Most of Us Do Not Recognize How Hard the Corrupt Supreme Court Republican Majority, the "New York Times", & so Many Others Are Working to Elect Donald Trump
Yes, and grave moral fault attaches to them all...
Yes, and grave moral fault attaches to them all...
Brian Buetler’s analysis of Jack Smith’s prosecution shows that Smith offers not just a criminal case against Donald Trump but a vivid portrait of a neofascist presidency gone rogue—a neofascist movement protected by the corrupt Republican Supreme Court majority, the New York Times, and so many, many others today. Disgraced ex-New York Times honcho Dean Baquet has offered pathetic excuses—”nobody thought that what we did would have consequences”—for his actions in 2016. Nobody is offering any excuses for their actions today…
This AM we have the smart Brian Buetler:
Brian Buetler: Jack Smith's Roadmap To Donald Trump's Corrupt Mind: ‘In addition to placing Trump on trial, he's teaching Democrats how to think like Trump, and be prepared. Are they listening?… The six Republican justices intervened in extraordinary fashion, first to pause Trump’s criminal proceedings for months, then to provide him the presumption of immunity for any crimes he committed during his presidency… ensur[ing] that Trump would not face trial for attempting a coup before the 2024 election—if ever…. Thanks to John Roberts et al, presidents can break laws that carry criminal penalties with complete impunity, so long as they cook up pretextual public-policy purposes for their violations. If they use their official powers to violate the law for personal gain, they may face legal jeopardy, but only if prosecutors can find evidence of their crimes outside the confines of the executive branch. The only incidental upside is that the official-acts immunity doctrine obligated Smith to lay out his evidence in detail—to demonstrate that Trump’s conduct did not stem from his official duties, and that the government’s evidence does not intrude on intra-executive branch deliberation.
We learn… that Trump blew off multiple direct admonitions from his vice president that they had lost the election legitimately. We also learn that Trump’s decision to resort to mob violence to pressure Pence one final time was premeditated. This evidence may be admissible insofar as their discussions pertained to election certification—a process in which the president has no role, and the vice president has only a ministerial role in his capacity as president of the Senate. By contrast, Smith can also substantiate that when Trump learned Pence’s life was in danger, his response was, “who cares”—but he can’t introduce this evidence at trial, because the witness who provided it was a White House aide, deduced to be Trump’s personal assistant, Nick Luna. That’s where mainstream media enters the picture. Smith’s latest bombshells could have reoriented the whole election around Trump’s efforts to overturn the last one. Instead…
Notice a subtle difference?… <https://www.offmessage.net/p/jack-smiths-roadmap-donald-trump>
Then-New York Times editor Dean Baquet has claimed that it was all the pollsters’ fault—that if he had known that Donald Trump had had a serious chance of winning the election, his New York Times would have done things "a lot differently”:
I don’t have regrets about the Hillary Clinton e-mail stories…. My God, we were writing stories about Donald Trump harassing women…. I don’t buy that we were tougher on Hillary Clinton than we were on Donald Trump…. I don’t think that anybody had their arms wrapped around the mood of the country that allowed for the election of Donald Trump, including us. I don’t think people—including the New York Times—quite had a handle on the anger, the amount of racial animosity. I don’t think any of us thought that Donald Trump was going to be elected President. Anybody who says they did, I don’t buy it. If I had to do that over again, oh, my God, I would do that very, very, very differently. I mean, we treated Trump seriously. We treated him as an investigative story. But I would have covered the country a lot differently in the months leading up to the election of Donald Trump… <https://www.thewrap.com/new-york-times-dean-baquet-hillary-clinton-email-stories/>
Let me spell out what Dean Baquet is saying here:
I was “tough on Trump”: I made sure that every column-inch critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton was matched by a column-inch equally critical of Donald Trump.
But it never crossed my mind he would win the election.
So I thought this “balance” would insulate me from criticism for being pro-Democrat before the election.
And so I thought I would then be in a much stronger position with more credibility to cover the Hillary Rodham Clinton administration.
Anyone who says that they thought Trump might win the election is a liar, and using 20-20 hindsight: “Anybody who says they did, I don’t buy it.”
But “my God, I would do that very, very, very differently… a lot differently…”
So Dean Baquet has his excuse—pathetic as it is.
What is the New York Times’s excuse today?
References:
Buetler, Brian. 2024. "Jack Smith’s Roadmap to Donald Trump’s Corrupt Mind." Off Message, October 4. <https://www.offmessage.net/p/jack-smiths-roadmap-donald-trump>.
Campione, Katie. 2022. "NY Times Editor Dean Baquet Still Doesn’t Regret All Those Hillary Clinton Email Stories." TheWrap. February 18. <https://www.thewrap.com/new-york-times-dean-baquet-hillary-clinton-email-stories/>.
The basic story about Trump is his gross incompetence, psychiatric unfitness, and eager embodiment of our long tradition of Know Nothingism. But the whole corporate media ecology, including the paper of record, rests on selling ads, and that requires meta-balance, even when that isn't remotely realistic.
Very good points criticizing the NYT reporting and choice of external opinion pieces. Trump and Vance any utterance is reported and amplified, but Harris statements don´t get the same treatment. The editorial endorsing Harris is not sufficient to offset that.