Funny this, certain folks not talking about it? Because Team Trump Treason Tax Cheat is the kind of guy to go on legitimate record as injecting 10 million of his own money into his campaign, straight up and stand up guy that he is?
So they're pushing the Durham report back to after the election (spoiler alert--there's not a whole lot there) and now they quietly announce they found no evidence of wrong doing regarding the masking nonsense?
Where art thou, devout Trumpists? You, who were clinging to these conspiracies to swing the election? Why so silent? @BS44325 @RoleModelsinBlood31
This is faaaar from over, we all know that. Unlike democrats, republicans hold these things close to the chest and don’t leak (even falsities) to the media to “help” them. His investigation has gotten much bigger than was originally expected, that much is obvious.
If I was leading this investigation, I would want to run those down before I started to “show my cards” to my targets by making indictments public. I expect when an indictment is filed — and I believe one will be filed — it will include an extraordinarily detailed conspiracy count — maybe more than one conspiracy count — laying out the evidence against named and unnamed co-conspirators. A conspiracy charge includes a section describing the “manner and means” of the conspiracy — how the group planned and executed the objectives of the conspiracy — and a lengthy factual statement of the “overt acts” committed by individual co-conspirators “in furtherance of the objectives” of the conspiracy.
To be legally sufficient, an indictment only needs to describe one overt act. Historically there was a “practice” of minimizing the number of overt acts set forth in the indictment so as to not provide more information to the defense than the law required. In the past couple decades the practice has changed, and federal prosecutors now draft what are called “speaking indictments” which are sometimes wildly “over-inclusive” in describing the overt acts. The reason for doing this is the indictment is a “public record”, and anything in the indictment can be discussed in a press release or at a press conference announcing the case. A classic example of this was the Troll Farm and Russian GRU indictments announced by the Special Counsel’s Office.
They have all learned how the democrats operate, and it is to lie, cheat, and use any means necessary to attain political power: the US media, foreign assets, their own FBI, DOJ, etc. republicans are much smarter at this game, and we’ll see indictments come
December or early January, just before the inauguration of Trump.
You really should cite your sources. Maybe provide a link?
To you? Lmao, you’re the biggest clown shoe here, and that’s saying a lot, seeing as this is the most misinformed “political” discussion group I tread! Pee-tape? Russia? I owe you nothing, fool. I told you all along.
I only just scratched the surface in this pathetic echo chamber this last hour, but idiots here are talking about “right wing” dudes involved in the MI kidnapping? Jesus Christ you fools lap up everything you’re told. It’s already come out that one of the guys was a BLM activist who denounced Trump in videos in front of an anarchist flag of all things. didn’t take long to look that up, you just have to finally acknowledge that the candy you’ve been sucking on has been fed to you like a baby because you slurp it all up without question. Another of the goons? Pardoned by DE governor a few years back, only to return to attempt a shitty plot to kidnap someone. These weren’t right wingers, they were boogaloos, who may as well be left wing since their anti-gov’t beliefs fall more in line with Antifa and BLM than anyone on the right who supports their gov’t/country and doesn’t want to overthrow it.
i haven’t seen it yet, but what kind of spun filth is floating around this forum about the “security” clown in Denver who shot and killed the conservative hat maker at the march? You realize he was far left? Again, apologies if it’s been covered, but holy shit you all are so far off base with reality and just spoon fed anti-govt, anti-country bile that I just have to assume you’ve been fed it again with that news.
"every single person that works for gov't is your enemy". Okay fine, he's a militia man. That doesn't make him left wing. He planned to abduct Whitmer and Northam, two Democratic governors. These are the same jokers that invaded the State house in Michigan. You think they vote Democrat or something?
Didn’t say that. I said their views more align with anti-govt. to say they’re white supramacists it right wing is just as untruthful. They’re anarchists, whichever wing you want them on is your choice.
Do you think the news that Whitmer was the target of an abduction helped or hurt Trump's cause in Michigan?
Neither. Just like a Bernie Bro shooting up a baseball field full of Republicans makes no difference.
This is big local news in Michigan, not happening in DC. You'll see another little bump or solidified D numbers in the polls in Michigan coming up. Then you'll start seeing Trump pulling ads, if that hasn't already happened.
Except John James is now only running a point behind Peters. The “decides” have decided and this shit won’t move them. Trump voters get that these bastards aren’t Trump people. Biden voters will claim they are regardless. The “middle” if they still exist might hate the insanity but won’t make there end decision based on the actions of domestic terrorists. My understanding is that Americans are made of sterner stuff.
I'm sorry, you must not understand America middle/suburbia. If you think for one minute that women and mothers in this country are ambivalent about militias or people walking around the streets with AR's and camos, you're crazy. And then suburban women hear about a plan by these idiots to abduct the female democratic governor? Yeah, no. It's not a wash for Trump.
You're cherry picking polls a bit here. I think it's tight, but Peters has a consistent lead. You can throw out Trafalgar. I generally think you can throw out any poll less than 1000 as well, so I don't know how useful any of these are.
Ummm. Ok. Throw out any poll with less than 1000. Which leaves you with CBS and Trafalgar. Peters +3 to a tie. Basically margin of error race. Either way your suburban women ain’t dumb. They know these anarchists aren’t Trump voters while antifa are Biden voters. Pretty sure they can figure out on their own who to vote for...which like I said may not be Trump...but it won’t be this issue that sways them. It’s the 2016 voters who stayed home the dems need to move in Michigan because the ones who voted Trump ain’t switching. It’s too bad they refuse to knock on doors.
So they're pushing the Durham report back to after the election (spoiler alert--there's not a whole lot there) and now they quietly announce they found no evidence of wrong doing regarding the masking nonsense?
Where art thou, devout Trumpists? You, who were clinging to these conspiracies to swing the election? Why so silent? @BS44325 @RoleModelsinBlood31
This is faaaar from over, we all know that. Unlike democrats, republicans hold these things close to the chest and don’t leak (even falsities) to the media to “help” them. His investigation has gotten much bigger than was originally expected, that much is obvious.
If I was leading this investigation, I would want to run those down before I started to “show my cards” to my targets by making indictments public. I expect when an indictment is filed — and I believe one will be filed — it will include an extraordinarily detailed conspiracy count — maybe more than one conspiracy count — laying out the evidence against named and unnamed co-conspirators. A conspiracy charge includes a section describing the “manner and means” of the conspiracy — how the group planned and executed the objectives of the conspiracy — and a lengthy factual statement of the “overt acts” committed by individual co-conspirators “in furtherance of the objectives” of the conspiracy.
To be legally sufficient, an indictment only needs to describe one overt act. Historically there was a “practice” of minimizing the number of overt acts set forth in the indictment so as to not provide more information to the defense than the law required. In the past couple decades the practice has changed, and federal prosecutors now draft what are called “speaking indictments” which are sometimes wildly “over-inclusive” in describing the overt acts. The reason for doing this is the indictment is a “public record”, and anything in the indictment can be discussed in a press release or at a press conference announcing the case. A classic example of this was the Troll Farm and Russian GRU indictments announced by the Special Counsel’s Office.
They have all learned how the democrats operate, and it is to lie, cheat, and use any means necessary to attain political power: the US media, foreign assets, their own FBI, DOJ, etc. republicans are much smarter at this game, and we’ll see indictments come
December or early January, just before the inauguration of Trump.
You really should cite your sources. Maybe provide a link?
To you? Lmao, you’re the biggest clown shoe here, and that’s saying a lot, seeing as this is the most misinformed “political” discussion group I tread! Pee-tape? Russia? I owe you nothing, fool. I told you all along.
