry—whose livelihood was on the line,” the statement continued. “As journalists, we will continue to ask those questions and hold elected officials accountable.”> Here's Steve Doocy spending 30 seconds admitting the story they ran last week about a Nashville coronavirus "cover-up" was totally wrong. Fox had used it to demand the mayor's resignation and speculate that similar "cover-ups" are happening everywhere. https://t.co/sH2n25vabz pic.twitter.com/7iTbG2xl4C> > — Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) September 21, 2020In a brief standalone segment on Monday morning, Doocy addressed the retraction during the first hour of Fox & Friends.“We wanted to give you update on a story last week,” he noted. “On Friday, we reported on allegations that the mayor of Nashville had hidden coronavirus numbers. That was according to our local Nashville Fox affiliate.”“They have since retracted their story. And we now know the mayor’s office did apparently not conceal those numbers and did release them to the public and so this morning on this Monday we wanted to apologize for any confusion,” Doocy concluded.A Fox News spokesperson told The Daily Beast that both Carlson and Ingraham will also be addressing the retracted story on their programs Monday nightRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster made a recent comment that will surely leave believers of the ‘deep state’ wondering.
McMaster, during an interview with “60 minutes,” stated there is a group of people within the White House who believe they are saving the world “from the President.”
He believes there are three groups of people operating within the administration.
“There is certainly one group of people there who are there to serve the elected president and to serve the country,” said McMaster.
“I think there are other groups there though, as well, a second group that is there really, instead of providing options to the elected president, they really want to advance their narrow agendas,” he admitted.
The third group is one Raw Story defines as “secret members.”
Regarding competing groups in the West Wing, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster says there’s one group of advisors “who cast themselves in the role of saving the country and maybe the world from the president.” https://t.co/YBUCccl25vpic.twitter.com/w7UMrFBGBx
President Trump recently accused a “deep state” at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) trying to slow down the testing of COVID vaccines.
“The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics,” he tweeted weeks ago.
“Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!”
While McMaster contends there is a ‘deep state’ battling every administration, there hasn’t likely been quite at the level of those battling President Trump.
No. Mindless is having evidence and refusing to look or accept it. Mindless is seeing an impeachment process and allowing the MSM do all of YOUR homework. Mindless, is not believing in a deep state in 16, AND STILL BELIEVING NONE EXISTS IN 2020. #Landslide2020@realDonaldTrumphttps://t.co/QtOTLf73Dg
Recently released documents from the Department of Justice show multiple members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team that investigated the President engaged in some shady activity.
They “accidentally wiped” their phones after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) requested them.
Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has voted to authorize over three dozen subpoenas and depositions of Obama-era officials.
The officials – which include former FBI Director James Comey – were involved in the 2016 Russia investigation into the Trump campaign.
These seem like ‘deep state’ actors, some of who engaged in a cover-up.
Newly released DOJ records show that multiple top members of Mueller’s investigative team claimed to have “accidentally wiped” at least 15 (!) phones used during the anti-Trump investigation after the DOJ OIG asked for the devies to be handed over. https://t.co/VVUnfZVolmpic.twitter.com/p50PnoCBse
A Daily Beast article from 2018 parrots exactly what McMaster is saying, with some in the Justice Department practically admitting to their ‘deep state’ activities.
“We see ourselves as rebels,” one official told the Beast, laughing at the notion.
They added that a “senior official” in the anti-Trump movement who had written an anonymous New York Times op-ed was cause for celebration.
A separate official admitted actual celebrations took place after the ‘resistance’ op-ed was published.
“We even went around fist-bumping each other,” they said.
Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) have hinted impeachment would be considered as a weapon to halt President Trump from filling a Supreme Court vacancy.
The vacancy arose following the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday.
Trump has vowed to nominate an individual to fill her seat while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced the nominee “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
House Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and AOC (D-NY) demonstrated that they are in lockstep in trying to stop the Presidential’s Constitutional duty to select a replacement.
They’ve even gone so far as to wield impeachment – potentially – as a tool to accomplish their politically motivated goals.
I stand by what I said in Jan. 2019: Harry Reid & Chuck Schumer changed Senate rules to try and stack the courts for Obama. Now it’s coming back to haunt them as I predicted. I’m dead set on confirming @realDonaldTrump’s nominee. If you stand with me: https://t.co/MYF6qgyjdIpic.twitter.com/lsejlSs0QQ
Pelosi appeared in an interview with ABC News’ “This Week,” where the topic of impeachment was broached by former Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos.
