CNN

A Real Border Crisis (Not Manufactured)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Larry Elder deftly journeys through the Left’s refusal to face a crisis worse than when Obama called it a crisis. (Insert here #nevertrumpers as well.) There is now no question about it… and those that perpetuate this as a non-crisis will only help Trump win in 2020.

Here are some related reads:

Media Still Refusing Culpability For “Collusion Delusion” Narrative

Published by Papa Giorgio

(BTW, I love the “collusion delusion” moniker Trump gave this. It’s like the old WWF days)

I apologize for putting Glenn Greenwald in my posts of late… but he is showing the corruption in the media well. And as a far leaning Leftist who was banned from CNN (along with Democrat Alan Dershowitz because they refused to go along with the narrative the MSM was dishing out). While I believe Greenwalds views on the Iraq War are wrong (along with most of his positions on politics and life), his defense of free thought and media bias are healthy:

BREAKING: Clapper Blames Obama For Collusion Delusion

Published by Papa Giorgio

>> REMEMBER, Mark Levin CALLED THIS in March of 2017! <<

~ALSO, see my OBAMAGATE post! ~

(GATEWAY PUNDIT h-t, via RED RIGHT VIDEOS)

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper revealed in an interview last week that if not for President Obama asking for an intelligence community assessment that “set off a whole sequence of events” we would not have the Mueller investigation. Clapper, a CNN contributor, said the effects of that intel assessment “are still unfolding today.”

There needs to be just a bit of reading between the lines here but make no mistake, what James Clapper is doing here is sending out a warning flare that if he’s going down there will be a lot of others he intends to take with him—including a certain former President of the United States. (Really pay attention to how much he emphasizes Obama’s personal involvement in the process from beginning to end.)

(Here is the March 5th, 2017 time where Clapper mentioned no evidence for collusion) But remember, he called Trump a Russian assett.  He may refer to a time where he said there was no evidence of collusion… but he then stepped on his own CYA toes to claim this in December 18th, 2017:

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper referred to President Donald Trump as a Russian “asset” on Monday.

Clapper was asked by CNN’s Jim Sciutto about the difference between Trump’s criticism of Russia as a rival power and his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin after the Russian leader foiled a terror attack using CIA intelligence.

“I think that this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is,” Clapper said.

“He knows how to handle an asset and that’s what he’s doing with the president,” he said.

Sciutto asked Clapper to reiterate his statement, to confirm whether he was indeed calling the American president an “asset” of Russia.

“That’s the appearance to me,” Clapper said. “He’s a [former] KGB officer. That’s what they do. They recruit assets.”

(FOX)

RELATED:

Remember, this is the Clapper that said a spy in the Trump campaign was a good thing (via RUSH LIMBAUGH, May 18, 2018). In other words… OBAMA AUTHORIZED AMERICANS TO BE SPIED ON WITH NO EVIDENCE!!

RUSH: We have the audio of you James Clapper. I wanted you to actually hear this. I mentioned it to you, but here’s James Clapper last night on CNN with Don Lemon. Clapper is the former Director of National Intelligence for Obama, and they’re talking about the story we began on this program on Monday that the FBI had a spy in the Trump campaign or an informant. Again, I know who it is, but I’m not gonna mention the name until it’s officially mentioned or released — and it doesn’t matter who.

What’s important is the FBI, the DOJ, the anti-Trump people had a spy in the Trump campaign, an informant. And here is James Clapper being asked about it and basically saying, “Yeah. It’s a good thing.” The question is from Lemon. Here’s what the president tweeted: “Andrew McCarthy says, ‘There’s probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign.’ If so, this is bigger than Watergate!” Don Lemon — who’s clueless, like Fredo Cuomo is clueless. You’ll hear an example of Fredo in clueless action in moments. Don Lemon said, “That’s an extraordinary claim. Based on your experience, Mr. Clapper, what’s the likelihood that it’s true?”

CLAPPER: This is hyperbole. They may have had someone who was talking to them in the campaign, but, y’know, the focus here, and as it was with the intelligence community, is not on the campaign per se, but what the Russians were doing to try to substantiate themselves in the campaign or influence or leverage it. So if there was someone that was observing that sort of thing, well, that’s a good thing! Uh, because the Russians pose a threat to the very basis of our political system.

RUSH: Come on.

