Far too much media coverage of politics focuses on the horserace angle--who's ahead, who's behind, who's up or down. It relies on false equivalency: if Politician A says X, then the reporter goes to Politician B, who's sure to say Y. That's lazy journalism, and it doesn't actually inform the public about which position (if any) is actually true, or adheres to the facts as we know them. At TWiA, our mission is to discuss politics through the prism of policy--to look, in other words, at the real-world implications of the things that politicians say and do, to make connections others might miss, and to explain it all in language a lay person can understand. Also to offer suggestions of how you can help somebody in need, to report on what's awesome, and to keep tabs on bears. If you like TWiA, share or repost or tell a friend, and be sure to leave comments, even if they're arguments. Especially if they're arguments.
This Week in False Equivalency
At the Washington Post, Paul Waldman asks the age-old question: WTF? Or, as the headline phrased it:
"Trump's history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?
Either way you put it, the point is the same. The press has been going after Hillary Clinton nonstop, launching extensive investigations that turn up no actual crimes or ethical lapses, but reporting breathlessly all the same. Meanwhile, although they touch on Donald Trump's genuine scandals, they never seem to go after those with the same enthusiasm. Waldman offers a partial list of Trump issues that could use more attention.
The false equivalency problem was made more acute by a televised forum this week, the "Commander-in-Chief Forum," in which both candidates were interviewed separately, but back to back, by Today Show host Matt Lauer. Lauer's performance as moderator was roundly criticized, and justifiably so. As a tweet from Obama administration alumnus Bill Burton put it, "Lauer opens to Clinton: 'Why are you so horrible?' Lauer opens to Trump: 'Talk about why you're awesome.'"
It went downhill from there. Lauer pressed Clinton again and again on her emails, hardly leaving her any time for any actual, substantive questions about national security and veterans' issues, which were supposed to be the event topics. After having wasted so much time covering familiar ground, he interrupted her multiple times, to remind her that time was short. American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Orenstein tweeted, "It is amazing. Lauer interrupted Clinton's answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump. Tough to be a woman running for President."
When Trump finally came on, he claimed to have opposed the Iraq War from the start. Everyone in the world should know this is a lie; Matt Lauer certainly should have, since a) he's a journalist, or a "journalist," and b) Clinton had just mentioned Trump's oft-repeated lie in her segment, minutes earlier. Not only that, but Trump introduced the topic by reminding Lauer of Clinton's comment, saying, "I heard Hillary Clinton say I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq. You can look at Esquire magazine from 2004. You can look at before that." Even if that was the first time Lauer had ever heard about it (hint: it wasn't), he should have challenged Trump's statement. The WaPo's fact checkers have covered this many times, and put together a timeline, complete with video, showing Trump's, let's say, evolution on the Iraq War. Lauer had to know it was coming; it's one of Trump's most fundamental lies.
At the New Yorker, Jonathan Chait wrote: "I had not taken seriously the possibility that Donald Trump could win the presidency until I saw Matt Lauer host an hour-long interview with the two major-party candidates. Lauer’s performance was not merely a failure, it was horrifying and shocking. The shock, for me, was the realization that most Americans inhabit a very different news environment than professional journalists. I not only consume a lot of news, since it’s my job, I also tend to focus on elite print-news sources. Most voters, and all the more so undecided voters, subsist on a news diet supplied by the likes of Matt Lauer. And the reality transmitted to them from Lauer matches the reality of the polls, which is a world in which Clinton and Trump are equivalently flawed."
If you can stomach it, the full transcript is here. Look for the part where Trump claims that Vladimir Putin is a better chief executive than Barack Obama, and try to imagine the response on the right had Obama said that about George W. Bush in 2008. And watch for the spot where Trump declares that rape is the inevitable result of having men and women together in the same organization. And of course there's the time Trump revealed details of his classified intelligence briefing--details that are lies, but still. Intelligence officials have called it the first time in anyone's memory that a candidate has tried to politicize the intelligence briefing that all major party presidential candidates get.
1) Everything, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, the "vast right-wing conspiracy," and mainstream media outlets
2) Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely and utterly false. And even then, it keeps a life of its own in the conservative media world.