Stephanopoulos discussed impeaching either President Trump or Attorney General William Barr.
“You and the House could move to impeach President Trump or Attorney General Barr as a way of stalling and preventing the Senate from acting on this nomination,” he suggested.
“We have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now, but the fact is we have a big challenge in our country,” Pelosi replied.
She added, “This president has threatened to not even accept the results of the election.”
When questioned again Pelosi claimed her oath to the Constitution would compel her to use every tool at her disposal.
“We have a responsibility. We take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” she continued.
“We have a responsibility to meet the needs of the American people.”
Pelosi concluded: “When we weigh the equities of protecting our democracy, it requires us to use every arrow in our quiver.”
UNHINGED: Former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos floats impeaching @realDonaldTrump or AG Bill Barr to Nancy Pelosi to prevent Trump from filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Pelosi: “We have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss…” pic.twitter.com/YHLx6j0T13
If you thought Pelosi’s response was unhinged, you needn’t point to any further proof than the fact that AOC is on board with the idea.
Yes, the former bartender believes impeachment – a process reserved for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ – is a viable option.
“Would you be in support of potentially reviewing talks of impeachment hearings either against the attorney general or the president?” a reporter asked.
“These are procedures and decisions that are largely up to House Democratic leadership,” she deferred.
“But I believe that also we must consider, again, all of the tools available to our disposal, and that all of these options should be entertained and on the table.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is open to impeaching @realDonaldTrump to stop him from filling the Supreme Court vacancy.
“We must consider, again, all of the tools available to our disposal & that all of these options should be entertained & on the table.”
President Trump on Monday claimed he would win the presidential election if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually attempted to use impeachment as an option to block his eventual Supreme Court nominee from being confirmed to the seat vacated by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the House “must consider” all options to block the Trump administration from pushing through a nominee to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including possibly seeking the impeachment of President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr.
I can’t possibly add to the accolades already bestowed the most-beloved Supreme Court justice in eons. So I’ll simply revisit some of her own words as we all try to get our bearings on this Monday morning:
"When I'm sometimes asked 'When will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]?' and I say 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."
"If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be."
Continued…
RBG Cont’d
"Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say my colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way, but the greatest dissents do become court opinions."
4evuh.
“I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”
“Every constitution written since the end of World War II includes a provision that men and women are citizens of equal stature. Ours does not.”
"The number of women who have come forward as a result of the MeToo movement has been astonishing. My hope is not just that it is here to stay, but that it is as effective for the woman who works as a maid in a hotel as it is for Hollywood stars."
“Throwing out [the Voting Rights Act] when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Baby RBG survives...
“The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control.”
“All of the incentives, all of the benefits marriage affords would still be available. So you’re not taking away anything from heterosexual couples. They would have the very same incentive to marry, all the benefits that come with marriage that they do now.”
"I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has."
I don’t think that'll be a problem, ma'am. See you upstairs.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, September 21, 2020
Note: SPOILER ALERT—"By the Numbers" comes after this note.
Number of the 298 women running for the U.S. House this year (a record) who are Democrats: 204
Percent chance that Ruth Bader Ginsburg's childhood nickname was Kiki, because her older sister said she was "a kicky baby": 100%
Year during which Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Law Reporter, the first law journal in the U.S. to focus exclusively on women's rights: 1970
Length of volume 1 of President Barack Obama's memoir A Promised Land, which will be released on November 17th and cover the years 2008-2011: 768 pages
Number of cargo ships that will be needed to deliver them because the first printing of the book is so large, according to The New York Times: 3
Years since The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted as of last Saturday: 50
CHEERS to citizens in action. A pair of fresh signs that the left is energized and pissed off, both before and after the passing of RBG:
FundraisingAs the political reality of Ginsburg’s passing sank in, the ticker that keeps track of donations soared on ActBlue, the non-profit operation that provides a tool for left-leaning activists to raise money for political candidates and issues. … The latest tally puts it at $56 million.
Early voters lined up as far as the eye can see in Loudoun County, Virginia.
Early VotingLines of voters stretched from polling places in Virginia and Minnesota as early voting started in four states, the first of the 2020 presidential election. The longest lines were found in Virginia, where voters previously needed a reason to cast an early ballot. In the state's Fairfax County, where reports showed lines stretching for hours, election workers scrambled to open an additional voting room at the county government centre. … South Dakota and Wyoming also saw their first day of early voting on Friday.