CLAPPER: And I think it’s hugely danger if someone like that is exposed because, uh, the danger to that person, not to mention the reluctance of others to be informants for the FBI. And the FBI gains a lot of valuable information from informants. So — so — so to me, this is incredible.

RUSH: So it’s perfect… Okay. I tell you what. I’ll tell you what then, Clapper. Whoever you people run in 2020, we’re gonna put a spy on! It’s gonna be a valuable thing. We’re gonna find out who it is that might be trying to rig the election for you. If the Russians tampering with campaigns is the big deal… You heard Clapper say, “It’s not Trump. No, no. This is hyperbole! We were trying to find out what the Russians were doing because the Russians were tampering.”

You people have done more to damage the integrity of the American electoral process than Vladimir Putin could in his dreams! And I’m not joking. With what these people have done for the last year and a half — basically get people thinking the election was stolen, that it was illegitimate, that the Russians didn’t want Hillary and wanted Trump and made it happen — look at what they have done to the image, the reputation of the American electoral system and process.

These people are doing the damage to it, and they continue to do it, because they can’t show any evidence whatsoever the Russians succeeded in determining the outcome of a presidential race. And we’ve got multiple sound bites from Obama himself admitting that it would be impossible to do. Our election, presidential election system is way too complex. You couldn’t know enough in advance of where you would have to start playing games to pull anything off because the Electoral College, precincts, voter turnout. You just… It couldn’t be done. If it could, the Democrats would never lose.

If they had found a way, if they had found a way to tamper with presidential elections, do you think they would ever lose one? No. But they do. They haven’t found any evidence that the Russians succeeded, and yet they continue to talk about it and validate the idea that spies are worthwhile. These people need to be held accountable for this.

They are doing this on purpose. They are attempting to impugn and cloud the very integrity of the electoral system as a means of explaining every election they lose in the future. They are doing this so that they’ll be able to rant and rave that they were never rejected by voters, that voters didn’t choose to vote against them because of their policies. The Russians must have done it. The Russians or other foreign entities must have been conspiring against these precious Democrat candidates.

And it’s gotten to the point now that this is so prevalent that you cannot watch prime time television without — the entire series of Homeland this year, the entire season was devoted to this fake premise that the Russians were easily able to infiltrate anything they wanted. The Russians were able to get rid of a duly elected president. The Russians were able to determine the outcome of an election.

The Russians cannot hold a candle to the American Democrat Party. The Russians can’t hold a candle to the ChiComs in terms of worldwide power and the ability to project it. You talk about a straw man, a straw dog. And not a shred of evidence. And now here’s Clapper. And there’s one more thing he said here that I want to double back to. “This is hyperbole,” he said.

“They may have had somebody who was talking to them in the campaign. But, you know, the focus here, as it was with the intelligence community, is not on the campaign per se, but what the Russians were going to try.” That is, pardon me, BS, Mr. Clapper. Your focus was Trump. It was Trump you were spying on. You weren’t spying on the Russians. If you were trying to find Russian influence in the campaign, you’d have been looking in Russia, you’d been looking in Putin, you’d be spying on people that would have done it.

No, you were spying on Trump. You were trying to find evidence that Trump was conspiring with the Russians, not that Russia was conspiring with Trump. That’s what you wanted to prove. And if you could, if you could have gotten close to it, I know these people would have said so. This is total obfuscation. “No, we weren’t looking at the campaign. No, no, no. We were looking at the Russians because, of course, the Russians were going to try to instantiate themselves in the campaign or influence their leverage,” blah, blah, blah, blah. These guys are trying to double back and cover their tracks, lying through their wooden teeth about what they were doing.

So we’ll just say that the next time there’s a presidential race, we’re gonna vouch for a spy being in the Democrat campaign. It’s a valuable thing. We need to have informants in there, Mr. Clapper, to see to it that foreign actors don’t instantiate themselves, as you say, into the campaign and tamper with our precious electoral process. People are starting to tick me off, and you’ve probably been there longer than I have.

…break in the transcript…

You know, here’s another thought. And this is how I know that the snake Clapper is lying. Clapper tells CNN (imitating Clapper), “Oh, no, no, no, we weren’t interested in the Trump campaign, our spy. We think it was a good thing the FBI had a spy to look for pernicious activity from the Russians, the Russians tampering with our electoral process. It was a good thing they had a spy in that campaign, not to look at the Trump campaign, but to look at the Russians.”