I only just scratched the surface in this pathetic echo chamber this last hour, but idiots here are talking about “right wing” dudes involved in the MI kidnapping? Jesus Christ you fools lap up everything you’re told. It’s already come out that one of the guys was a BLM activist who denounced Trump in videos in front of an anarchist flag of all things. didn’t take long to look that up, you just have to finally acknowledge that the candy you’ve been sucking on has been fed to you like a baby because you slurp it all up without question. Another of the goons? Pardoned by DE governor a few years back, only to return to attempt a shitty plot to kidnap someone. These weren’t right wingers, they were boogaloos, who may as well be left wing since their anti-gov’t beliefs fall more in line with Antifa and BLM than anyone on the right who supports their gov’t/country and doesn’t want to overthrow it.
i haven’t seen it yet, but what kind of spun filth is floating around this forum about the “security” clown in Denver who shot and killed the conservative hat maker at the march? You realize he was far left? Again, apologies if it’s been covered, but holy shit you all are so far off base with reality and just spoon fed anti-govt, anti-country bile that I just have to assume you’ve been fed it again with that news.
"every single person that works for gov't is your enemy". Okay fine, he's a militia man. That doesn't make him left wing. He planned to abduct Whitmer and Northam, two Democratic governors. These are the same jokers that invaded the State house in Michigan. You think they vote Democrat or something?
Didn’t say that. I said their views more align with anti-govt. to say they’re white supramacists it right wing is just as untruthful. They’re anarchists, whichever wing you want them on is your choice.
Do you think the news that Whitmer was the target of an abduction helped or hurt Trump's cause in Michigan?
Neither. Just like a Bernie Bro shooting up a baseball field full of Republicans makes no difference.
This is big local news in Michigan, not happening in DC. You'll see another little bump or solidified D numbers in the polls in Michigan coming up. Then you'll start seeing Trump pulling ads, if that hasn't already happened.
Except John James is now only running a point behind Peters. The “decides” have decided and this shit won’t move them. Trump voters get that these bastards aren’t Trump people. Biden voters will claim they are regardless. The “middle” if they still exist might hate the insanity but won’t make there end decision based on the actions of domestic terrorists. My understanding is that Americans are made of sterner stuff.
I'm sorry, you must not understand America middle/suburbia. If you think for one minute that women and mothers in this country are ambivalent about militias or people walking around the streets with AR's and camos, you're crazy. And then suburban women hear about a plan by these idiots to abduct the female democratic governor? Yeah, no. It's not a wash for Trump.
You're cherry picking polls a bit here. I think it's tight, but Peters has a consistent lead. You can throw out Trafalgar. I generally think you can throw out any poll less than 1000 as well, so I don't know how useful any of these are.
Ummm. Ok. Throw out any poll with less than 1000. Which leaves you with CBS and Trafalgar. Peters +3 to a tie. Basically margin of error race. Either way your suburban women ain’t dumb. They know these anarchists aren’t Trump voters while antifa are Biden voters. Pretty sure they can figure out on their own who to vote for...which like I said may not be Trump...but it won’t be this issue that sways them. It’s the 2016 voters who stayed home the dems need to move in Michigan because the ones who voted Trump ain’t switching. It’s too bad they refuse to knock on doors.
1200 likely voters. Biden also up 11. Good times.
1200 LV is a good sample. Harris also leans right.
So they're pushing the Durham report back to after the election (spoiler alert--there's not a whole lot there) and now they quietly announce they found no evidence of wrong doing regarding the masking nonsense?
Where art thou, devout Trumpists? You, who were clinging to these conspiracies to swing the election? Why so silent? @BS44325 @RoleModelsinBlood31
This is faaaar from over, we all know that. Unlike democrats, republicans hold these things close to the chest and don’t leak (even falsities) to the media to “help” them. His investigation has gotten much bigger than was originally expected, that much is obvious.
If I was leading this investigation, I would want to run those down before I started to “show my cards” to my targets by making indictments public. I expect when an indictment is filed — and I believe one will be filed — it will include an extraordinarily detailed conspiracy count — maybe more than one conspiracy count — laying out the evidence against named and unnamed co-conspirators. A conspiracy charge includes a section describing the “manner and means” of the conspiracy — how the group planned and executed the objectives of the conspiracy — and a lengthy factual statement of the “overt acts” committed by individual co-conspirators “in furtherance of the objectives” of the conspiracy.
To be legally sufficient, an indictment only needs to describe one overt act. Historically there was a “practice” of minimizing the number of overt acts set forth in the indictment so as to not provide more information to the defense than the law required. In the past couple decades the practice has changed, and federal prosecutors now draft what are called “speaking indictments” which are sometimes wildly “over-inclusive” in describing the overt acts. The reason for doing this is the indictment is a “public record”, and anything in the indictment can be discussed in a press release or at a press conference announcing the case. A classic example of this was the Troll Farm and Russian GRU indictments announced by the Special Counsel’s Office.
They have all learned how the democrats operate, and it is to lie, cheat, and use any means necessary to attain political power: the US media, foreign assets, their own FBI, DOJ, etc. republicans are much smarter at this game, and we’ll see indictments come
December or early January, just before the inauguration of Trump.
You really should cite your sources. Maybe provide a link?
To you? Lmao, you’re the biggest clown shoe here, and that’s saying a lot, seeing as this is the most misinformed “political” discussion group I tread! Pee-tape? Russia? I owe you nothing, fool. I told you all along.
I only just scratched the surface in this pathetic echo chamber this last hour, but idiots here are talking about “right wing” dudes involved in the MI kidnapping? Jesus Christ you fools lap up everything you’re told. It’s already come out that one of the guys was a BLM activist who denounced Trump in videos in front of an anarchist flag of all things. didn’t take long to look that up, you just have to finally acknowledge that the candy you’ve been sucking on has been fed to you like a baby because you slurp it all up without question. Another of the goons? Pardoned by DE governor a few years back, only to return to attempt a shitty plot to kidnap someone. These weren’t right wingers, they were boogaloos, who may as well be left wing since their anti-gov’t beliefs fall more in line with Antifa and BLM than anyone on the right who supports their gov’t/country and doesn’t want to overthrow it.
i haven’t seen it yet, but what kind of spun filth is floating around this forum about the “security” clown in Denver who shot and killed the conservative hat maker at the march? You realize he was far left? Again, apologies if it’s been covered, but holy shit you all are so far off base with reality and just spoon fed anti-govt, anti-country bile that I just have to assume you’ve been fed it again with that news.
"every single person that works for gov't is your enemy". Okay fine, he's a militia man. That doesn't make him left wing. He planned to abduct Whitmer and Northam, two Democratic governors. These are the same jokers that invaded the State house in Michigan. You think they vote Democrat or something?
Didn’t say that. I said their views more align with anti-govt. to say they’re white supramacists it right wing is just as untruthful. They’re anarchists, whichever wing you want them on is your choice.
Do you think the news that Whitmer was the target of an abduction helped or hurt Trump's cause in Michigan?
Neither. Just like a Bernie Bro shooting up a baseball field full of Republicans makes no difference.
This is big local news in Michigan, not happening in DC. You'll see another little bump or solidified D numbers in the polls in Michigan coming up. Then you'll start seeing Trump pulling ads, if that hasn't already happened.
Except John James is now only running a point behind Peters. The “decides” have decided and this shit won’t move them. Trump voters get that these bastards aren’t Trump people. Biden voters will claim they are regardless. The “middle” if they still exist might hate the insanity but won’t make there end decision based on the actions of domestic terrorists. My understanding is that Americans are made of sterner stuff.
I'm sorry, you must not understand America middle/suburbia. If you think for one minute that women and mothers in this country are ambivalent about militias or people walking around the streets with AR's and camos, you're crazy. And then suburban women hear about a plan by these idiots to abduct the female democratic governor? Yeah, no. It's not a wash for Trump.
You're cherry picking polls a bit here. I think it's tight, but Peters has a consistent lead. You can throw out Trafalgar. I generally think you can throw out any poll less than 1000 as well, so I don't know how useful any of these are.
