Sarah Huckabee Sanders is terrible at this job

[J.R. 150]

You seem to have a hard time grasping the difference between making mistakes when trying to report on an unprecedented tornado of a presidency and outright intentional lying. I am not surprised. I have nothing further for you. 

[seven 1368]

8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Again, posting a list of reports that contained incorrect info...MOST of which were corrected (contrast with the “Vesuvius of mendacity” coming from Trump, which is NEVER corrected - not my words, but rather from that pussy libtard Krauthammer)....again, it’s perfect.

Well he did issue one correction but that correction was the lie and the original was the truth 

[retread 2951]

23 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

The last two pages were really a microcosm of the problems we are going to face after this shitgibbon is gone.  These people have been fully brainwashed. 

I guess the best we can hope for is the possibility that their latent love for racism and authoritarianism will go dormant once DOTUS is gone.

[Mojo Hand 4580]

8 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

Okay I'll just go with some of the more well known ones Atkinson gives.

 

Jan. 26, 2017: 

Josh Rogin of the Washington Post reported that the State Department’s “entire senior administrative team” had resigned in protest of Trump. A number of media outlets ranging from politically left to right, including liberal-leaning Vox, stated that claim was misleading or wrong.

 

Jan. 28, 2017

CNBC’s John Harwood reported the Justice Department “had no input” on Trump’s immigration executive order. After a colleague contradicted Harwood’s report, he amended it to reflect that Justice Department lawyers reportedly had reviewed Trump’s order.

 

 

Jan. 31, 2017:

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported the White House set up Twitter accounts for two judges to try to keep Trump’s selection for Supreme Court secret. Zeleny later corrected his report to state that the Twitter accounts had not been set up by the White House.

 

Feb. 4, 2017:

Josh Rogin of the Washington Post reported on “Inside the White House-Cabinet Battle Over Trump’s Immigration Order,” only to have the article updated repeatedly to note that one of the reported meetings had not actually occurred, that a conference call had not happened as described, and that actions attributed to Trump were actually taken by his chief of staff.

 

 

June 6, 2017:

CNN’s Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus; and ABC’s Justin Fishel and Jonathan Karl reported that Comey was going to refute Donald Trump’s claim that Comey told Trump three times he was not under investigation. Instead, Comey did the opposite and confirmed Trump’s claim.

 

June 22, 2017:

CNN’s Thomas Frank reported that Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.” The report was later retracted. Frank and two other CNN employees resigned in the fallout.

 

December 2, 2017: 

ABC News’ Brian Ross reported that former Trump official Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was going to testify that candidate Trump had directed him to contact “the Russians.” Even though such contact would not be in of itself a violation of law, the news was treated as an explosive indictment of Trump in the Russia collusion narrative, and the stock market fell on the news. ABC later corrected the report to reflect that Trump had already been elected when he reportedly asked Flynn to contact the Russians about working together to fight ISIS and other issues. Ross was suspended.

 

 

 July 6, 2017:

Newsweek’s Chris Riotta and others reported that Poland’s First Lady had refused to shake Trump’s hand. Newsweek’s later “update” reflected that the First Lady had shaken Trump’s hand after all, as clearly seen on the full video. 

 

Aug. 31, 2017:

NBC News’ Ken Dilinian and Carol Lee reported that a Trump official’s notes about a meeting with a Russian lawyer included the word “donation,” as if there were discussions about suspicious campaign contributions. NBC later corrected the report to reflect that the word “donation” didn’t appear, but still claimed the word “donor” did. Later, Politico reported that the word “donor” wasn’t in the notes, either.

 

 

Nov. 6, 2017:

CNN’s Daniel Shane edited excerpts from a Trump event to make it seem as though Trump didn’t realize Japan builds cars in the U.S. However, Trump’s entire statement made clear that he does.

 

Nov. 6, 2017:

CNN edited a video that made it appear as though Trump impatiently dumped a box of fish food into the water while feeding fish at Japan’s palace. The New York Daily News, the Guardian and others wrote stories implying Trump was gauche and impetuous. The full video showed that Trump had simply followed the lead of Japan’s Prime Minister. 

 

Nov. 29, 2017:

Newsweek’s Chris Riotta claimed Ivanka Trump “plagiarized” one of her own speeches. In fact, plagiarizing one’s own work is impossible since plagiarism is when a writer steals someone else’s work and passes it off as his own.