MR. CLAPPER, THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU PUT A SPY IN THE HILLARY CAMPAIGN? SHE WAS INTERACTING WITH THE RUSSIANS. SHE WAS RIGGING THE DNC PRIMARY. SHE DID HIRE A GUY TO WRITE A PHONY OPPOSITION RESEARCH WITH RUSSIAN AGENTS ON TRUMP. THE HILLARY CAMPAIGN WAS INTERTWINED WITH THE RUSSIANS FOR MONTHS. WHY DIDN’T YOU HAVE A SPY IN HER CAMPAIGN, IF IT WAS THE RUSSIANS YOU WERE REALLY INTERESTED IN? WHY NOT LOOK AT HOW HILLARY WAS WORKING WITH THEM?

But of course they weren’t looking for the Russians, because I think they’ve known from the get-go the Russians didn’t affect the outcome of this election. Remember, if Hillary had won, you’d a never heard about the Russians, other than whatever steps they took to destroy Trump, which I think they would have done. Even if Trump had lost, I think they would have made moves to further destroy this guy, to send the message to any other outsiders, “Don’t even think about trying this. Look what we’ll do to you.”

And if I’m right, they’re gonna continue their destruction plan of Trump after he leaves the White House, whenever that is.

(emphasis added)

 

Dershowitz Called It From Day One…

Published by Papa Giorgio

(See a previous post detailing some of his arguments, HERE) Mar. 25, 2019 | Former Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says Robert Mueller was wrong for not completely ruling out a case for obstruction of justice in his Russia report.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz weighs in on the lack of a decision on obstruction in the Mueller report.

 

The Liberal Media’s Most Embarrassing Russia Fails

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Via MRCTV/NEWSBUSTERS) The Sunday afternoon letter from Attorney General Bill Barr on the Mueller report has rocked the political world and burst more than a few bubbles in the liberal media, most notably their years-long insistence that the President and/or his team colluded with Russia.

Some journalists have conceded this reality, while others are mimicking Japanese soldiers still fighting World War II in 1971……

The Medias Most Embarrassing Fails (Via THE DAILY CALLER):

1. CNN ACCUSES DON JR. OF WIKILEAKS COLLUSION

Last December, CNN’s Manu Raju reported that Wikileaks emailed Donald Trump Jr. to give him access to stolen documents a full 10 days before they were released to the public.

Unfortunately for CNN, it turns out their sources gave them the wrong date. Don Jr. actually received an email with access to the stolen docs on Sept. 14, 2016, after they had already been released publicly.

2. ABC TANKS STOCK MARKET WITH FAKE FLYNN NEWS

ABC was forced to suspend Brian Ross after he falsely reported that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that then-candidate Donald Trump ordered him to make contact with the Russians.

The stock market dropped a few hundred points at the news — but it turned out to be fake.

ABC clarified that Flynn was actually prepared to testify that Trump asked him to contact Russia while the administration was transitioning into office. Pretty standard preparation for an incoming president.

3. THE MOOCH IS NOT UNDER INVESTIGATION

CNN earns another spot on this list for their shoddy reporting about former Trump adviser Anthony, “The Mooch,” Scaramucci. In June 2017, CNN relied on a single unnamed source to claim that Scaramucci was under investigation for a meeting he took with a Russian banker prior to Trump’s inauguration.

The Mooch denied the story and CNN later gave him a much-deserved apology. Oh … and three CNN employees resigned over the botched piece.

4. BLOOMBERG’S DIRTY DEUTSCHE BANK SCOOP

Bloomberg initially reported in December that special counsel Robert Mueller had “zeroed in” on Trump by subpoenaing Deutsche Bank records for the incoming president and his family.

Bloomberg later admitted that Mueller was looking for records relating to “people affiliated” with Trump.

5. SESSIONS EXONERATED

Last May, CNN was sure that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had botched protocol when he didn’t list meetings he had with the Russian ambassador on his security clearance forms. To CNN and other establishment media outlets, this was proof that Sessions was hiding something related to Russia.

A little over six months later, CNN quietly walked back the scandal, explaining the FBI sent emails informing Sessions’ aide that he did not need to disclose the meetings on his forms because they were carried out in the course of his duties as a senator.

6. RUSSIANS AREN’T JUST HACKING THE ELECTION — THEY’RE HACKING OUR POWER GRID

The Washington Post claimed in January 2017 that Russians were hacking the U.S. power grid through a company in Vermont, only to change the story to say that only one laptop was infiltrated. It turns out that one laptop was never even connected to the power grid.