Ummm. Ok. Throw out any poll with less than 1000. Which leaves you with CBS and Trafalgar. Peters +3 to a tie. Basically margin of error race. Either way your suburban women ain’t dumb. They know these anarchists aren’t Trump voters while antifa are Biden voters. Pretty sure they can figure out on their own who to vote for...which like I said may not be Trump...but it won’t be this issue that sways them. It’s the 2016 voters who stayed home the dems need to move in Michigan because the ones who voted Trump ain’t switching. It’s too bad they refuse to knock on doors.
1200 likely voters. Biden also up 11. Good times.
1200 LV is a good sample. Harris also leans right.
True. It's also true that the RCP average went from Peters +5 pre-Whitmer plot to Peters +6 post-Whitmer. Like I said... it's a Wash My Love.
So they're pushing the Durham report back to after the election (spoiler alert--there's not a whole lot there) and now they quietly announce they found no evidence of wrong doing regarding the masking nonsense?
Where art thou, devout Trumpists? You, who were clinging to these conspiracies to swing the election? Why so silent? @BS44325 @RoleModelsinBlood31
This is faaaar from over, we all know that. Unlike democrats, republicans hold these things close to the chest and don’t leak (even falsities) to the media to “help” them. His investigation has gotten much bigger than was originally expected, that much is obvious.
If I was leading this investigation, I would want to run those down before I started to “show my cards” to my targets by making indictments public. I expect when an indictment is filed — and I believe one will be filed — it will include an extraordinarily detailed conspiracy count — maybe more than one conspiracy count — laying out the evidence against named and unnamed co-conspirators. A conspiracy charge includes a section describing the “manner and means” of the conspiracy — how the group planned and executed the objectives of the conspiracy — and a lengthy factual statement of the “overt acts” committed by individual co-conspirators “in furtherance of the objectives” of the conspiracy.
To be legally sufficient, an indictment only needs to describe one overt act. Historically there was a “practice” of minimizing the number of overt acts set forth in the indictment so as to not provide more information to the defense than the law required. In the past couple decades the practice has changed, and federal prosecutors now draft what are called “speaking indictments” which are sometimes wildly “over-inclusive” in describing the overt acts. The reason for doing this is the indictment is a “public record”, and anything in the indictment can be discussed in a press release or at a press conference announcing the case. A classic example of this was the Troll Farm and Russian GRU indictments announced by the Special Counsel’s Office.
They have all learned how the democrats operate, and it is to lie, cheat, and use any means necessary to attain political power: the US media, foreign assets, their own FBI, DOJ, etc. republicans are much smarter at this game, and we’ll see indictments come
December or early January, just before the inauguration of Trump.
You really should cite your sources. Maybe provide a link?
To you? Lmao, you’re the biggest clown shoe here, and that’s saying a lot, seeing as this is the most misinformed “political” discussion group I tread! Pee-tape? Russia? I owe you nothing, fool. I told you all along.
I only just scratched the surface in this pathetic echo chamber this last hour, but idiots here are talking about “right wing” dudes involved in the MI kidnapping? Jesus Christ you fools lap up everything you’re told. It’s already come out that one of the guys was a BLM activist who denounced Trump in videos in front of an anarchist flag of all things. didn’t take long to look that up, you just have to finally acknowledge that the candy you’ve been sucking on has been fed to you like a baby because you slurp it all up without question. Another of the goons? Pardoned by DE governor a few years back, only to return to attempt a shitty plot to kidnap someone. These weren’t right wingers, they were boogaloos, who may as well be left wing since their anti-gov’t beliefs fall more in line with Antifa and BLM than anyone on the right who supports their gov’t/country and doesn’t want to overthrow it.
i haven’t seen it yet, but what kind of spun filth is floating around this forum about the “security” clown in Denver who shot and killed the conservative hat maker at the march? You realize he was far left? Again, apologies if it’s been covered, but holy shit you all are so far off base with reality and just spoon fed anti-govt, anti-country bile that I just have to assume you’ve been fed it again with that news.
"every single person that works for gov't is your enemy". Okay fine, he's a militia man. That doesn't make him left wing. He planned to abduct Whitmer and Northam, two Democratic governors. These are the same jokers that invaded the State house in Michigan. You think they vote Democrat or something?
Didn’t say that. I said their views more align with anti-govt. to say they’re white supramacists it right wing is just as untruthful. They’re anarchists, whichever wing you want them on is your choice.
Do you think the news that Whitmer was the target of an abduction helped or hurt Trump's cause in Michigan?
Neither. Just like a Bernie Bro shooting up a baseball field full of Republicans makes no difference.
This is big local news in Michigan, not happening in DC. You'll see another little bump or solidified D numbers in the polls in Michigan coming up. Then you'll start seeing Trump pulling ads, if that hasn't already happened.
Except John James is now only running a point behind Peters. The “decides” have decided and this shit won’t move them. Trump voters get that these bastards aren’t Trump people. Biden voters will claim they are regardless. The “middle” if they still exist might hate the insanity but won’t make there end decision based on the actions of domestic terrorists. My understanding is that Americans are made of sterner stuff.
I'm sorry, you must not understand America middle/suburbia. If you think for one minute that women and mothers in this country are ambivalent about militias or people walking around the streets with AR's and camos, you're crazy. And then suburban women hear about a plan by these idiots to abduct the female democratic governor? Yeah, no. It's not a wash for Trump.
You're cherry picking polls a bit here. I think it's tight, but Peters has a consistent lead. You can throw out Trafalgar. I generally think you can throw out any poll less than 1000 as well, so I don't know how useful any of these are.
Ummm. Ok. Throw out any poll with less than 1000. Which leaves you with CBS and Trafalgar. Peters +3 to a tie. Basically margin of error race. Either way your suburban women ain’t dumb. They know these anarchists aren’t Trump voters while antifa are Biden voters. Pretty sure they can figure out on their own who to vote for...which like I said may not be Trump...but it won’t be this issue that sways them. It’s the 2016 voters who stayed home the dems need to move in Michigan because the ones who voted Trump ain’t switching. It’s too bad they refuse to knock on doors.
1200 likely voters. Biden also up 11. Good times.
1200 LV is a good sample. Harris also leans right.
True. It's also true that the RCP average went from Peters +5 pre-Whitmer plot to Peters +6 post-Whitmer. Like I said... it's a Wash My Love.
Sure, sure. One post kidnap poll averaged against a bunch of pre. More intellectual honesty. But if you're hanging your hat on this and "peace in the Middle East", well more power to you. It's been a really productive four years for the country.
So they're pushing the Durham report back to after the election (spoiler alert--there's not a whole lot there) and now they quietly announce they found no evidence of wrong doing regarding the masking nonsense?
Where art thou, devout Trumpists? You, who were clinging to these conspiracies to swing the election? Why so silent? @BS44325 @RoleModelsinBlood31
This is faaaar from over, we all know that. Unlike democrats, republicans hold these things close to the chest and don’t leak (even falsities) to the media to “help” them. His investigation has gotten much bigger than was originally expected, that much is obvious.
If I was leading this investigation, I would want to run those down before I started to “show my cards” to my targets by making indictments public. I expect when an indictment is filed — and I believe one will be filed — it will include an extraordinarily detailed conspiracy count — maybe more than one conspiracy count — laying out the evidence against named and unnamed co-conspirators. A conspiracy charge includes a section describing the “manner and means” of the conspiracy — how the group planned and executed the objectives of the conspiracy — and a lengthy factual statement of the “overt acts” committed by individual co-conspirators “in furtherance of the objectives” of the conspiracy.