 

Dec. 5, 2017:

Bloomberg’s Steven Arons and the Wall Street Journal’s Jenny Strasburg reported the blockbuster that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had subpoenaed Trump’s bank records. It wasn’t true.

 

Dec. 8, 2017:

CNN’s Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb reported that Donald Trump Jr. conspired with WikiLeaks in advance of the publication of damaging Democrat party and Clinton campaign emails. Many other publications followed suit. They had the date wrong: WikiLeaks and Trump Junior were in contact after the emails were published.

 

March 8, 2018:

The New York Times’ Jan Rosen reported on a hypothetical family whose tax bill would rise nearly $4,000 under Trump’s tax plan. It turns out the calculations were off: the couple’s taxes would go actually go down $43; not up $4,000. 

 

 March 13, 2018:

The New York Times’ Adam Goldman, NBC’s Noreen O’Donnell and AP’s Deb Riechmann reported that Trump’s pick for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, had waterboarded a particular Islamic extremist terrorist dozens of time at a secret prison; and that she had mocked his suffering. In fact, Haspel wasn’t assigned to the prison until after the detainee left. ProPublica originally reported the incorrect details in Feb. 2017.

 

March 15, 2018:

AP’s Michael Biesecker, Jake Pearson and Jeff Horwitz reported that a Trump advisory board official had been a Miss America contestant and had killed a black rhino. She actually was a Mrs. America contestant and had shot a nonlethal tranquilizer dart at a white rhino.

 

 May 3, 2018:

NBC’s Tom Winter reported that the government had wiretapped Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen. NBC later corrected the story after three senior U.S. officials said there was no wiretap.

 

May 7, 2018:

CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger reported that Trump’s personal lawyer, Cohen, paid $1 million in fines related to unauthorized cars in his taxi business, had been barred from managing taxi medallions, had transferred $60 million offshore to avoid paying debts, and is awaiting trial on charges of failing to pay millions in taxes. A later correction stated that none of that was true.

 

 

May 16, 2018:

The New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis, AP, CNN’s Oliver Darcy and others excerpted a Trump comment as if he had referred to immigrants or illegal immigrants generally as “animals.” Most outlets corrected their reports later to note that Trump had specifically referred to members of the murderous criminal gang MS-13.

May 28, 2018

The New York Times’ Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein and CNN’s Hadas Gold shared a story with photos of immigrant children in cages as if they were new photos taken under the Trump administration. The article and photos were actually taken in 2014 under the Obama administration.

 

June 21, 2018

 

Time magazine and others used a photo of a crying Honduran child to illustrate a supposed Trump administration policy separating illegal immigrant parents and children. The child’s father later reported that agents had never separated her from her mother; the mother had taken her to the US without his knowledge and separated herself from her other children, whom she left behind.

 

June 28, 2018

After a newsroom shooting, a newspaper reporter falsely tweeted that the shooter “dropped his [Trump Make America Great Again] hat on newsroom floor before opening fire.”

 

 

1.  Opinion piece.  Others in media called him out, as even your hack piece notes. 

2.  Corrected. 

3.  Corrected. 

4.  Corrected. 

5.  Corrected. 

6.  Retracted, reporters all fired. 

7.  Corrected, reporter suspended and later fired. 

and on and on.... 

In contrast to 55 media mistakes that were largely corrected and led to several reporters being fired, Trump is now up to 4,229 lies in just a year and a half as president:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/08/01/president-trump-has-made-4229-false-or-misleading-claims-in-558-days/

I can't recall any that were corrected, and Trump has not lost his job.   So, there is absolutely no comparison to be made. 

[Nivek 16987]

Oh there are people who have been fully brainwashed alright.  Just not the ones you are referring to.

Correct. I don’t think the dendrite between your ears qualifies as a brain. Which is why you became a professional troll. I guess fry cook was too complex.

[DDD Dad 14351]

5 hours ago, EMAWesome said:

If Jim Acosta and all the other shitslingers at CNN think Trump is trying to destroy the press they should take their act to Cuba or Iran and see what happens to them under a regime that does not have a First Amendment.  It wouldn't be their feelings that would be getting hurt.

This has got to be clearlakehorn's new ID, right?

[seven 1368]

6 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

This has got to be clearlakehorn's new ID, right?