3) The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there's hard evidence otherwise.
4) Everything is newsworthy because the Clintons are the equivalent of America's royal family.
5) Everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit.
The piece is worth a read for the many examples Allen offers. Hillary-haters probably won't read it, but they should, because they might see a different--and more accurate--picture of her there than they usually do.
Side Note 1: Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo disagrees about Lauer's performance. Not that he was in love with it, but he thinks that Lauer's softball approach to Trump was largely a matter of spooling out just enough rope for Trump to hang himself. An NBC poll afterward declared Trump the winner, so it's hard to argue that Trump hurt himself too badly. Watch the video or read the transcript for yourself--YMMV.
Side Note 2: There's been some back-and-forth between Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell about his advice to her re: using a non-State Department email system. Now the email that Powell wrote to her--2 days after she was sworn in as Secretary of State--has surfaced, and in it he explains the lengths to which he went to use his own personal devices. Next time someone tells you that Clinton is the first Secretary of State to use non-State Department hardware, you can tell them that Powell did it, and told her how to do the same.
Side Note 3: If you still think Hillary's emails are a "scandal," you should read this.
This Week in Russia
Donald Trump occasionally claims to have met Vladimir Putin, and also occasionally admits that they've never met. During this campaign, he's hugged Putin so tightly that one suspects that if they ever did meet, Trump would embrace him in a bear hug. That might make Putin uncomfortable--but probably not as uncomfortable as he looks in this image from the G-20 summit. Here, Putin looks downright terrified. And so very small.
After his pro-Putin appearance in the Commander-in-Chief forum on Wednesday, Trump went on Russian state-owned propaganda TV network Russia Today (RT) America to complain more about the United States and rave about the Russians. After public outcry, his campaign claimed he didn't realize the interview would be broadcast on RT. That would be easier to believe if one of his chief foreign policy advisors, retired general Michael Flynn, weren't such a big supporter of Putin and RT (and, of course, if Trump could ever be believed). Here's Flynn sitting next to good ol' Vlad at RT's 10th-anniversary dinner. Note also Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein at the table.
(Photo by Michael Klimentyev/Sputnik via AP)
This Week in War
One of the takeaways from the forum this week was just how little Donald Trump knows about the military, or his own plans, or anything else, really. Philip Bump has much more. Warning: it's scary.
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Before the forum, Trump announced his plan to "rebuild" the US military. He wants 540,000 active duty soldiers, 36 battalions of Marines, a 350-ship Navy and he wants the Air Force to have 1,200 fighter jets. We guess he'll have a yard sale to unload 500 fighter jets, because as Lara Seligman of Aviation Week points out, the AF currently has 1,700 of them.
On MSNBC's Hardball the next day, Rudy Giuliani accidentally called Trump "Ronald Reagan," while also repeating the always nonsensical claim that the US Navy is at World War I strength. Giuliani should know that a single current carrier group could reduce the entire WWI Navy to scrap metal in about twenty minutes, and making that claim makes him sound like a fool. He is probably referring to the number of ships the Navy has now vs. then, which is closer to factually correct but still foolish, because number of ships is a ridiculous measure.
Speaking of sounding like a fool, in the same interview he declared numerous times, very forcefully, that Hillary Clinton's campaign was the original source of the Obama birther conspiracy. It wasn't. Some of her supporters made that claim, but holding a campaign responsible for things its supporters say is dangerous. (Giuliani, a surrogate for Trump, might then have to answer for folks who claim that America is a "white" country and all non-whites should go back where they came from. Which raises the issue that the ancestors of all human beings came to America from elsewhere, so why shouldn't we all have to leave? And where would we go?) Hardball host Chris Matthews fact-checked him on the spot, and Giuliani insisted, "I'm not wrong. I'm right about that."
He is wrong. Transcript and video are here.
Side Note: Trump's racist supporters would embarrass any other presidential candidate, but Trump speaks their language. This piece in the WaPo discusses the roots of "politically acceptable" racism, which came to the fore with libertarians like Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard, founder of the Cato Institute. The libertarian movement led directly to the alt-right we're hearing so much about these days.