To be legally sufficient, an indictment only needs to describe one overt act. Historically there was a “practice” of minimizing the number of overt acts set forth in the indictment so as to not provide more information to the defense than the law required. In the past couple decades the practice has changed, and federal prosecutors now draft what are called “speaking indictments” which are sometimes wildly “over-inclusive” in describing the overt acts. The reason for doing this is the indictment is a “public record”, and anything in the indictment can be discussed in a press release or at a press conference announcing the case. A classic example of this was the Troll Farm and Russian GRU indictments announced by the Special Counsel’s Office.
They have all learned how the democrats operate, and it is to lie, cheat, and use any means necessary to attain political power: the US media, foreign assets, their own FBI, DOJ, etc. republicans are much smarter at this game, and we’ll see indictments come
December or early January, just before the inauguration of Trump.
You really should cite your sources. Maybe provide a link?
To you? Lmao, you’re the biggest clown shoe here, and that’s saying a lot, seeing as this is the most misinformed “political” discussion group I tread! Pee-tape? Russia? I owe you nothing, fool. I told you all along.
I only just scratched the surface in this pathetic echo chamber this last hour, but idiots here are talking about “right wing” dudes involved in the MI kidnapping? Jesus Christ you fools lap up everything you’re told. It’s already come out that one of the guys was a BLM activist who denounced Trump in videos in front of an anarchist flag of all things. didn’t take long to look that up, you just have to finally acknowledge that the candy you’ve been sucking on has been fed to you like a baby because you slurp it all up without question. Another of the goons? Pardoned by DE governor a few years back, only to return to attempt a shitty plot to kidnap someone. These weren’t right wingers, they were boogaloos, who may as well be left wing since their anti-gov’t beliefs fall more in line with Antifa and BLM than anyone on the right who supports their gov’t/country and doesn’t want to overthrow it.
i haven’t seen it yet, but what kind of spun filth is floating around this forum about the “security” clown in Denver who shot and killed the conservative hat maker at the march? You realize he was far left? Again, apologies if it’s been covered, but holy shit you all are so far off base with reality and just spoon fed anti-govt, anti-country bile that I just have to assume you’ve been fed it again with that news.
"every single person that works for gov't is your enemy". Okay fine, he's a militia man. That doesn't make him left wing. He planned to abduct Whitmer and Northam, two Democratic governors. These are the same jokers that invaded the State house in Michigan. You think they vote Democrat or something?
Didn’t say that. I said their views more align with anti-govt. to say they’re white supramacists it right wing is just as untruthful. They’re anarchists, whichever wing you want them on is your choice.
Do you think the news that Whitmer was the target of an abduction helped or hurt Trump's cause in Michigan?
Neither. Just like a Bernie Bro shooting up a baseball field full of Republicans makes no difference.
This is big local news in Michigan, not happening in DC. You'll see another little bump or solidified D numbers in the polls in Michigan coming up. Then you'll start seeing Trump pulling ads, if that hasn't already happened.
Except John James is now only running a point behind Peters. The “decides” have decided and this shit won’t move them. Trump voters get that these bastards aren’t Trump people. Biden voters will claim they are regardless. The “middle” if they still exist might hate the insanity but won’t make there end decision based on the actions of domestic terrorists. My understanding is that Americans are made of sterner stuff.
I'm sorry, you must not understand America middle/suburbia. If you think for one minute that women and mothers in this country are ambivalent about militias or people walking around the streets with AR's and camos, you're crazy. And then suburban women hear about a plan by these idiots to abduct the female democratic governor? Yeah, no. It's not a wash for Trump.
You're cherry picking polls a bit here. I think it's tight, but Peters has a consistent lead. You can throw out Trafalgar. I generally think you can throw out any poll less than 1000 as well, so I don't know how useful any of these are.
Ummm. Ok. Throw out any poll with less than 1000. Which leaves you with CBS and Trafalgar. Peters +3 to a tie. Basically margin of error race. Either way your suburban women ain’t dumb. They know these anarchists aren’t Trump voters while antifa are Biden voters. Pretty sure they can figure out on their own who to vote for...which like I said may not be Trump...but it won’t be this issue that sways them. It’s the 2016 voters who stayed home the dems need to move in Michigan because the ones who voted Trump ain’t switching. It’s too bad they refuse to knock on doors.
1200 likely voters. Biden also up 11. Good times.
1200 LV is a good sample. Harris also leans right.
True. It's also true that the RCP average went from Peters +5 pre-Whitmer plot to Peters +6 post-Whitmer. Like I said... it's a Wash My Love.
Sure, sure. One post kidnap poll averaged against a bunch of pre. More intellectual honesty. But if you're hanging your hat on this and "peace in the Middle East", well more power to you. It's been a really productive four years for the country.
It’s many pre-polls averaged against many post. You’ve lost the argument. Again.
So they're pushing the Durham report back to after the election (spoiler alert--there's not a whole lot there) and now they quietly announce they found no evidence of wrong doing regarding the masking nonsense?
Where art thou, devout Trumpists? You, who were clinging to these conspiracies to swing the election? Why so silent? @BS44325 @RoleModelsinBlood31
This is faaaar from over, we all know that. Unlike democrats, republicans hold these things close to the chest and don’t leak (even falsities) to the media to “help” them. His investigation has gotten much bigger than was originally expected, that much is obvious.
If I was leading this investigation, I would want to run those down before I started to “show my cards” to my targets by making indictments public. I expect when an indictment is filed — and I believe one will be filed — it will include an extraordinarily detailed conspiracy count — maybe more than one conspiracy count — laying out the evidence against named and unnamed co-conspirators. A conspiracy charge includes a section describing the “manner and means” of the conspiracy — how the group planned and executed the objectives of the conspiracy — and a lengthy factual statement of the “overt acts” committed by individual co-conspirators “in furtherance of the objectives” of the conspiracy.
To be legally sufficient, an indictment only needs to describe one overt act. Historically there was a “practice” of minimizing the number of overt acts set forth in the indictment so as to not provide more information to the defense than the law required. In the past couple decades the practice has changed, and federal prosecutors now draft what are called “speaking indictments” which are sometimes wildly “over-inclusive” in describing the overt acts. The reason for doing this is the indictment is a “public record”, and anything in the indictment can be discussed in a press release or at a press conference announcing the case. A classic example of this was the Troll Farm and Russian GRU indictments announced by the Special Counsel’s Office.
They have all learned how the democrats operate, and it is to lie, cheat, and use any means necessary to attain political power: the US media, foreign assets, their own FBI, DOJ, etc. republicans are much smarter at this game, and we’ll see indictments come
December or early January, just before the inauguration of Trump.
You really should cite your sources. Maybe provide a link?
To you? Lmao, you’re the biggest clown shoe here, and that’s saying a lot, seeing as this is the most misinformed “political” discussion group I tread! Pee-tape? Russia? I owe you nothing, fool. I told you all along.
I only just scratched the surface in this pathetic echo chamber this last hour, but idiots here are talking about “right wing” dudes involved in the MI kidnapping? Jesus Christ you fools lap up everything you’re told. It’s already come out that one of the guys was a BLM activist who denounced Trump in videos in front of an anarchist flag of all things. didn’t take long to look that up, you just have to finally acknowledge that the candy you’ve been sucking on has been fed to you like a baby because you slurp it all up without question. Another of the goons? Pardoned by DE governor a few years back, only to return to attempt a shitty plot to kidnap someone. These weren’t right wingers, they were boogaloos, who may as well be left wing since their anti-gov’t beliefs fall more in line with Antifa and BLM than anyone on the right who supports their gov’t/country and doesn’t want to overthrow it.
i haven’t seen it yet, but what kind of spun filth is floating around this forum about the “security” clown in Denver who shot and killed the conservative hat maker at the march? You realize he was far left? Again, apologies if it’s been covered, but holy shit you all are so far off base with reality and just spoon fed anti-govt, anti-country bile that I just have to assume you’ve been fed it again with that news.