No, that's holocawesome 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

I’m convinced slorch uses retard socks to take the heat off once he goes full slorch.

[Captainant 27790]

2 hours ago, EMAWesome said:

Why is it okay for the press to lie about the President but a mortal sin for the President to lie about the press?  The press has a responsibility to report facts fairly, objectively, and let the audience decide whether those facts deserve praise or condemnation.  What consists of the press now is a bunch of social activists who are presenting personal political opinions and deliberately trying to pass off those opinions as facts in order to persuade the audience to support those opinions.  That is not journalism.  That is propaganda.  

 

Is some of what Sanders says propaganda?  Sure, some of what every White House press secretary who has ever given a press briefing says is propaganda.  Government without propaganda doesn't exist.  However an honest press would ask questions first and shoot when they get bullshit for an answer.  The press now shoots first and asks questions later.  The media has not cared about the truth since Trump was elected.  All they have cared about is "getting Trump."  Trump is giving them a taste of their own medicine and it makes them despise him even more.

Listening to Acosta, CNN, the New York Times, and all the other media stooges complain about Trump picking on them is like listening to a bully complain when someone he picks on punches him in the nose.

Press outlets critical of trump have been receiving death threats and one has been shot up. The president is calling them the enemy of the state and of the people. You don't see how the two could possibly be related and the power dynamic between the two? The press is supposed to be a check on the president, not the other way around. 

[TornACL 7722]

Quote

Why is it okay for the press to lie about the President but a mortal sin for the President to lie about the press?  The press has a responsibility to report facts fairly, objectively, and let the audience decide whether those facts deserve praise or condemnation.  What consists of the press now is a bunch of social activists who are presenting personal political opinions and deliberately trying to pass off those opinions as facts in order to persuade the audience to support those opinions.  That is not journalism.  That is propaganda.

Hooray for false equivalency!

[hayden_horn 11365]

3 hours ago, EMAWesome said:

http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/393553-the-media-just-cant-stop-lying-about-trump

https://www.crtv.com/video/9-most-absurd-lies-the-media-told-about-trump-in-2017--white-house-brief

https://sharylattkisson.com/2018/07/11/50-media-mistakes-in-the-trump-era-the-definitive-list/

okay, i had a post all typed up and accidentally 86ed it. 

but these examples are shaky as fuck. i made it to the first press "lie" in your first link:

Quote

So let’s review the first three statements that Todd claims are false. Then we'll look at the one that he says is the “most ridiculous” of all.

Trump: “Well, no, there is no trade war.”

Whatever one thinks of tariffs or Trump’s negotiating strategy, the president’s tariff threats are more of a tiny skirmish than a full-blown “trade war.” In 2017, the US imported goods worth about $3.9 trillion. Only about $29 billion of those imports were in steel, and the aluminum imports that will face tariffs were $14 billion. This amounts to $43 billion in imports of these two goods. $18 billion (41 percent) of that total came from China.

Friday’s announcement of $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese electronics is more significant, but still a tiny fraction of our overall goods trade. These tariffs don't affect 98 percent of all imports. Eighty-seven percent of imports from China are unaffected. The average tariff rate on all imported goods will rise from 1.4 percent to just over 2 percent. The U.S. has among the lowest tariff rates in the world, and this will hold true even if the threatened increases go into effect.

To put in perspective how small this increase is, the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff raised the average tariff on imported goods from 13.5 percent in 1929 to 19.8 percent in 1933.

This isn’t a defense of tariffs. It just brings some perspective to the overheated language.

Quote

trade war
ˈtrād ˌwôr/
noun
a situation in which countries try to damage each other's trade, typically by the imposition of tariffs or quota restrictions.

is that currently happening? yes? then the scale of it does not matter. THERE IS A TRADE WAR. donald lied. he always lies. he lies all the time. 

[Aqua Buddha 14618]

I like how the right is obsessed with "fake news" and "the media" but meanwhile large swaths of them are watching Fox News and Infowars, who are both getting sued for outright making up stories out of thin air.

[hobbes2702 13074]

5 hours ago, slorch said:

He’s giving what he’s getting.

 

Should he sit there and take it?

 

I wouldn’t begin to defend Trump’s character, but the ‘free pass’ for the press is bullshit.  They have zero accountability.