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Libertarian candidate was on MSNBC's Morning Joe this week, and it didn't go well. Talking Points Memo has the details:
“What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?" Mike Barnicle asked Gary Johnson on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“About?” Johnson asked.
“Aleppo,” Barnicle repeated, referring to Syria’s second-largest city, which has been hit in recent weeks by a series of devastating chemical gas attacks and targeted bombing strikes on its few remaining medical facilities.
“And what is Aleppo?” Johnson asked sunnily, to the astonishment of the “Morning Joe” hosts.
“You’re kidding,” Barnicle said.
“No,” Johnson replied.
“Aleppo is in Syria. It’s the epicenter of the refugee crisis,” Barnicle said.
“Okay got it, got it,” Johnson said. “Well with regard to Syria I do think that it’s a mess. I think the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that to an end.”
Later, Johnson explained his problem by saying "Well, I have to get smarter and that’s just part of the process."
Actually, Gov. Johnson, getting smarter on issues of great international significance is a process that should take place before you run for president, not with two months left in race. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to be ready for prime time before prime time starts. That just makes you look like...well, like Donald Trump. We can only imagine the look of horror on the face of Johnson's running mate, former Gov. William Weld, who has foreign policy experience, knows what Aleppo is, and probably has solid ideas on what to do there. Johnson later said he does know what Aleppo is, but misunderstood the question, thinking he was being asked about some acronym. That's possible, but it's still a poor excuse.
We here at TWiA World Headquarters don't know what to do about Aleppo, which we think is President Obama's greatest foreign policy failure--but which we also think is a nearly impossible situation. But we know what it is. So should Gary Johnson.
This Week in Hannity's Brain
Yes, it's an icky place to venture into, so we'll just share this verbatim from the Washington Post:
"You can’t make this up: In 2010, [Fox "News" personality Sean] Hannity said Assange was 'waging … war against the U.S.' by publishing leaked documents and attacked President Obama for not arresting him. Now that Assange is going after Clinton, Hannity praises him for doing 'a lot of good.' (Never mind that the U.S. intelligence community believes the pilfered documents he’s posting most likely came from the Russians as part of an effort to meddle in our elections.) Hannity then applauded Assange some more and ended last night’s interview by saying, 'I do hope you get free one day.' (Keep in mind that this guy is hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid being extradited/prosecuted for alleged sex crimes…)"
Assange is not our idea of any kind of hero, and the fact that he's trying to get Donald Trump elected president just shows how much he hates America.
This Week in Banks
Still wondering about the usefulness of the Elizabeth Warren-championed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Check out what Wells Fargo Bank employees have been up to--creating 1.5 million fake bank accounts and applying for 565,000 credit cards, passing along the costs for all this phony activity to the bank's customers. They said the bank pressured them to sell, sell, sell, and the only way they could think of to meet sales goals was to create bogus accounts and rip off the people who put their faith in one of America's biggest banks. Enter the CFPB, and now Wells Fargo is paying record fines.
This Week in Offensive
Sunday is the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. This mattress store decided to use the occasion to launch a truly offensive promotion, and then to publicize it with a TV commercial. One can only hope whoever came up with this idea is now unemployed.
This Week in Arizona
BuzzFeed News suggests that America's Most Corrupt SheriffTM is vulnerable in this year's election, in part thanks to his legal troubles, his history of blatant racism, and his ties to Trump. Here's hoping.
This Week in Bears
Pandas aren't really bears, and China isn't really America. But there are pandas in America, and people often call them panda bears, so when the news is this good, we'll take it.
"The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which monitors threatened species on its 'Red List,' announced Sunday that giant pandas were being shifted from the endangered category to being listed as vulnerable."
The first place we ever saw pandas was at the National Zoo, so here's a shot of the zoo's current generation:
Karen Bleier / AFP / Getty Images
Also, Upworthy shares "11 panda facts that are really just an excuse to look at some pandas." You know you want to.
(Thanks to TWiA special ursine correspondent Marcy Rockwell for the tip.)
Wow, that commercial. I can't even.
Posted by: Marcy | 09/11/2016 at 08:43 AM
I know. Stunningly bad taste.
Posted by: Jeff Mariotte | 09/11/2016 at 10:30 AM