"every single person that works for gov't is your enemy". Okay fine, he's a militia man. That doesn't make him left wing. He planned to abduct Whitmer and Northam, two Democratic governors. These are the same jokers that invaded the State house in Michigan. You think they vote Democrat or something?
Didn’t say that. I said their views more align with anti-govt. to say they’re white supramacists it right wing is just as untruthful. They’re anarchists, whichever wing you want them on is your choice.
Do you think the news that Whitmer was the target of an abduction helped or hurt Trump's cause in Michigan?
Neither. Just like a Bernie Bro shooting up a baseball field full of Republicans makes no difference.
This is big local news in Michigan, not happening in DC. You'll see another little bump or solidified D numbers in the polls in Michigan coming up. Then you'll start seeing Trump pulling ads, if that hasn't already happened.
Except John James is now only running a point behind Peters. The “decides” have decided and this shit won’t move them. Trump voters get that these bastards aren’t Trump people. Biden voters will claim they are regardless. The “middle” if they still exist might hate the insanity but won’t make there end decision based on the actions of domestic terrorists. My understanding is that Americans are made of sterner stuff.
I'm sorry, you must not understand America middle/suburbia. If you think for one minute that women and mothers in this country are ambivalent about militias or people walking around the streets with AR's and camos, you're crazy. And then suburban women hear about a plan by these idiots to abduct the female democratic governor? Yeah, no. It's not a wash for Trump.
You're cherry picking polls a bit here. I think it's tight, but Peters has a consistent lead. You can throw out Trafalgar. I generally think you can throw out any poll less than 1000 as well, so I don't know how useful any of these are.
Ummm. Ok. Throw out any poll with less than 1000. Which leaves you with CBS and Trafalgar. Peters +3 to a tie. Basically margin of error race. Either way your suburban women ain’t dumb. They know these anarchists aren’t Trump voters while antifa are Biden voters. Pretty sure they can figure out on their own who to vote for...which like I said may not be Trump...but it won’t be this issue that sways them. It’s the 2016 voters who stayed home the dems need to move in Michigan because the ones who voted Trump ain’t switching. It’s too bad they refuse to knock on doors.
1200 likely voters. Biden also up 11. Good times.
1200 LV is a good sample. Harris also leans right.
True. It's also true that the RCP average went from Peters +5 pre-Whitmer plot to Peters +6 post-Whitmer. Like I said... it's a Wash My Love.
Sleepy Woke Joe Basement Biden in MI just now saying how Team Trump Treason Tax Cheat hasn’t “turned the corner,” but how he’s “gone around the bend.” To laughter no less.
So they're pushing the Durham report back to after the election (spoiler alert--there's not a whole lot there) and now they quietly announce they found no evidence of wrong doing regarding the masking nonsense?
Where art thou, devout Trumpists? You, who were clinging to these conspiracies to swing the election? Why so silent? @BS44325 @RoleModelsinBlood31
This is faaaar from over, we all know that. Unlike democrats, republicans hold these things close to the chest and don’t leak (even falsities) to the media to “help” them. His investigation has gotten much bigger than was originally expected, that much is obvious.
If I was leading this investigation, I would want to run those down before I started to “show my cards” to my targets by making indictments public. I expect when an indictment is filed — and I believe one will be filed — it will include an extraordinarily detailed conspiracy count — maybe more than one conspiracy count — laying out the evidence against named and unnamed co-conspirators. A conspiracy charge includes a section describing the “manner and means” of the conspiracy — how the group planned and executed the objectives of the conspiracy — and a lengthy factual statement of the “overt acts” committed by individual co-conspirators “in furtherance of the objectives” of the conspiracy.
To be legally sufficient, an indictment only needs to describe one overt act. Historically there was a “practice” of minimizing the number of overt acts set forth in the indictment so as to not provide more information to the defense than the law required. In the past couple decades the practice has changed, and federal prosecutors now draft what are called “speaking indictments” which are sometimes wildly “over-inclusive” in describing the overt acts. The reason for doing this is the indictment is a “public record”, and anything in the indictment can be discussed in a press release or at a press conference announcing the case. A classic example of this was the Troll Farm and Russian GRU indictments announced by the Special Counsel’s Office.
They have all learned how the democrats operate, and it is to lie, cheat, and use any means necessary to attain political power: the US media, foreign assets, their own FBI, DOJ, etc. republicans are much smarter at this game, and we’ll see indictments come
December or early January, just before the inauguration of Trump.
You really should cite your sources. Maybe provide a link?
To you? Lmao, you’re the biggest clown shoe here, and that’s saying a lot, seeing as this is the most misinformed “political” discussion group I tread! Pee-tape? Russia? I owe you nothing, fool. I told you all along.
I only just scratched the surface in this pathetic echo chamber this last hour, but idiots here are talking about “right wing” dudes involved in the MI kidnapping? Jesus Christ you fools lap up everything you’re told. It’s already come out that one of the guys was a BLM activist who denounced Trump in videos in front of an anarchist flag of all things. didn’t take long to look that up, you just have to finally acknowledge that the candy you’ve been sucking on has been fed to you like a baby because you slurp it all up without question. Another of the goons? Pardoned by DE governor a few years back, only to return to attempt a shitty plot to kidnap someone. These weren’t right wingers, they were boogaloos, who may as well be left wing since their anti-gov’t beliefs fall more in line with Antifa and BLM than anyone on the right who supports their gov’t/country and doesn’t want to overthrow it.
i haven’t seen it yet, but what kind of spun filth is floating around this forum about the “security” clown in Denver who shot and killed the conservative hat maker at the march? You realize he was far left? Again, apologies if it’s been covered, but holy shit you all are so far off base with reality and just spoon fed anti-govt, anti-country bile that I just have to assume you’ve been fed it again with that news.
"every single person that works for gov't is your enemy". Okay fine, he's a militia man. That doesn't make him left wing. He planned to abduct Whitmer and Northam, two Democratic governors. These are the same jokers that invaded the State house in Michigan. You think they vote Democrat or something?
Didn’t say that. I said their views more align with anti-govt. to say they’re white supramacists it right wing is just as untruthful. They’re anarchists, whichever wing you want them on is your choice.
Do you think the news that Whitmer was the target of an abduction helped or hurt Trump's cause in Michigan?
Neither. Just like a Bernie Bro shooting up a baseball field full of Republicans makes no difference.
This is big local news in Michigan, not happening in DC. You'll see another little bump or solidified D numbers in the polls in Michigan coming up. Then you'll start seeing Trump pulling ads, if that hasn't already happened.
Except John James is now only running a point behind Peters. The “decides” have decided and this shit won’t move them. Trump voters get that these bastards aren’t Trump people. Biden voters will claim they are regardless. The “middle” if they still exist might hate the insanity but won’t make there end decision based on the actions of domestic terrorists. My understanding is that Americans are made of sterner stuff.
I'm sorry, you must not understand America middle/suburbia. If you think for one minute that women and mothers in this country are ambivalent about militias or people walking around the streets with AR's and camos, you're crazy. And then suburban women hear about a plan by these idiots to abduct the female democratic governor? Yeah, no. It's not a wash for Trump.
You're cherry picking polls a bit here. I think it's tight, but Peters has a consistent lead. You can throw out Trafalgar. I generally think you can throw out any poll less than 1000 as well, so I don't know how useful any of these are.
Ummm. Ok. Throw out any poll with less than 1000. Which leaves you with CBS and Trafalgar. Peters +3 to a tie. Basically margin of error race. Either way your suburban women ain’t dumb. They know these anarchists aren’t Trump voters while antifa are Biden voters. Pretty sure they can figure out on their own who to vote for...which like I said may not be Trump...but it won’t be this issue that sways them. It’s the 2016 voters who stayed home the dems need to move in Michigan because the ones who voted Trump ain’t switching. It’s too bad they refuse to knock on doors.
1200 likely voters. Biden also up 11. Good times.