Another good omen: when Stephen Colbert introduced his super-simple BetterKnowABallotsite last week to help his liberal audience get early voting info for their state, it was hit so hard it crashed. He has since added more gerbils to the wheel. No doubt funded by George Soros.
JEERS to keeping track of America’s fugliest numbers. While Trump and McConnell plot and scheme to ram an America-killing Supreme Court nominee through the Senate, the mighty Covid-19 Wurlitzer plays on (31 million cases around the globe now, with over 20 percent of them in the U.S.). Our Monday tradition of maintaining a benchmark of the awfulness for the C&J historical record continues. Let’scheck the most depressing tote board in the world as our death toll now approaches the population of America’s 111th-largest city Rochester, New York:
20 weeks ago: 1.2 million confirmed cases. 69,000 deaths.
10 weeks ago: 3.4 million confirmed cases, 138,000 deaths
5 weeks ago: 5.5 million confirmed cases, 173,000 deaths
This morning: 7 million confirmed cases, 204,000deaths
And in other covid news, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner has some comforting words for Americans suffering during the coronavirus pandemic: "That's their problem." A real chip off the ol' father-in-law.
CHEERS to Year 5781. Happy New Year! Rosh Hashanah rolled in Friday night, and C&J wishes all of our Jewish readers a hearty "Shana Tova!" minus the Times Square ball drop:
The only similarity between the Jewish New Year and the secular one is:
Many people use the New Year as a time to make "resolutions." Likewise, the Jewish New Year is a time to begin looking back at the mistakes of the past year and planning the changes to be made in the new year. …
Rosh Hashana begins a 10 day period, known as Aseret Ymay Tshuva, (Ten Days of Repentance) or Yomim Nora'im (High Holy days). These ten days that end with Yom Kippur, are a time for Tshuva (repentance), Tefilla (prayer) and Tzedaka (charity).
Even though the C&J household is just a run-'o-the-mill lapsed-Episcopalian/lapsed-Catholic domicile, we still took a moment to blow a ram's horn outside our neighbor's bedroom window at 3am. We figured, why break with our normal routine just because it's Rosh Hashanah?
JEERS to evil people doing evil deeds to evil people. Ruh roh:
A package containing the poison ricin and addressed to President Donald Trump was intercepted by law enforcement earlier this week, according to two law enforcement officials. Two tests were done to confirm the presence of ricin. All mail for the White House is sorted and screened at an offsite facility before reaching the White House.
And awaaay we go…
Boy, Postmaster Louis DeJoy must be pissed. I mean, a piece of mail actually got sorted? How did that happen??? Ha ha!!!
Officials knew something was wrong when the envelope was addressed "To President Trump with Love." Pow!!!
If they really wanted to put his body in a coma, they should've sent him a plate of vegetables. Zing!!!
Since ricin sounds like "rice," Trump is now calling it "the China powder." Ba-dum-boom!!!
An attempted poisoning? Golly, I wonder what Trump did to piss off Putin. Hey-O!!!
I'll be here all week. I suggest you turn and run. Run like the wind.
CHEERS to filling in for your boss. 139 years ago this week, in 1881, Chester Alan Arthur of the gilded and foppish Republican party was sworn in as the 21st president of the United States, following the unexpected meeting of an assassin's bullet and James Garfield's spine. (Or, more accurately, Garfield’s spine and his medical team’s unwashed hands.)
Arthur (Official White House photo)
The Chicago Tribune wrote of Arthur what it could easily be writing today about our current president: "It requires a great deal for him to get to his desk and begin the dispatch of business. Great questions of public policy bore him. No President was ever so much given to procrastination as he is." In Arthur’s defense, he suffered from an energy-robbing condition called Bright’s Disease, and he died of it shortly after leaving the White House. Trump, on the other hand, suffers from an even worse condition. It’s called Being Donald Trump Disease.
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 21, 2010
CHEERS to a pleasant afternoon under the oaks. Yesterday Portland, Maine became even more of the center of the universe than it usually is when Lady Gaga, in a spur-of-the-moment decision, pulled up in a giant bus after spending a night on the road and opened a can of 'Don't Ask, Don’t Tell' whupass on Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (with some nice jabs at John McCain thrown in for good measure):
"Doesn't 'don't ask, don't tell' seem to be backwards? Doesn't it seem to you we should send home the prejudiced—the straight soldier who hates the gay soldier, whose performance is affected because he is homophobic? He holds and harbors hate and he gets to stay and fight for our country. Gay soldiers, who harbor no hate, no phobia, are sent home.
