Dan Bongino: "[Members of the media are] Champions of Misinformation"

At Trump's most horrible moments, the left is always worse

David Griffey, a new friend of this blog, more or less echoes my thoughts on Trump's Helsinki performance by referencing this tweet.

I think I've seen you say it, @JamesHasson20, as have many others - all they have to do is not be insane. This Pearl Harbor, 9/11, "attack" and "war" stuff is nuts - Trump opened himself up to legit criticism today, and they can't help but to bury it in crazy. https://t.co/4kT8aqvoZT

— Jason Beale (@jabeale) July 17, 2018

Hasson's remark is in response to the comparison of the Helsinki Summit to Kristallnacht and the Pearl Harbor attacks by former Watergate Prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks.

The sound of Trump's voice is often to me about as pleasant as the sound of a glass breaking. And often his rhetoric is damaging; I agree with Pikkumatti that Trump could do more to unite the country. But to inflate Trump's unpleasantness or even his damage to Kristallnacht is to violate the rule no one talks about anymore because everyone on the left breaks it everyday. Hitler analogies, Kristallnacht comparisons and labeling everyone a fascist are doled out with absolutely straight faces by people accounted serious.

This is just one example of the media overreaction to the Helsinki Summit. Don Lemon gives us the standard brain-dead "not my president" guitar solo after turning the amp up a notch. Beale also takes a shot at Michael Moore's fake righteous anger reminding the left of their conveniently forgetting that Moore accused the entire American intelligence apparatus of deception in order to warmonger in Iraq. By making a documentary! Oh, weren't those the days... But in 2018, even during Trump's most horrible moments, the left and their media is always worse.

Trump's oppenent will easily get the women's vote

One of my political beliefs is that it's never too early to think about the general election. We should be imagining a match-up between the front-runners at the very least, and it could end up being a choice between the first woman President, Hillary Clinton, and a new record-holder for bad treatment of women, Donald Trump. Here's a Nation Journal article running off a list of evidence for my claim that Trump might hold such a record, but don't worry if you don't have time to read it. There will be many more if Trump is the nominee. And if he isn't? Good; people of both genders will be able to forget this ever happened. And we'll all be spared the tawdry particulars of a press frenzy which will make Bill Clinton look like a piker in comparison. Excerpt:

The trove of in­cen­di­ary and of­fens­ive things Trump has said about wo­men dur­ing his dec­ades in pub­lic life is seem­ingly end­less. He’s dis­paraged wo­men for their looks, ranked which fe­male pub­lic fig­ures he’d sleep with on The Howard Stern Show, and once said in an in­ter­view with Es­quire, “You know, it doesn’t really mat­ter what [the me­dia] write as long as you’ve got a young and beau­ti­ful piece of ass.” In 2011, Trump called a fe­male at­tor­ney—a new mom—who took a break dur­ing a de­pos­ition to use a breast pump “dis­gust­ing.”

The con­sequences are evid­ent in Re­pub­lic­an primary exit polling and na­tion­al opin­ion polls, in­clud­ing a Feb­ru­ary CNN/ORC poll that found just 29 per­cent of re­gistered wo­men voters had a fa­vor­able opin­ion of Trump, while a whop­ping 68 per­cent viewed him un­fa­vor­ably.

By com­par­is­on, CNN’s fi­nal na­tion­al poll be­fore the Novem­ber 2012 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion found wo­men evenly split in their opin­ion of Mitt Rom­ney: 47 per­cent of likely wo­men voters viewed him fa­vor­ably, and 49 per­cent viewed him un­fa­vor­ably. Rom­ney ul­ti­mately lost wo­men by 10 points na­tion­ally to Pres­id­ent Obama, and lost them by an even wider mar­gin in a hand­ful of swing states.

It probably is a waste of time to relate these truths to some Trump supporters, but not all. I'm of the opinion that many of these people are truly good people who are just misguided followers of a raving strong man with a large ego and harem who has started a cult based on fear and bullying. I mean... we know plenty of good Muslims, do we not?

"I don't know, honestly"

Michael Barone: Obama and the 1917 Espionage Act

As always, Michael Barone delivers the most interesting and insightful explanation on what is going on with the Obama Admin/Media Spy-vs-Spy flap. Excerpt:

There is one problem with the entirely justified if self-interested media squawking about the Justice Department snooping into the phone records of multiple Associated Press reporters and Fox News' James Rosen.

The problem is that what the AP reporters and Rosen did arguably violates the letter of the law.

The search warrant in the Rosen case cites Section 793(d) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code.

Section 793(d) says that a person lawfully in possession of information that the government has classified as secret who turns it over to someone not lawfully entitled to possess it has committed a crime. That might cover Rosen's source.

Section 793(g) is a conspiracy count that says that anyone who conspires to help the source do that has committed the same crime. That would be the reporter.

It sounds like this law criminalizes a lot of journalism. You might wonder how such a law ever got passed and why, for the last 90 years, it has very seldom produced prosecutions and investigations of journalists.

Politico's Ben Smith on the McChrystal Leak

This stuff is interesting, and way beyond my ability to add anything insightful. Excerpt.

So who did it?

The simplest theory — and one most administration officials Monday were endorsing — is that a military or civilian Pentagon official who supports McChrystal’s policy put it out in an attempt to pressure Obama to follow McChrystal’s suggestion and increase troop levels in Afghanistan.

But not everyone in Washington is a believer in Occam’s razor, so all manner of other theories flourished.

Then Smith goes on to detail the alternate theories.

News Heading of the Week

From this article, about halfway down: Some Never Forgave Kennedy for Chappaquiddick. What? Who would those ignoramuses be? Forgive and forget–we're talking about one girl here, jeez.

I liked the following question posed by Ted Kennedy biographer Edward Klein: "How could he be one of most trusted members of Senate–and they trusted his word as good as gold–be an out of control frat boy most of his life?" Then he answers his question: "Life is complicated and people aren't as simple as we'd like them to be."

After that night, the word Chappaquiddick became synonymous with deception and abuse of power, and for decades until this day, each anniversary was dredged up in newspapers around the country.

But oddly, the darkest moment in Kennedy's career also sealed his fate as a work-horse senator and ultimately transformed him into one of the most highly regarded politicians in Congress.

Yeah, "highly regarded" because no one could win an election against him. With the Kennedy machine behind him, the guy could do whatever he wanted.

Well that's that. Wanted to make sure I had the word "chappaquiddick" on the blog for some hits.

Andrew Klavan Explains the Perennial Argument of the Left: "Shut up"

Hat tip.

So let's give it a little more press

This is really funny to me because it's so counter-productive. This Imam doesn't like the press coverage given to Magdi Allam's conversion to Roman Catholicism.

Muslim leaders said that the highly public conversion was being viewed in some quarters as an open challenge to Islam rather than an individual's private religious choice. The spokesman for the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, Imam Issedin Elzir of Florence, said that "the case garnered more attention than it merited, given that each day many convert to Islam and many to Christianity."

So now the press is going to interview Mr. Elzir regarding these statements and give it a few more minutes of press.

Someone should point out to the good Imam that Allam is a well-known journalist; hence the press attention. Of course, maybe Mr. Elzir's purpose is to garner a bit of press for himself and he can't think of anything nice to say, so here come the sour grapes.