1200 LV is a good sample. Harris also leans right.
True. It's also true that the RCP average went from Peters +5 pre-Whitmer plot to Peters +6 post-Whitmer. Like I said... it's a Wash My Love.
Sure, sure. One post kidnap poll averaged against a bunch of pre. More intellectual honesty. But if you're hanging your hat on this and "peace in the Middle East", well more power to you. It's been a really productive four years for the country.
It’s many pre-polls averaged against many post. You’ve lost the argument. Again.
Peters has gone from up 3.8% to up 6.1% since the kidnapping plot came out. Biden has gone from +6% to +7% in the same time frame. Easy to see what is happening here. Hard to believe that was only just over a week ago. In Trump's America a week is the equivalent of a month.
Guess who has a checking account with a shell company in Chiiiiiiiiiiiina?
His own lawyer confirmed it. hahahah.
Just more fruit from the poisonous tree blended with brilliant brilliance in all its brilliancy.
“A repub majority for generations.” In all 3 branches no less and because of all of those law and order suburban women worried about their neighborhoods, don’t forget.
Maybe Mace took the baton from Unsung on this thread, we’re waiting for the Biden indictment any day now any day!
After the election...
But at this point, I'd be surprised if we don't get an FBI announcement that they are official investigating Biden within the next week or so. It worked last time.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Maybe Mace took the baton from Unsung on this thread, we’re waiting for the Biden indictment any day now any day!
After the election...
But at this point, I'd be surprised if we don't get an FBI announcement that they are official investigating Biden within the next week or so. It worked last time.
Maybe Mace took the baton from Unsung on this thread, we’re waiting for the Biden indictment any day now any day!
Woah, woah, woah, Hillary first, followed by Comey & Team Mueller and the 18 angry democrats, and then Obama. Then we see Sleepy Woke Joe Basement Biden perp walked.
Trump Had One Last Story to Sell. The Wall Street Journal Wouldn't Buy It.
NYT: WSJ wouldn't buy Hunter Biden story from Trump allies
Scroll back up to restore default view.
By early October, even people inside the White House believed President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign needed a desperate rescue mission. So three men allied with the president gathered at a house in McLean, Virginia, to launch one.
The host was Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations man close to Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. The guests were a White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, and a former deputy White House counsel, Stefan Passantino, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
Herschmann knew the subject matter they were there to discuss. He had represented Trump during the impeachment trial early this year, and he tried to deflect allegations against the president in part by pointing to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. More recently, he has been working on the White House payroll with a hazy portfolio, listed as “a senior adviser to the president,” and remains close to Jared Kushner.
The three had pinned their hopes for reelecting the president on a fourth guest, a straight-shooting Wall Street Journal White House reporter named Michael Bender. They delivered the goods to him there: a cache of emails detailing Hunter Biden’s business activities, and, on speaker phone, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s named Tony Bobulinski. Bobulinski was willing to go on the record in The Journal with an explosive claim: that Joe Biden, the former vice president, had been aware of, and profited from, his son’s activities. The Trump team left believing that The Journal would blow the thing open and their excitement was conveyed to the president.
The Journal had seemed to be the perfect outlet for a story the Trump advisers believed could sink Biden’s candidacy. Its small-c conservatism in reporting means the work of its news pages carries credibility across the industry. And its readership leans further right than other big news outlets. Its Washington bureau chief, Paul Beckett, recently remarked at a virtual gathering of Journal reporters and editors that while he knows that the paper often delivers unwelcome news to the many Trump supporters who read it, The Journal should protect its unique position of being trusted across the political spectrum, two people familiar with the remarks said.
As the Trump team waited with excited anticipation for a Journal exposé, the newspaper did its due diligence: Bender and Beckett handed the story off to a well-regarded China correspondent, James Areddy, and a Capitol Hill reporter who had followed the Hunter Biden story, Andrew Duehren. Areddy interviewed Bobulinski. They began drafting an article.
Then things got messy. Without warning his notional allies, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now a lawyer for Trump, burst onto the scene with the tabloid version of the McLean crew’s carefully laid plot. Giuliani delivered a cache of documents of questionable provenance — but containing some of the same emails — to The New York Post, a sister publication to The Journal in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Giuliani had been working with the former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who also began leaking some of the emails to favored right-wing outlets. Giuliani’s complicated claim that the emails came from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned, and his refusal to let some reporters examine the laptop, cast a pall over the story — as did The Post’s reporting, which alleged but could not prove that Joe Biden had been involved in his son’s activities.
While the Trump team was clearly jumpy, editors in The Journal’s Washington bureau were wrestling with a central question: Could the documents, or Bobulinski, prove that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s lobbying? Or was this yet another story of the younger Biden trading on his family’s name — a perfectly good theme, but not a new one or one that needed urgently to be revealed before the election.
Trump and his allies expected the Journal story to appear Monday, Oct. 19, according to Bannon. That would be late in the campaign, but not too late — and could shape that week’s news cycle heading into the crucial final debate last Thursday. An “important piece” in The Journal would be coming soon, Trump told aides on a conference call that day.
His comment was not appreciated inside The Journal.
“The editors didn’t like Trump’s insinuation that we were being teed up to do this hit job,” a Journal reporter who wasn’t directly involved in the story told me. But the reporters continued to work on the draft as the Thursday debate approached, indifferent to the White House’s frantic timeline.
Finally, Bobulinski got tired of waiting.
“He got spooked about whether they were going to do it or not,” Bannon said.
At 7:35 Wednesday evening, Bobulinski emailed an on-the-record, 684-word statement making his case to a range of news outlets. Breitbart News published it in full. He appeared the next day in Nashville, Tennessee, to attend the debate as Trump’s surprise guest, and less than two hours before the debate was to begin, he read a six-minute statement to the press, detailing his allegations that the former vice president had involvement in his son’s business dealings.
When Trump stepped on stage, the president acted as though the details of the emails and the allegations were common knowledge. “You’re the big man, I think. I don’t know, maybe you’re not,” he told Biden at some point, a reference to an ambiguous sentence from the documents.
As the debate ended, The Wall Street Journal published a brief item, just the stub of Areddy and Duehren’s reporting. The core of it was that Bobulinski had failed to prove the central claim. “Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden,” The Journal reported.
Asked about The Journal’s handling of the story, the editor-in-chief, Matt Murray, said the paper did not discuss its newsgathering. “Our rigorous and trusted journalism speaks for itself,” Murray said in an emailed statement.
And if you’d been watching the debate, but hadn’t been obsessively watching Fox News or reading Breitbart, you would have had no idea what Trump was talking about. The story the Trump team hoped would upend the campaign was fading fast.
The Gatekeepers Return
The McLean group&aposs failed attempt to sway the election is partly just another story revealing the chaotic, threadbare quality of the Trump operation — a far cry from the coordinated “disinformation” machinery feared by liberals.
But it’s also about a larger shift in the American media, one in which the gatekeepers appear to have returned after a long absence.
It has been a disorienting couple of decades, after all. It all began when The Drudge Report, Gawker and the blogs started telling you what stodgy old newspapers and television networks wouldn’t. Then social media brought floods of content pouring over the old barricades.
By 2015, the old gatekeepers had entered a kind of crisis of confidence, believing they couldn’t control the online news cycle any better than King Canute could control the tides. Television networks all but let Donald Trump take over as executive producer that summer and fall. In October 2016, Julian Assange and James Comey seemed to drive the news cycle more than the major news organizations. Many figures in old media and new bought into the idea that in the new world, readers would find the information they wanted to read — and therefore, decisions by editors and producers, about whether to cover something and how much attention to give it, didn’t mean much.
But the past two weeks have proved the opposite: that the old gatekeepers, like The Journal, can still control the agenda. It turns out there is a big difference between WikiLeaks and establishment media coverage of WikiLeaks, a difference between a Trump tweet and an article about it, even between an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal suggesting Joe Biden had done bad things, and a news article that didn’t reach that conclusion.