7. REPUBLICANS FUNDED THE DOSSIER! 

A number of news outlets have consistently claimed that Republicans initially paid for the anti-Trump Steele dossier, failing to note that Steele wasn’t even contracted by Fusion GPS until after the GOP donors pulled funding. The Republican donors say they paid Fusion for standard opposition research and that they have zero connection to the dossier.

The media has perpetuated this falsehood so consistently that even former FBI director James Comey was confused, repeating the lie in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier…..

(READ THEM ALL!)

Victimhood Chic – Dr. John McWhorter

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • Only in an America in which matters of race are not as utterly irredeemable as we are often told could things get to the point that someone would pretend to be tortured in this way, acting oppression rather than suffering it, seeking to play a prophet out of a sense that playing a singer on television is not as glamorous as getting beaten up by white guys. That anyone could feel this way and act on it in the public sphere is, in a twisted way, a kind of privilege, and a sign that we have come further on race than we are often comfortable admitting. — John McWhorter

John McWhorter delivers some brilliant social commentary (a shining light into Don Lemon’s career):

THE ATLANTIC

….Notable in Smollett’s account is that he sought to come off as an especially fierce kind of victim—the victim as hero, as cool. “I fought the fuck back,” he told ABC’s Robin Roberts in an interview. Smollett has long displayed a hankering for preacher status. His Twitter stream is replete with counsel about matters of spirit, skepticism, and persistence that sounds a tad self-satisfied from someone in his 30s. His mother associated with the Black Panthers and is friends with the activist Angela Davis, and in interviews Smollett has identified proudly with the activist tradition.

The problem is that amid the complexities of 2019 as opposed to 1969, keeping the Struggle going is more abstract, less dramatic, than it once was. Angela Davis is on T-shirts; it seems less likely that, for example, the Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson will be. How do you make as stark and monumental a statement as a King or a Malcolm these days? With a touch too much thirst for glory, and a tad too little inclination for analysis, one might seek to be attacked the way they were.

In john ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, a newspaperman advises, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” One take on Smollett’s story, if he turns out to have orchestrated it, will be that it was true in essence—a teachable example of the very real phenomenon of hate crimes. For a long time, the enlightened black person was to pretend that O. J. Simpson was framed by the Los Angeles Police Department, out of concern about the way the LAPD actually had treated black people for decades. For similar reasons, even today the idea that Michael Brown in Ferguson died with his hands up, although soundly refuted by all lines of evidence, retains status as almost an “alternative fact” in some quarters.

However, Smollett, in crafting his own “legend”—if that’s what happened—is less channeling Simpson and Brown than Tawana Brawley and Rachel Dolezal.

In 1987, Brawley claimed that six white men had abducted her, raped her, and left her in the woods covered with feces. They had scrawled racial epithets across her torso. That account turned out to be as fictional as it now sounds, but Brawley claimed as late as 1997 that “something happened to me,” a deftly vague statement. However, a key difference between Brawley and Smollett, pointing up the difference between 1987 and 2019, is that while Brawley lied to escape the wrath of her mother’s boyfriend after she ran away from home for four days, Smollett may have lied to look good to the public.

Dolezal, white, spent years with a spray tan, “identifying” as black and even heading a local NAACP branch, and had fabricated episodes of racist discrimination against herself. As Bryan Cranston’s dentist character on Seinfeld adopted Judaism for the jokes, Dolezal, one might say, took on blackness for the victimhood. She felt that her existence was more meaningful while she was “playing” an oppressed black person than living as a white person despite all the attendant privileges. Few news events more perfectly illustrated that in our moment, a claim of victimhood from a black person is a form of power. Only in an America much further past the old days than many like to admit could a white person eagerly seek to be a put-upon black person out of a sense that it looked “cool.” A Dolezal would have been unimaginable until roughly the late 1990s.
One could imagine that Smollett, if he was playacting, had a similar motivation. For Smollett, being a successful actor and singer might not have been quite as exciting as being a poster child for racist abuse in Trump’s America.