I'd like to propose a new law: a law that sends home the soldier that has the problem. Our new law is called 'If you don't like it, go home.'"
Meanwhile here's what today's cloture vote is about: it doesn't repeal 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,' it simply allows debate to begin, but not before 30 hours pass during which everybody stands around the senate with their finger up their butt, and if they get 60 votes they’ll need another 50 votes, and in the end, Congress still won’t be repealing the policy—they'll just be turning over the authority for repealing it from Congress to the president, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of Defense. Clear? (And people wonder why the public doesn't have a clue how Washington works.)
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And just one more…
CHEERS to America's favorite literary boogeyman. 73 skulls go on the birthday cake of most-famous-Mainer Stephen King, born September 21, 1947 in Portland. King is an unabashed Democrat (including actively helping dislodge Susan Collins from her perch) who isn't afraid to speak his mind, which he occasionally does by blowing up twitter:
» 2018: IF Susan Collins votes to confirm Kavanaugh, and IF she runs for re-election—two big ifs—she will be defeated. It would be unwise for anyone to mistake how angry most Americans are at the way this is being railroaded through.
» 2019: Let's remember that Susan Collins voted to confirm frat party boy Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court!
» 2020: Collins: FOR Kavanaugh. AGAINST impeachment. Bipartisan? Really? Please.
“Molly, aka the Thing of Evil, has decided that Trump is just a bit TOO evil. She is supporting Joe Biden. Because, she barks, ’He's the lesser of two evils, and at debate time I expect him to BITE Trump.’"
» Even if you're a supporter, you must see by now that if Donald Trump was your uncle, the family would be discussing how to gently take away his car keys.
» Just want to say that I've known several Karens in my lifetime who were perfectly nice and socially conscious and cool to animals and wear masks in Walmart.
» A priest, a minster, and a rabbit walk into a bar. The rabbit says, "I think I'm a typo."
» Tucker Carlson is your basic white, well-fed, complacent and entitled fuckdoodle.
» Ranch dressing is weird, and oddly snotlike, don't you think? Or is it just me?
» I believe—you may prove me wrong—that "Prove It All Night" is the only love song in history to contain the word "dynamo."
» I'd like to see a day when there was no news. None. Zilch. Zip. I'd turn on CNN and Brooke Baldwin would say, "Nothing happened today, so we're going to show a bunch of rock videos."
Today's special in the C&J watering hole, as always: half-off Redrum and Cokes.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
'It's a first': Oldest human footprints in Arabian peninsula point to route out of Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool
There is no point in accusing Republican senators of hypocrisy. Absolutely none. Only hours after the death of Supreme Court icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Republicans—who had previously gnashed their teeth at the audacity of the suggestion that the nation's first nonwhite president had the constitutional power to make nominations to the court at any point during the final year of his term—began declaring that this time around, obviously that new rule no longer applies. And obviously the president of their own party, impeached and transparently corrupt, must be granted a scrambling court even as voters line up to cast early ballots.
Hypocrisy implies there’s a previous ideology being upset; there wasn't one, and isn't one, and no serious politics-watcher ever thought otherwise. The principle being upheld by Sen. Mitch McConnell and clan then and now was more simple: Retain power using all available tools, and deny the opposition power using all available tools. There is no "ideology" inside the modern conservative movement, either before Trump's arrival or afterwards, that can survive its first brush with expediency. Each argument lasts only as long as the soundbites require and will be replaced with a new one immediately, without hesitation, when required.
Expediency as ideology is not a senate-only device. Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia practiced it with aplomb, often resulting in lawyers and courts using his past words against him in new cases—a futile gesture. Of his "originalist," "textualist," or "institutionalist" allies, the same approach is used by All Of Them.
It's not hypocrisy if the principle all along was "whatever best increases power." And it is irrelevant if it is.
The relevant part is that it is accomplished by lying. The practitioners claim some bold new notion of how the world should work, and it is an absolute, baldfaced, bullshit-laden public lie. Those who watch McConnell or Sen. Lindsey Graham in their public appearances can easily identify, at this point, the schtick that makes up their entire persona.
They look the American public in the eye, and they simply lie to them.