Perhaps the most influential media document of the past four years is a chart by a co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, Yochai Benkler. The study showed that a dense new right-wing media sphere had emerged — and that the mainstream news “revolved around the agenda that the right-wing media sphere set.”
Bannon had known this, too. He described his strategy as “anchor left, pivot right,” and even as he ran Breitbart News, he worked to place attacks on Hillary Clinton in mainstream outlets. The validating power of those outlets was clear when The New York Times and Washington Post were given early access in the spring of 2015 to the book “Clinton Cash,” an investigation of the Clinton family’s blurring of business, philanthropic and political interests by writer Peter Schweizer.
Schweizer is still around this cycle. But you won’t find his work in mainstream outlets. He’s over on Breitbart, with a couple of Hunter Biden stories this month.
And the fact that Bobulinski emerged not in the pages of the widely respected Journal but in a statement to Breitbart was essentially Bannon’s nightmare, and Benkler’s fondest wish. And a broad array of mainstream outlets, unpersuaded that Hunter Biden’s doings tie directly to the former vice president, have largely kept the story off their front pages, and confined to skeptical explanations of what Trump and his allies are claiming about his opponent.
“SO USA TODAY DIDN’T WANT TO RUN MY HUNTER BIDEN COLUMN THIS WEEK,” conservative writer Glenn Reynolds complained Oct. 20, posting the article instead to his blog. Trump himself hit a wall when he tried to push the Hunter Biden narrative onto CBS News.
“This is ‘60 Minutes,’ and we can’t put on things we can’t verify,” Lesley Stahl told him. Trump then did more or less the same thing as Reynolds, posting a video of his side of the interview to his own blog, Facebook.
The media’s control over information, of course, is not as total as it used to be. The people who own printing presses and broadcast towers can’t actually stop you from reading leaked emails or unproven theories about Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son’s business. But what Benkler’s research showed was that the elite outlets’ ability to set the agenda endured in spite of social media.
We should have known it, of course. Many of our readers, screaming about headlines on Twitter, did. And Trump knew it all along — one way to read his endless attacks on the establishment media is as an expression of obsession, a form of love. This week, you can hear howls of betrayal from people who have for years said the legacy media was both utterly biased and totally irrelevant.
“For years, we’ve respected and even revered the sanctified position of the free press,” wrote Dana Loesch, a right-wing commentator not particularly known for her reverence of legacy media, expressing frustration that the Biden story was not getting attention. “Now that free press points its digital pen at your throat when you question their preferences.”
On the Other Side of the Gate
There’s something amusing — even a bit flattering — in such earnest protestations from a right-wing movement rooted in efforts to discredit the independent media. And this reassertion of control over information is what you’ve seen many journalists call for in recent years. At its best, it can also close the political landscape to a trendy new form of dirty tricks, as in France in 2017, where the media largely ignored a last-minute dump of hacked emails from President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign just before a legally mandated blackout period.
But I admit that I feel deep ambivalence about this revenge of the gatekeepers. I spent my career, before arriving at The Times in March, on the other side of the gate, lobbing information past it to a very online audience who I presumed had already seen the leak or the rumor, and seeing my job as helping to guide that audience through the thicket, not to close their eyes to it. “The media’s new and unfamiliar job is to provide a framework for understanding the wild, unvetted, and incredibly intoxicating information that its audience will inevitably see — not to ignore it,” my colleague John Herrman (also now at The Times) and I wrote in 2013. In 2017, I made the decision to publish the unverified “Steele dossier,” in part on the grounds that gatekeepers were looking at it and influenced by it, but keeping it from their audience.
This fall, top media and tech executives were bracing to refight the last war — a foreign-backed hack-and-leak operation like WikiLeaks seeking to influence the election’s outcome. It was that hyper-vigilance that led Twitter to block links to The New York Post’s article about Hunter Biden — a frighteningly disproportionate response to a story that other news organizations were handling with care. The schemes of Herschmann, Passantino and Schwartz weren’t exactly WikiLeaks. But the special nervousness that many outlets, including this one, feel about the provenance of the Hunter Biden emails is, in many ways, the legacy of the WikiLeaks experience.
I’d prefer to put my faith in Murray and careful, professional journalists like him than in the social platforms’ product managers and executives. And I hope Americans relieved that the gatekeepers are reasserting themselves will also pay attention to who gets that power, and how centralized it is, and root for new voices to correct and challenge them.
Comments
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/14/politics/trump-campaign-donation-investigation/index.html
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1200 likely voters. Biden also up 11. Good times.
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“A repub majority for generations.” In all 3 branches no less and because of all of those law and order suburban women worried about their neighborhoods, don’t forget.
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https://news.yahoo.com/trump-had-one-last-story-115253037.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9jb21tdW5pdHkucGVhcmxqYW0uY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGqguFNZgvvzk5I1UFzU9tDfc2gCXzMw6DhbJepNCQylUYQyi02p0JC8UaiWsv6IRmCdJPozZdaN5StmgleGydyXPi2Z_rj8s8yQRmRjA1OlVQSUdb8n7KLMOapI8jdsOyKUeWAylQiy5n9QSOy8oQlQThIu1ucKIujh1fUXs2i2
Trump Had One Last Story to Sell. The Wall Street Journal Wouldn't Buy It.
By early October, even people inside the White House believed President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign needed a desperate rescue mission. So three men allied with the president gathered at a house in McLean, Virginia, to launch one.
The host was Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations man close to Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. The guests were a White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, and a former deputy White House counsel, Stefan Passantino, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
Herschmann knew the subject matter they were there to discuss. He had represented Trump during the impeachment trial early this year, and he tried to deflect allegations against the president in part by pointing to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. More recently, he has been working on the White House payroll with a hazy portfolio, listed as “a senior adviser to the president,” and remains close to Jared Kushner.
The three had pinned their hopes for reelecting the president on a fourth guest, a straight-shooting Wall Street Journal White House reporter named Michael Bender. They delivered the goods to him there: a cache of emails detailing Hunter Biden’s business activities, and, on speaker phone, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s named Tony Bobulinski. Bobulinski was willing to go on the record in The Journal with an explosive claim: that Joe Biden, the former vice president, had been aware of, and profited from, his son’s activities. The Trump team left believing that The Journal would blow the thing open and their excitement was conveyed to the president.
The Journal had seemed to be the perfect outlet for a story the Trump advisers believed could sink Biden’s candidacy. Its small-c conservatism in reporting means the work of its news pages carries credibility across the industry. And its readership leans further right than other big news outlets. Its Washington bureau chief, Paul Beckett, recently remarked at a virtual gathering of Journal reporters and editors that while he knows that the paper often delivers unwelcome news to the many Trump supporters who read it, The Journal should protect its unique position of being trusted across the political spectrum, two people familiar with the remarks said.
As the Trump team waited with excited anticipation for a Journal exposé, the newspaper did its due diligence: Bender and Beckett handed the story off to a well-regarded China correspondent, James Areddy, and a Capitol Hill reporter who had followed the Hunter Biden story, Andrew Duehren. Areddy interviewed Bobulinski. They began drafting an article.
Then things got messy. Without warning his notional allies, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now a lawyer for Trump, burst onto the scene with the tabloid version of the McLean crew’s carefully laid plot. Giuliani delivered a cache of documents of questionable provenance — but containing some of the same emails — to The New York Post, a sister publication to The Journal in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Giuliani had been working with the former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who also began leaking some of the emails to favored right-wing outlets. Giuliani’s complicated claim that the emails came from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned, and his refusal to let some reporters examine the laptop, cast a pall over the story — as did The Post’s reporting, which alleged but could not prove that Joe Biden had been involved in his son’s activities.