 

People are sick of it.  Some of y’all seem to embrace it.

He’s he President you fucking dunce. Of course he should take it. That’s how this fucking works. He’s not a king. His job is to put up with whatever people say about him

[yaqdum 182]

3 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

The last two pages were really a microcosm of the problems we are going to face after this shitgibbon is gone.  These people have been fully brainwashed. 

yep.  and yeoman's work on that project was done by none other than rupert murdoch.

this mess is so large that tendrils of it will tail off for years after the big fireworks have gone cold, but by that point the whole nation will be on-page regarding what has happened.  until somewhat recently these people have been free to spew their crap with relative impunity since none of us realized the significance of it prior to the big blowup.  in the future the whole nation will be on point to deal with these creeps.  i don't like to imagine living here at that point and trying to do as they've been free to do.  the incorrigible may find it difficult simply to get by.  i don't think they realize right now what it's going to be like.  at worst, i'm guessing, they think things will go back to the way they were.  that goose has been plucked.

[EMAWesome 101]

2 hours ago, Captainant said:

Press outlets critical of trump have been receiving death threats and one has been shot up. The president is calling them the enemy of the state and of the people. You don't see how the two could possibly be related and the power dynamic between the two? The press is supposed to be a check on the president, not the other way around. 

Perfect example, the newspaper that was shot up was shot up by a guy who had been swinging an axe against that particular newspaper since 2012 and had lost a lawsuit against that newspaper in 2015.  Trump had absolutely nothing to do with that and you use it as an example of him threatening the media.  That is flat out inaccurate and dishonest.  That is like claiming that Maxine Waters rhetoric about harassing Trump supporters and people in the Trump administration caused Steve Scalisse to get shot.

 

You can't have it both ways.  You can't claim that Trump's statements about the media are putting the media in harm's way and then turn around and state that various public figures putting out statements supporting harassing members of the Trump administration and their supporters are having no effect on the potential safety of those officials and supporters.

[EMAWesome 101]

3 hours ago, Mojo Hand said:

1.  Opinion piece.  Others in media called him out, as even your hack piece notes. 

2.  Corrected. 

3.  Corrected. 

4.  Corrected. 

5.  Corrected. 

6.  Retracted, reporters all fired. 

7.  Corrected, reporter suspended and later fired. 

and on and on.... 

In contrast to 55 media mistakes that were largely corrected and led to several reporters being fired, Trump is now up to 4,229 lies in just a year and a half as president:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/08/01/president-trump-has-made-4229-false-or-misleading-claims-in-558-days/

I can't recall any that were corrected, and Trump has not lost his job.   So, there is absolutely no comparison to be made. 

And as we can see in this very thread there are people who still believe the original story even if it has been corrected.   The original stories make page one.  The corrections and revisions to the stories make page 16.  Reporters know this, newspapers know this, the entire mass media knows this.  Ask a certain fraternity at the University of Virginia what a correction to a damaging, incorrect story is worth.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

You do know the media serves the public and not Trump right? The media is supposed to be critical of those in power. It’s a form of accountability.

Trump doesn’t like accountability so he demonizes anyone critical of him.

this isn’t difficult 

[EMAWesome 101]

Oh please, the media would rather smell their own farts than have anything to do with the public unless it is the public that receives an invitation to a cocktail party in Washington D.C. or in some Manhattan townhouse.  Remember just after Nov. 8, 2016 when the media were performing self-autopsies on their inability to see Trump's election?  How many pieces did the media write about not spending enough time in the heartland, about not spending enough time talking to actual voters?  How many actually followed up on that?  There was the one guy who used to be a big shot at NPR who did a piece on doing that but that was it.  Everyone else gave lip service about doing it for about a week and then it was back to business as usual.  Today's media don't serve anyone other than themselves.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

I forgot you were a moron for a moment. 

Apologies 

[Incredulity 11683]

6 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

You do know the media serves the public and not Trump right? The media is supposed to be critical of those in power. It’s a form of accountability.

Trump doesn’t like accountability so he demonizes anyone critical of him.

this isn’t difficult 

The media serves media and stockholders.

The media(journalism) had for many decades pretty robust ethical and editorial standards.  The rise of internet news has obliterated that in favor of speed to publish a story.  That is compounded by journalism with political bias.  