“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination." pic.twitter.com/quD1K5j9pz
It was a lie from the moment he uttered it, and there was not a person in the room who didn’t know it from the outset. The movement is devoted to lying as governing principle. It works because there are countless channels through which those lies can be disseminated, and amplified, and praised. It will continue for as long as it works.
Over and over. About everything, all the time. The Moscow Turtle has never cried a sincere tear in his life, but according to him all Democratic actions are Devastation, all Republican actions are Sorrowfully Required Due To Democratic Existence, and the rest is puppet show. Graham is superb at being outraged in showy defense of the outrageous. Sen. Marco Rubio's usual deployed device is to respond to each act of corruption or depravity with a Bible verse, typically as non sequitur, and wiping his hands of the rest of it. Sen. Susan Collins is forever concerned by gross incompetence or criminality within her movement, and remains equally as concerned the next time around, and will make good on that "concern" exactly zero times as she votes to enable each concerning act one-by-one-by-one.
It's not hypocrisy. They're just liars. Conservatism is a movement of fictions, a series of nonsense falsehoods deployed like a squid ejects ink. Nobody asks the squid whether it stands by the cloud ejaculated in the last crisis. It would be pointless. The squid doesn't remember, and can't tell you.
It is not that the nation is run by a movement of "hypocrites." The nation is run by a collection of liars.
Propagandists.
Those who issue false statements and make false claims relentlessly in order to deceive the public, or to stir their base into new heights of feverishness, or—and this is rather more to the point in this particular year—to justify and endorse criminality in service to the movement. Incompetence, if in service to the movement. A quarter million deaths, if in service to the movement.
The lies are consequential. McConnell and his allies lied their way through the impeachment of a president, simply insisting that the evidence was not evidence and the testimony not testimony. The movement has lied its way through a pandemic, turning even the most rote of pandemic safety precautions—masks, even—into conspiracies and partisan litmus tests.
When Michael Caputo and his aides insisted that children were nearly immune to the virus and could not spread it, it was not ideology. It was a lie meant to keep more of the "economy" open even if the more pertinent metric—deaths—was multiplied.
When the movement claims "antifa"—a group that does not actually exist—is behind police reform protests, it is a lie. It is propaganda intended purely to discredit protestors, and better facilitate state and militia violence against them.
When Sen. Ron Johnson pipelines the work of known Russian operatives into his committee to declare that he has discovered very serious doings, doings that suggest his opponents are secretly corrupt in ways no American law enforcement has ever been able to find, he is fully aware of his own actions. He is not stupid.
When Attorney General William Barr releases a document that grossly undermines a report on Russian election interference that benefited his party, and follows up by launching conspiracy after conspiracy all premised on the notion that it is American law enforcement that is corrupt for going after Republican targets, he is lying to the public for the sake of the party.
The movement ofRepublicanism is propagandistic in nature. Lies are deployed towards political ends. All involved know they are lies. All involved spread the lies willingly. Fox News exists as propaganda factory. Donald Trump exists as propaganda factory. McConnell exists as propaganda factory. The sitting attorney general, the president's odd private lawyer—the only through line is relentless lying to the public about everything, all the time, for power.
There's no textualist in conservatism. Nonsense about precedents and institutions is barely even given lip service. There are no "deficit hawks," or "small government" idealism. None of those things have survived. The only takeaway from White House press briefings is a single, fundamental point: These are today's lies. If you don't like them, there will be others tomorrow.
There is a word for all of this. Declaring that your leaders are allowed to commit crimes while demanding the arrest of enemies on false charges; the rejection of facts and the explicit declaration that the free press is an enemy of the people for presenting information that conflicts with the state's own preferred interpretations; the altering and realtering of supposed norms so that the opposition is, invariably, declared to be out of control in their requests, so out of control that it is now necessary to alter the rules of government to properly constrain them:
It is authoritarianism. The party is a propaganda movement devoted only to self-preservation. There is not a stitch of prior ideological principle that will survive from 2016 to 2020—or from 2018 on a Monday to 2018 on a Tuesday. The rules are whatever they need to be to suppress the movement's perceived enemies. Not merely for a desperately needed Supreme Court seat, but for the now-existential election and all its myriad details.
Democrats are turning up the heat on William Barr, accusing the attorney general of trying to influence the November presidential election and threatening impeachment after he gave a fiery speech last week lambasting career federal prosecutors.
The chairs of four House committees urged the Justice Department's internal watchdog to open ...
Former independent counsel Ken Starr reflects on the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Democratic threats.