Assuming, again, that the reports are accurate, Smollett’s clumsiness would be an especially poignant indication of how deeply this victimhood chic has taken hold—almost as if he thought this was such an easy score that he didn’t even need to think too hard about the logistics. This story has been reminiscent, again, of Brawley, except that she was 15 and Smollett is, at 36, more than twice her age then. Consider, for example, this saliently implausible detail: If thugs put a rope around your neck, your first impulse when they were gone would be to remove it, but he still had it on when police first made contact. Really?

Smollett told Robin Roberts, amid initial skepticism about his account, that people would have been more open to his story if he had said the attackers were black or Muslim—missing, apparently, that the attackers’ being white made the story the most interesting possible one to all the people he was seeking to reach. Then, suddenly, even an actor is awkward in playing his part. He addressed an audience recently using note cards and callowly compared himself to Tupac Shakur, unaware that all of this is the hallmark of someone making something up, speaking from a script—telling a story, as it were……

Fact Checking WaPo, CNN, and NYTs On Trump’s SOTU

Published by Papa Giorgio

In a good bit today on the Glenn Beck Radio Program, a New York Times story that “fact-checked” the State of the Union Speech was itself run through the grinder. I include a short Stephanie Ruhle (MSNBC) audio clip, and then Brian Stelter (CNN) gets “fact-checked himself. Good clip to link in a response to a Leftist. Glenn and Stu (Steve Burguiere) are in their zone here. The segment that followed this section can be see HERE.

See also an excellent article at THE FEDERALIST entitled, “The State Of American ‘Fact-Checking’ Is Completely Useless“.

In another great segment Glenn Beck and Stu (Steve Burguiere) discuss where the New York Times and the Washington Post’s fudging their quotes and intended meanings. NATIONAL REVIEW has an excellent rebuttal to this in their article entitled, “Trump Was Right about New York’s Abortion Law”. In it we read:

  • The text of the law bears out rather than contradicts Trump’s comment. So long as the abortionist is willing to say that an abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s health — including emotional health — the abortion can take place at any time before or after 24 weeks. Two decades ago, during a debate over similar legislation, late-term abortionist Warren Hern explained that he would always testify that an abortion he wished to perform would avert adverse health consequences (Frank Murray, “Daschle Ban May Not Ban Anything; Abortionists Could Use Own Judgment,” Washington Times, May 15, 1997).

Good stuff Glenn and Stu!

 

Sean Hannity Interviews Jerome Corsi

Published by Papa Giorgio

Sean Hannity interviews Jerome Corsi. I first want to say that I am not a fan of Jerome – at all. BUT, the interview sheds a lot of light on the entire case, and he (if this is true) should win his case easily. But discussion about Roger Stone and Julian Assange add some substance to the case[s]. Good stuff, I hope it helps fill-in holes for the listener. Here is more information:

HOT AIR reports on this:

…So what were Stone’s false statements? The six counts of false testimony in the indictment allege:

  • Stone lied when he claimed that he had no records pertinent to the House Intelligence Committee’s probe
  • Stone lied when he claimed not to have sent or received e-mails and texts relating to the hacked e-mails
  • Stone lied about the timing of his contacts with “Person 2” about Julian Assange, and had actually contacted “Person 1” rather than “Person 2”, which he did not disclose
  • Stone lied when he claimed he never directed either to get more information about the hacked data, when in fact he asked both to get documents from Wikileaks
  • Stone lied about never sending e-mails or texts to “Person 2”
  • Stone lied about discussing all of the above with “anyone involved in the Trump campaign

It’s tough to argue that all of these are immaterial to the House’s purpose in investigating the issues surrounding the 2016 campaign, if — if — Mueller can prove these allegations in court. It’s also tough to establish forgetfulness on the first two, since there is a reasonable expectation that a subpoenaed witness would check to see if requested/demanded records exist before denying that they do. A jury is not likely to find “memory loss” as a reasonable explanation for this series of supposed senior moments.

Plus, let’s not forget (pardon the joke), that the questions of materiality and memory loss do not at all pertain to the witness-tampering charge. That charge might make it tough for Stone to sustain a memory loss defense, too:

e. On multiple occasions, including on or about December 1, 2017, STONE told Person 2 that Person 2 should do a “Frank Pentangeli” before HPSCI in order to avoid contradicting STONE’s testimony. Frank Pentangeli is a character in the film The Godfather: Part II, which both STONE and Person 2 had discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and in that testimony claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know.

f. On or about December 1, 2017, STONE texted Person 2, “And if you turned over anything to the FBI you’re a fool.” Later that day, Person 2 texted STONE, “You need to amend your testimony before I testify on the 15th.” STONE responded, “If you testify you’re a fool. Because of tromp I could never get away with a certain [sic] my Fifth Amendment rights but you can. I guarantee you you are the one who gets indicted for perjury if you’re stupid enough to testify.”