[jimmyjazz 46166]

7 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

Oh please, the media would rather smell their own farts than have anything to do with the public unless it is the public that receives an invitation to a cocktail party in Washington D.C. or in some Manhattan townhouse.  Remember just after Nov. 8, 2016 when the media were performing self-autopsies on their inability to see Trump's election?  How many pieces did the media write about not spending enough time in the heartland, about not spending enough time talking to actual voters?  How many actually followed up on that?  There was the one guy who used to be a big shot at NPR who did a piece on doing that but that was it.  Everyone else gave lip service about doing it for about a week and then it was back to business as usual.  Today's media don't serve anyone other than themselves.

You're literally too stupid to have the privilege of voting.

[Mojo Hand 4580]

14 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

And as we can see in this very thread there are people who still believe the original story even if it has been corrected.   The original stories make page one.  The corrections and revisions to the stories make page 16.  Reporters know this, newspapers know this, the entire mass media knows this.  Ask a certain fraternity at the University of Virginia what a correction to a damaging, incorrect story is worth.

Ok.  Mistakes happen and have negative consequences.   That doesn't mean that those mistakes equate in any way to thousands of knowingly repeated lies by the president, or in any way diminish his culpability for those lies.  

[seven 1368]

5 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

The media serves media and stockholders.

The media(journalism) had for many decades pretty robust ethical and editorial standards.  The rise of internet news has obliterated that in favor of speed to publish a story.  That is compounded by journalism with political bias.  

This is easily the biggest problem with the current media. 

The bias stuff is mostly hogwash 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

I think quality journalism gets lost in a sea of bullshit in today’s media environment

and people don’t have enough media literacy to determine good journalism from bad journalism 

[TornACL 7722]

14 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

Oh please, the media would rather smell their own farts than have anything to do with the public unless it is the public that receives an invitation to a cocktail party in Washington D.C. or in some Manhattan townhouse.  Remember just after Nov. 8, 2016 when the media were performing self-autopsies on their inability to see Trump's election?  How many pieces did the media write about not spending enough time in the heartland, about not spending enough time talking to actual voters?  How many actually followed up on that?  There was the one guy who used to be a big shot at NPR who did a piece on doing that but that was it.  Everyone else gave lip service about doing it for about a week and then it was back to business as usual.  Today's media don't serve anyone other than themselves.

Yes, it seems like you certainly don't bring any of your own personal bias or prejudice into your even tempered and fair minded description of "the media".  Your ability to describe a large population of folks from various backgrounds, locations, and viewpoints as a monolithic entity also shows your expert level usage of nuanced thought!

[Loco 3754]

24 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

And as we can see in this very thread there are people who still believe the original story even if it has been corrected.   The original stories make page one.  The corrections and revisions to the stories make page 16.  Reporters know this, newspapers know this, the entire mass media knows this.  Ask a certain fraternity at the University of Virginia what a correction to a damaging, incorrect story is worth.

How about the issue I asked you specifically to address...  I picked one of your reported "fake" news items.  I'm waiting for you to provide the specific news article you thought was a LIE.

I'm waiting

[hobbes2702 13074]

42 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

Oh please, the media would rather smell their own farts than have anything to do with the public unless it is the public that receives an invitation to a cocktail party in Washington D.C. or in some Manhattan townhouse.  Remember just after Nov. 8, 2016 when the media were performing self-autopsies on their inability to see Trump's election?  How many pieces did the media write about not spending enough time in the heartland, about not spending enough time talking to actual voters?  How many actually followed up on that?  There was the one guy who used to be a big shot at NPR who did a piece on doing that but that was it.  Everyone else gave lip service about doing it for about a week and then it was back to business as usual.  Today's media don't serve anyone other than themselves.

The New York Times has done multiple pieces about voters in the heartland, so much so that most people are tired of them covering it. We all know what the morons who vote trump think. We don’t need to continue including them in the discussion. Crooked media has a 15 part podcast series based on focus groups with voters in Texas, the heartland, etc. 

You spew bullshit over and over with zero evidenciary support. You are fucking fake news. 

[EMAWesome 101]

36 minutes ago, Loco said:

How about the issue I asked you specifically to address...  I picked one of your reported "fake" news items.  I'm waiting for you to provide the specific news article you thought was a LIE.