While the Trump team was clearly jumpy, editors in The Journal’s Washington bureau were wrestling with a central question: Could the documents, or Bobulinski, prove that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s lobbying? Or was this yet another story of the younger Biden trading on his family’s name — a perfectly good theme, but not a new one or one that needed urgently to be revealed before the election.
Trump and his allies expected the Journal story to appear Monday, Oct. 19, according to Bannon. That would be late in the campaign, but not too late — and could shape that week’s news cycle heading into the crucial final debate last Thursday. An “important piece” in The Journal would be coming soon, Trump told aides on a conference call that day.
His comment was not appreciated inside The Journal.
“The editors didn’t like Trump’s insinuation that we were being teed up to do this hit job,” a Journal reporter who wasn’t directly involved in the story told me. But the reporters continued to work on the draft as the Thursday debate approached, indifferent to the White House’s frantic timeline.
Finally, Bobulinski got tired of waiting.
“He got spooked about whether they were going to do it or not,” Bannon said.
At 7:35 Wednesday evening, Bobulinski emailed an on-the-record, 684-word statement making his case to a range of news outlets. Breitbart News published it in full. He appeared the next day in Nashville, Tennessee, to attend the debate as Trump’s surprise guest, and less than two hours before the debate was to begin, he read a six-minute statement to the press, detailing his allegations that the former vice president had involvement in his son’s business dealings.
When Trump stepped on stage, the president acted as though the details of the emails and the allegations were common knowledge. “You’re the big man, I think. I don’t know, maybe you’re not,” he told Biden at some point, a reference to an ambiguous sentence from the documents.
As the debate ended, The Wall Street Journal published a brief item, just the stub of Areddy and Duehren’s reporting. The core of it was that Bobulinski had failed to prove the central claim. “Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden,” The Journal reported.
Asked about The Journal’s handling of the story, the editor-in-chief, Matt Murray, said the paper did not discuss its newsgathering. “Our rigorous and trusted journalism speaks for itself,” Murray said in an emailed statement.
And if you’d been watching the debate, but hadn’t been obsessively watching Fox News or reading Breitbart, you would have had no idea what Trump was talking about. The story the Trump team hoped would upend the campaign was fading fast.
The Gatekeepers Return
The McLean group&aposs failed attempt to sway the election is partly just another story revealing the chaotic, threadbare quality of the Trump operation — a far cry from the coordinated “disinformation” machinery feared by liberals.
But it’s also about a larger shift in the American media, one in which the gatekeepers appear to have returned after a long absence.
It has been a disorienting couple of decades, after all. It all began when The Drudge Report, Gawker and the blogs started telling you what stodgy old newspapers and television networks wouldn’t. Then social media brought floods of content pouring over the old barricades.
By 2015, the old gatekeepers had entered a kind of crisis of confidence, believing they couldn’t control the online news cycle any better than King Canute could control the tides. Television networks all but let Donald Trump take over as executive producer that summer and fall. In October 2016, Julian Assange and James Comey seemed to drive the news cycle more than the major news organizations. Many figures in old media and new bought into the idea that in the new world, readers would find the information they wanted to read — and therefore, decisions by editors and producers, about whether to cover something and how much attention to give it, didn’t mean much.
But the past two weeks have proved the opposite: that the old gatekeepers, like The Journal, can still control the agenda. It turns out there is a big difference between WikiLeaks and establishment media coverage of WikiLeaks, a difference between a Trump tweet and an article about it, even between an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal suggesting Joe Biden had done bad things, and a news article that didn’t reach that conclusion.
Perhaps the most influential media document of the past four years is a chart by a co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, Yochai Benkler. The study showed that a dense new right-wing media sphere had emerged — and that the mainstream news “revolved around the agenda that the right-wing media sphere set.”
Bannon had known this, too. He described his strategy as “anchor left, pivot right,” and even as he ran Breitbart News, he worked to place attacks on Hillary Clinton in mainstream outlets. The validating power of those outlets was clear when The New York Times and Washington Post were given early access in the spring of 2015 to the book “Clinton Cash,” an investigation of the Clinton family’s blurring of business, philanthropic and political interests by writer Peter Schweizer.
Schweizer is still around this cycle. But you won’t find his work in mainstream outlets. He’s over on Breitbart, with a couple of Hunter Biden stories this month.
And the fact that Bobulinski emerged not in the pages of the widely respected Journal but in a statement to Breitbart was essentially Bannon’s nightmare, and Benkler’s fondest wish. And a broad array of mainstream outlets, unpersuaded that Hunter Biden’s doings tie directly to the former vice president, have largely kept the story off their front pages, and confined to skeptical explanations of what Trump and his allies are claiming about his opponent.
“SO USA TODAY DIDN’T WANT TO RUN MY HUNTER BIDEN COLUMN THIS WEEK,” conservative writer Glenn Reynolds complained Oct. 20, posting the article instead to his blog. Trump himself hit a wall when he tried to push the Hunter Biden narrative onto CBS News.
“This is ‘60 Minutes,’ and we can’t put on things we can’t verify,” Lesley Stahl told him. Trump then did more or less the same thing as Reynolds, posting a video of his side of the interview to his own blog, Facebook.
The media’s control over information, of course, is not as total as it used to be. The people who own printing presses and broadcast towers can’t actually stop you from reading leaked emails or unproven theories about Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son’s business. But what Benkler’s research showed was that the elite outlets’ ability to set the agenda endured in spite of social media.
We should have known it, of course. Many of our readers, screaming about headlines on Twitter, did. And Trump knew it all along — one way to read his endless attacks on the establishment media is as an expression of obsession, a form of love. This week, you can hear howls of betrayal from people who have for years said the legacy media was both utterly biased and totally irrelevant.
“For years, we’ve respected and even revered the sanctified position of the free press,” wrote Dana Loesch, a right-wing commentator not particularly known for her reverence of legacy media, expressing frustration that the Biden story was not getting attention. “Now that free press points its digital pen at your throat when you question their preferences.”
On the Other Side of the Gate
There’s something amusing — even a bit flattering — in such earnest protestations from a right-wing movement rooted in efforts to discredit the independent media. And this reassertion of control over information is what you’ve seen many journalists call for in recent years. At its best, it can also close the political landscape to a trendy new form of dirty tricks, as in France in 2017, where the media largely ignored a last-minute dump of hacked emails from President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign just before a legally mandated blackout period.
But I admit that I feel deep ambivalence about this revenge of the gatekeepers. I spent my career, before arriving at The Times in March, on the other side of the gate, lobbing information past it to a very online audience who I presumed had already seen the leak or the rumor, and seeing my job as helping to guide that audience through the thicket, not to close their eyes to it. “The media’s new and unfamiliar job is to provide a framework for understanding the wild, unvetted, and incredibly intoxicating information that its audience will inevitably see — not to ignore it,” my colleague John Herrman (also now at The Times) and I wrote in 2013. In 2017, I made the decision to publish the unverified “Steele dossier,” in part on the grounds that gatekeepers were looking at it and influenced by it, but keeping it from their audience.
This fall, top media and tech executives were bracing to refight the last war — a foreign-backed hack-and-leak operation like WikiLeaks seeking to influence the election’s outcome. It was that hyper-vigilance that led Twitter to block links to The New York Post’s article about Hunter Biden — a frighteningly disproportionate response to a story that other news organizations were handling with care. The schemes of Herschmann, Passantino and Schwartz weren’t exactly WikiLeaks. But the special nervousness that many outlets, including this one, feel about the provenance of the Hunter Biden emails is, in many ways, the legacy of the WikiLeaks experience.
I’d prefer to put my faith in Murray and careful, professional journalists like him than in the social platforms’ product managers and executives. And I hope Americans relieved that the gatekeepers are reasserting themselves will also pay attention to who gets that power, and how centralized it is, and root for new voices to correct and challenge them.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©