If Mueller’s team can establish this communication as genuine, and if Stone’s attorneys can’t establish any other context for demanding that Person 2 pull a Frankie Five Angels, it shows that Stone knew full well that he’d perjured himself…..

So Woke Blacks Have White Privilege

Published by Papa Giorgio

MEDIA’ITE fills us in on the story:

2019 is so woke that you don’t even need to be white to be accused of “white privilege” anymore.

CNN analyst Areva Martin accused Sirius XM radio and Fox Nation host David Webb of benefitting from “white privilege” because of his views on race Tuesday morning, to which Webb responded… that he’s black.

In a debate on his radio show about what makes some people qualified for certain jobs over others, Webb said as a general rule when applying for jobs he cares more about his work-related expertise and experience, not skin color…..

The WASHINGTON TIMES has more.

CNN Suppresses Facts

Published by Papa Giorgio

LEGAL INSURRECTION sets up the video for us:

As a conservative citizen activist residing in San Diego, I have always been impressed with the news coverage of KUSI’s wonderful team.  Its reporters always gave us a fair hearing and covered our stories honestly.

So, it was with great interest that I read the story, which went viral, KUSI had offered CNN a reporter to give the cable news network perspective on the area’s functional and effective border wall…but was rejected.

A San Diego television station accused CNN of dropping an appearance by one of its reporters after learning that person’s reporting does not fit an anti-border-wall narrative — an allegation the cable news network denies.

KUSI this week that CNN had asked whether one of its reporters could appear on the network and talk about the local debate surrounding the border wall and government shutdown…..

More at FOX

Der Spiegel’s Broken Mirror | The Atlantic

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager reads from THE ATLANTIC’S article entitled, “Germany’s Leading Magazine Published Falsehoods About American Life” This well written piece should be a nail in the biased coffin of the MSM. Here are some key points that stuck out to me (and Dennis) — EXCEPT I will change the sentence a bit (capitalized):

  • …THE AMERICAN LEFT repeated the hoary “Blood for Oil” charge as the rationale for the Iraq War, and, in the run-up to George W. Bush’s reelection campaign, asked, “Will America Be Democratic Again?”
  • CNN, I submit, was able to get away with his con for so long because THEY (MSNBC, ABC, CBS, ETC.) confirmed the preconceived notions of people who fashion themselves worldly yet are as parochial as the red-state hicks of their imagination.
  • The… MSM SOUND exactly like what you would expect a snotty, effete, self-righteous, morally superior, latte-sipping DEMOCRAT to say about America. Pardon the stereotype.

Here is the Atlantic article in part:

The word spiegel means “mirror” in German,…

[….]

…Der Spiegel has cracked, and revealed ugliness within the publication as well as German society more broadly.

On December 19, the magazine announced that the star reporter Claas Relotius had fabricated information “on a grand scale” in more than a dozen articles. Relotius has been portrayed as a sort of Teutonic Stephen Glass, the 1990s New Republic fabulist. “I’m sick and I need to get help,” Relotius told his editor. While that may very well be the case, his downfall is about more than just one writer with a mental-health problem.

A motif of Relotius’s work is America’s supposed brutality. In one story, he told the macabre tale of a woman who travels across the country volunteering to witness executions. In another, he related the tragic experience of a Yemeni man wrongly imprisoned by the United States military at Guantánamo Bay, where he was held in solitary confinement and tortured for 14 years. (The song that American soldiers turned on full blast and pumped into the poor soul’s cell? Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”) Both stories were complete fabrications.

And they should have been easily invalidated. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, Der Spiegel’s fact-checking department is the largest in the world, besting that of the vaunted New Yorker. (In 2013, I spent several months on a fellowship working for a now-defunct English-language unit at Der Spiegel). A diligent checker would have at least contacted the purported death-row roadie to confirm her existence. And the U.S. government keeps scrupulous records about the inmates imprisoned at Guantánamo. Yet Relotius’s inventions escaped the scrutiny of his colleagues.