I'm waiting

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/Trumps-New-CIA-Choice-Ran-Secret-Prison-Where-Terrorism-Suspects-Were-Waterboarded-476666273.html

[hobbes2702 13074]

6 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/Trumps-New-CIA-Choice-Ran-Secret-Prison-Where-Terrorism-Suspects-Were-Waterboarded-476666273.html

So an article from a local paper written by a writer with such credits as “how to help a shelter even if you can’t adopt”. Lulz.

[Loco 3754]

8 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/Trumps-New-CIA-Choice-Ran-Secret-Prison-Where-Terrorism-Suspects-Were-Waterboarded-476666273.html

Nice dodge attempt.  I'm not going down every stupid rabbit hole while you move the goal posts.  FOCUS.  You posted and said the news lied about this...  Now you need to POST the SPECIFIC piece of news that you think is a LIE.

May 16, 2018:

The New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis, AP, CNN’s Oliver Darcy and others excerpted a Trump comment as if he had referred to immigrants or illegal immigrants generally as “animals.” Most outlets corrected their reports later to note that Trump had specifically referred to members of the murderous criminal gang MS-13.

[seven 1368]

49 minutes ago, TornACL said:

Yes, it seems like you certainly don't bring any of your own personal bias or prejudice into your even tempered and fair minded description of "the media".  Your ability to describe a large population of folks from various backgrounds, locations, and viewpoints as a monolithic entity also shows your expert level usage of nuanced thought!

Nuance! /FCHorn 

[yaqdum 182]

1 hour ago, yaqdum said:

at worst, i'm guessing, they think things will go back to the way they were.  that goose has been plucked.

any of you buckeroos or buckerooskies who doubt the national position after all this is over with need to read this long thread that was recommended by rick wilson.  note the similarites and especially the strong right-wing support of nixon even after his sins were exposed.  i ask you to think today of our collective memory of the nixon saga.  today few recall or realize how bent this nation was at that time.  few today don't see nixon as what he sadly was.  me, i mourn for what he might have been.

click the link below to read the original and see some great photos and graphics from that era.

 

Joshua Tait @Joshua_A_Tait - 7:25 pm - 27 Jul 2018

 

A long thread on conservative intellectuals' responses to Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal.

 

Movement intellectuals around the magazine National Review, who had gone a long way toward popularizing “conservatism” as a conscious and articulated political outlook, were never especially keen on Nixon.

 

William F. Buckley voted for Nixon in 1960. The magazine’s publisher, William Rusher, a key conservative activist, wrote in Barry Goldwater, the candidate he helped to draft for the 1964 presidential election.

 

Rusher thought Nixon’s ’60 defeat was essential to the emergence of conservatism. Had Nixon won, then Eisenhower-Nixon Republicanism would have predominated the early 1960s. No Goldwater run, no conservative takeover of the GOP.

 

After LBJ’s landslide defeat of Goldwater in 1964, some conservative intellectuals, including Buckley, decided that the right needed some wins and Nixon would be their best bet.

 

Pat Buchanan, a Nixon aide and conservative, was a key conduit in making conservatives feel listened to by Nixon and for papering over some public disagreements.

 

By the end of the first Nixon term, conservative intellectuals were divided. In ‘69 and ‘70, Nixon seemed to tack to a hard conservative line, but after the ‘70 midterms, he moved to the center.

 

Conservative intellectuals were in a bind. Did they support Nixon, the president – in power and the rightmost option in the election – or retreat to opposition and find a true conservative alternative, maybe Reagan. Rusher wanted Reagan.

 

He compared conservative support for Reagan unfavorably with conservative criticism of the Eisenhower years writing that “modern American conservatism largely organized itself during, and in explicit opposition to, the Eisenhower administration.”

 

During the election, National Review offered qualified support for Nixon. The letters the magazine received divided evenly between readers asking why they weren’t supporting Nixon more and why they were supporting Nixon at all.

 

Early in Nixon’s second term, James Burnham, a driving force within NR and a conservative philosopher, turned massively against Nixon. According to Rusher, Burnham thought the administration was the most “outrageously secretive and Byzantine in American history.”

 

Burnham quashed Rusher’s attempts to criticize the threat that he thought the press’s legal immunity for publishing leaked documents posed to national security.

 

Rusher noted the irony of the growing liberal worry of the imperial presidency, since it echoed arguments that conservatives had made for the previous three decades.  [ed-*wink* does this sound familiar?]