Der Spiegel is conducting an internal review to explain what went wrong. But it seems to me that the blame lies not only with Relotius or a few careless checkers or even the publication’s research methods, but with the mentality of its editors and readers. Relotius told them what they wanted—what they expected—to hear about America; this is a case of motivated reasoning if I’ve ever seen one.

Consider the story Relotius published in March 2017, “Where They Pray for Trump on Sundays.” In 7,300 words, the German correspondent described the town of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, in the manner of an explorer recounting his visit to a remote island tribe untouched by civilization. Some of the “facts” Relotius reported, like his claim that the city voted 70.4 percent for President Donald Trump when the actual figure was 62.6 percent, could have been exposed as false with a few minutes’ research. The same goes for other, too-good-to-be-true details, like the sign warning “Mexicans Keep Out” and a throwaway line about a resident who had “never seen the ocean.” Most of the story was, according to a devastating analysis written by the Fergus Falls residents Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn, “uninhibited fiction.”

An open-minded editor would have doubted this astonishing tale about a town so jingoistic that its only cinema continues to sell out screenings of American Sniper years after the film’s release (another easily disproven lie). The fact that these blatant deceptions were not exposed until nearly two years after publication speaks to the ignorance about America that characterizes a wide swath of elite German society. Relotius, I submit, was able to get away with his con for so long because he confirmed the preconceived notions of people who fashion themselves worldly yet are as parochial as the red-state hicks of their imagination.

Though it is respected abroad as an authoritative news source, Der Spiegel has long peddled crude and sensational anti-Americanism, usually grounded in its brand of knee-jerk German pacifism. Covers over the years have impugned the United States as “The Conceited World Power” (with an image of the White House bestriding the globe), repeated the hoary “Blood for Oil” charge as the rationale for the Iraq War, and, in the run-up to George W. Bush’s reelection campaign, asked, “Will America Be Democratic Again?” When Edward Snowden leaked information detailing U.S. surveillance practices several years ago, Der Spiegel went on a crusade unlike anything in its recent history, railing about U.S. intelligence cooperation with Germany and demanding that Berlin grant Snowden asylum. (The magazine demonstrated none of the same outrage when, two years later, Russia hacked the German parliamentary computer network). Last year, Der Spiegel notoriously featured a cartoon of Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty on its cover. And this May, one of its columnists misappropriated the memory of those who struggled against Nazism by calling for “resistance against America,” quite a demand for a magazine from the country that started World War II.

[….]

When Trump was elected president, it seemed to confirm every negative impression Europeans hold about Americans. Here, in the shape of our reality-TV leader, was the ur-American: vulgar, crass, ignorant, bellicose. Trump may be all those things, but to depict his supporters with such a broad brush is akin to writing off half of Germany as a bunch of goose-stepping, would-be fascists. The wildly popular work of Relotius reads exactly like what you would expect a snotty, effete, self-righteous, morally superior, latte-sipping European to say about America. Pardon the stereotype.

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“Is This It?” Vanity Fair Asks of “Collusion”

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • “…Trump’s White House has pursued what is arguably the harshest set of policies toward Russia since the fall of Communism…” | Vanity Fair

Larry Elder reads from a Vanity Fair article that is entitled, “Is This It? A Trump-Hater’s Guide To Mueller Skepticism.” The “Sage” also plays a recent interview on CNN of Jerry Nadler by Jake Tapper.

Here is one of the powerful paragraphs from the article:

  • Certainly, Trump’s ethical standards are low, but if sleaziness were a crime then many more people from our ruling class would be in jail. It is sleazy, but not criminal, to try to find out in advance what WikiLeaks has on Hillary Clinton. It is sleazy, but not criminal, to take a meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising a dossier of dirt on Clinton. (Just as, it should be mentioned, it is sleazy, but not criminal, to pay a guy to go to Russia to put together a dossier of dirt on Trump. This is one reason why the Clinton campaign lied about its connection to the Steele dossier, albeit without the disadvantage of being under oath.) It is sleazy, but not criminal, to pursue a business deal while you’re running for president. Mueller has nailed people for trying to prevaricate about their sleaze, so we already have a couple of guilty pleas over perjury, with more believed to be on the way. But the purpose of the investigation was to address suspicions of underlying conspiracy—that is, a plan by Trump staffers to get Russian help on a criminal effort. Despite countless man-hours of digging, this conspiracy theory, the one that’s been paying the bills at Maddow for a couple of years now, has come no closer to being borne out.