 

In June 1973, NR’s “Washington Editor,” George F. Will wrote about Watergate in his WaPo column. He asked what the conservative position on burglary could possibly be. He argued that:

 

“Reflective conservatives know they must act with special severity against miscreants whose political activism represents a perversion of conservatism in the name of – but contrary to – the essential conservative values.”

 

Liberals excused leftist violence, conservatives supported McCarthy. Nixon struck at “what conservatives cherish most: the institutions and procedures that guarantee limited government and prevent ordered liberty from degenerating into the licentious abuse of unchecked power.”

Will’s criticism of Nixon and esp. VP Spiro Agnew (a conservative favorite) got him in trouble with the NR editors. Buckley and the other editors tried several times to rein in Will’s “gleeful” commentary since he was attached to NR's masthead.

 

Will responded that WFB did not realize that “when NR’s role as an opinion journal conflicts with its role as an instrument of a political movement (and, increasingly, as the instrument of a candidate), the second role is given priority.”

 

Will regarded “the fate of this administration as nothing short of a national tragedy.”: He had “no desire to adopt an ideological sense of justice, ie judging an act by the political views of the person committing the act..."

 

Rusher told Buckley that those at NR thought of Will as their Washington Editor, but he thought of NR as a magazine he freelanced for. Rusher thought Will a good writer with important connections to Irving Kristol's set, but a hassle to deal with.

 

Into August, 1973, Will’s columns in the Washington Post constituted the most robust conservative criticism of Watergate.

 

Rusher fumed that Will was taking them to war with Nixon the way LBJ did with Vietnam: “without the benefit of an official declaration by those empowered to do the official declaring.”

 

Finally, in October in response to the Saturday Night Massacre, NR editorialized that Nixon had to shape up by the new year or the magazine would call for his resignation or impeachment.

 

The reader letters NR received in response were 85% pro-Nixon. The readers raged that NR was going leftwing commie pinko and that the “Kennedy tramp” Will would lead to cancelled subscriptions.

 

The pro-Nixon letters made familiar arguments:

- Nixon is the greatest president of the century

- Nixon has issues, but anyone liberals hate that much is good.

- Removing a president due to media pressure will damage the country

- Will’s hatred for Nixon invalidates his comments

 

In March, 1974 NR reemphasized, belatedly, its criticism of Nixon, Watergate, and the coverup.

 

Within the magazine, William Rusher, Jeffrey Hart and others continued their campaign against Will. Rusher wrote repeatedly to Buckley about Will. Most baldly, he wrote:

 

By Will’s “consistent shilling for established liberal positions, NR is not only being used (and misused, and abused) to further liberal objectives, but... is being deprived of what it badly needs: a competent Washington correspondent who will state the conservative position…”

 

Some of this was professional jealousy. Several of the editors were in direct competition with Will as “minor spokesmen for the conservative position” and in 1974 Will was on a wave of favorable publicity as someone who could write for readers of NR and WaPo

 

Another editor at NR wrote to Buckley to say that another part of the animus against Will was that he affronted conservatives by being “prematurely right” about Watergate and breaking with and criticizing the president from a conservative perspective early.

 

So what’s the point? Conservative intellectuals struggle with proximity to power: it warps them. Rusher opposed Nixon on ideological terms, but supported him late into the Watergate scandal because he was attacked by the left.

[Jack Straw 2954]

6 hours ago, SubliminalHorn said:

Slorch is a moron who supports a traitor and the undermining of our institutions. 

And takes great enjoyment in it, because it “‘makes other people mad.”  

Slorch is approaching, if he has not already arrived, at the Swam-level intersection of profound stupidity and mental illnesss.  

[EMAWesome 101]

Skip the first two minutes unless you have an unhealthy interest in Birch Gold.  First twenty minutes or so are about Sarah Jeung and the New York Times.  The last twelve or thirteen are about Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Jim Acosta.  Other than the usual annoying sponsor suck up promos and a couple of words that don't exist in the English language (journalismism. journalisming) Shapiro is spot on.

[Nivek 16987]

Don't you understand what the Media did to those poor University of Virginia/Duke boys? I mean no one has ever heard of a correction.  For all we still know the libural media never covered the correction except on page 16 when no one reads the newspaper anymore?   I don't make sense because you are brain washed.  I voted for Gary Johnson!

[EMAWesome 101]

I also seem to remember Shannon Bream being forced to retreat from a live location back into a studio due to feeling threatened by people protesting the Kavanaugh announcement.  Where was blowhard Acosta demanding that people stop threatening the media then?  I double dog dare anyone to find one tweet from him condemning that situation.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20496]

1 hour ago, hobbes2702 said:

He’s he President you fucking dunce. Of course he should take it. That’s how this fucking works. He’s not a king. His job is to put up with whatever people say about him

 

Lord knows I had no love for Obama, but can you imagine him whining constantly like a little girl about all the things that mean old Fox News/Rush Limbaugh said about him every day?

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20496]

5 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

I also seem to remember Shannon Bream being forced to retreat from a live location back into a studio due to feeling threatened by people protesting the Kavanaugh announcement.  Where was blowhard Acosta demanding that people stop threatening the media then?  I double dog dare anyone to find one tweet from him condemning that situation.

 

Why are you in bed with the pussy grabber and Vladimir Putin?

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, Jack Straw said:

And takes great enjoyment in it, because it “‘makes other people mad.”  

Slorch is approaching, if he has not already arrived, at the Swam-level intersection of profound stupidity and mental illnesss.  

I'm not mentally ill, or stupid.

 

I just don't bend the constitution to say what i wish it did.

 

Fuck all of you neggers too.  Holy fuck, it's like I kicked your grandma or something.  post your take and grow the fuck up.

Edited August 3, 2018 by slorch

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Shapiro is a disingenuous hack capitalizing on Trumpism like several others.

Shapiro is just way smarter about it.  

It’s easy for him to spew that nonsense about Acosta and Sanders when there’s no one around to challenge him or call him out.

Old Ben Shapiro looks more like a fraud when he gets challenged by someone of equal cerebral firepower. But it so seldomly happens.

 

[jimmyjazz 46166]

11 minutes ago, slorch said:

I just don't bend the constitution to say what i wish it did.

Bullshit.  2A.

[Js1 85583]

44 minutes ago, Jack Straw said:

And takes great enjoyment in it, because it “‘makes other people mad.”  

Slorch is approaching, if he has not already arrived, at the Swam-level intersection of profound stupidity and mental illnesss.  

You triggered him.  He got sad and negged you.

[jimmyjazz 46166]

Let's clarify something for our resident Trumpkins, a group which includes slorch, IMAWESOME and all other Swam socks, and anybody else who's in general completely oblivious to what is actually going on:

Trump doesn't attack ALL media.  He attacks all media BUT Fox (and splinter groups like Breitbart, etc.).

Justify that.

[TornACL 7722]

16 minutes ago, slorch said:

I'm not mentally ill, or stupid.

 

I just don't bend the constitution to say what i wish it did.

 

Fuck all of you neggers too.  Holy fuck, it's like I kicked your grandma or something.  post your take and grow the fuck up.

Negged for whining

[J.R. 150]

1 hour ago, slorch said:

I'm not mentally ill, or stupid.

 

I just don't bend the constitution to say what i wish it did.

 

Fuck all of you neggers too.  Holy fuck, it's like I kicked your grandma or something.  post your take and grow the fuck up.

We’re still waiting on you to back up your post there has been anything approaching reciprocity on the intentional lying we have seen from the admin by the press. Or are you going to go with EMAWs shitty fucking evidence?

[hobbes2702 13074]

1 hour ago, slorch said:

I'm not mentally ill, or stupid.

 

I just don't bend the constitution to say what i wish it did.

 

Fuck all of you neggers too.  Holy fuck, it's like I kicked your grandma or something.  post your take and grow the fuck up.

Telling others to grow up while complaining about imaginary internet points... I think there was a song about this...

[Player 4576]

Slorch doesn't bend the constitution y'all. He's a strict obstructionist. 

[SubliminalHorn 6811]

Slorch is a perfect trumpkin. A snowflake that whines about neg rep. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Bullshit.  2A.

haha.

 

Y'all want like fucking hell to change that one too.

 

Gotdamned Constitution...

[David Dennison 18948]

8 minutes ago, slorch said:

haha.

 

Y'all want like fucking hell to change that one too.

 

Gotdamned Constitution...

He's right, though. You read what you want into it.