JFLNYC wrote:Trump wants him to resign. Firing him would just look like (and be) more obstruction of justice.

pacino wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

Werthless wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:jersey is saying the thing monkeyboy is claiming is a distraction is specifically about what monkeyboy thinks we are getting distracted from

10 years ago, before I joined this board, I never would have guessed that this sentence would make so much sense.

I did a poor job of explaining because I didn't want to go into it. Distraction is a poor word choice. I think this book stuff will get tied together with the Russia stuff, then the book stuff will be discredited, maybe in absolute fashion, which will then allow Trump's followers (and the idiot media that create them) to say the whole Russia thing is also dsicredited. They make it work by tying the book to the scandal. Meanwhile, they will bash Mueller, find tiny things to blow out of proportion (like the anti-Trump texts between investigators), and run a million of their own investigations to confuse the matter. Mueller will do his thing and probably even get some people behind bars, but Trump will survive, which is all that really matters when you control both houses of Congress and the SCOTUS.

I now see that the book guy has recordings. That will make it more difficult to discredit. But keep in mind that his supporters already believe everyone is out to get Trump. EVERYONE. The first thing my brother said when I talked to him about this is that he's never seen the media attack anyone like they have attacked Trump. Nevermind that Trump is acting in ways no other president has acted .... he's the VICTIM.

Tell your brother that in fact the media is pro-trump, and in fact to the extent they continue to behave as they always have are enabling Trump (perhaps not intentionally, but in fact I believe that many of them do in fact realize the way they cover politics is how Trump was able to become President in the first place) and even more to the point, without the mainstream media, Trump would never have sniffed the Republican nomination. All those early debates could not have been designed better if the media did not want Trump to get this nomination.

This is why I'm willing to (re)consider the value of the Wolff book. Now, obviously, publishing this book has made Wolff quite wealthy, and that was probably his main goal. But in disrupting the "everything is normal" narrative being pushed by the Republicans and the mainstream media, Wolff may have done some real good here. Certainly normal journalism (if that's what you want to call the disgraceful product most of the media puts out there) has done nothing in our abnormal times. Maybe it's time for a new kind of journalism, that makes no pretense to objectivity or looking at both sides of an issue, whatever that means.

To be sure, all of this is rather speculative.

wolff is a bad journalist but he may have accidentally committed good journalism simply by upending the status quo. i just wish we weren't at the point where a shit book like this was elevated.

CalvinBall wrote:

pacino wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

Werthless wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:jersey is saying the thing monkeyboy is claiming is a distraction is specifically about what monkeyboy thinks we are getting distracted from

10 years ago, before I joined this board, I never would have guessed that this sentence would make so much sense.

I did a poor job of explaining because I didn't want to go into it. Distraction is a poor word choice. I think this book stuff will get tied together with the Russia stuff, then the book stuff will be discredited, maybe in absolute fashion, which will then allow Trump's followers (and the idiot media that create them) to say the whole Russia thing is also dsicredited. They make it work by tying the book to the scandal. Meanwhile, they will bash Mueller, find tiny things to blow out of proportion (like the anti-Trump texts between investigators), and run a million of their own investigations to confuse the matter. Mueller will do his thing and probably even get some people behind bars, but Trump will survive, which is all that really matters when you control both houses of Congress and the SCOTUS.

I now see that the book guy has recordings. That will make it more difficult to discredit. But keep in mind that his supporters already believe everyone is out to get Trump. EVERYONE. The first thing my brother said when I talked to him about this is that he's never seen the media attack anyone like they have attacked Trump. Nevermind that Trump is acting in ways no other president has acted .... he's the VICTIM.

Tell your brother that in fact the media is pro-trump, and in fact to the extent they continue to behave as they always have are enabling Trump (perhaps not intentionally, but in fact I believe that many of them do in fact realize the way they cover politics is how Trump was able to become President in the first place) and even more to the point, without the mainstream media, Trump would never have sniffed the Republican nomination. All those early debates could not have been designed better if the media did not want Trump to get this nomination.

This is why I'm willing to (re)consider the value of the Wolff book. Now, obviously, publishing this book has made Wolff quite wealthy, and that was probably his main goal. But in disrupting the "everything is normal" narrative being pushed by the Republicans and the mainstream media, Wolff may have done some real good here. Certainly normal journalism (if that's what you want to call the disgraceful product most of the media puts out there) has done nothing in our abnormal times. Maybe it's time for a new kind of journalism, that makes no pretense to objectivity or looking at both sides of an issue, whatever that means.

To be sure, all of this is rather speculative.

wolff is a bad journalist but he may have accidentally committed good journalism simply by upending the status quo. i just wish we weren't at the point where a #$!&@ book like this was elevated.

You read it already?

pacino wrote:really housh? 'weaponized' against him? justified to call mainstream media 'fake news' because a few silly things by a few wayward journalists were wrong?

Houshphandzadeh wrote:

pacino wrote:really housh? 'weaponized' against him? justified to call mainstream media 'fake news' because a few silly things by a few wayward journalists were wrong?

I don't see what's controversial there. Fox News is mainstream news and we complain about its bias and unreliability every day. I suppose I'm glad NYT and WaPo and CNN and MSNBC are anti-Trump but they're going about it pretty poorly and, in my opinion, damaging their credibility pretty severely with the deluge of shoddy reporting over the last year

Houshphandzadeh wrote:yeah, I agree. I guess I just thought it odd to see TV say that the media is pro-Trump at this moment. if Democrats had control of Congress, Trump would have been impeached yesterday and news outlets outside of Fox would applaud it

Axl Rose @axlrose
Along with several other condescending adjectives the current WH has no room to call virtually anyone disgraceful. The WH is the current US gold standard of what can be considered disgraceful.

Bucky wrote:

pacino wrote:he may be legit insane

i've been loathe to make it too much about Trump, but this is just another level. imagine if ANY other politician did this #$!&@. this guy may actually have serious undiagnosed mental problems and he has the goddamn nuclear codes.

this is close if not exact from him tweestorm this morning: "I'm a totally stable genius"

1 wrote:Didn’t he run for president, like, 17 years ago?

TenuredVulture wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:yeah, I agree. I guess I just thought it odd to see TV say that the media is pro-Trump at this moment. if Democrats had control of Congress, Trump would have been impeached yesterday and news outlets outside of Fox would applaud it

I agree with this, except that the shoddy "reporting" in fact serves Trump's purposes. What they should be doing is doing real investigation, rather than, trading in gossip, idle speculation, and horse race who's hot who is not. Also, they need to do a lot more analysis of policy--how for instance trumps conduct of foreign policy is an utter train wreck (we have no ambassasor in Saudi Arabia or Qatar or Egypt but instead have Jared Kushner running around making "deals" with the dictators who run this country.

But no, they'd rather just wait for Sarah Huckabee to tell them stuff they don't believe.

TenuredVulture wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

Werthless wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:jersey is saying the thing monkeyboy is claiming is a distraction is specifically about what monkeyboy thinks we are getting distracted from

10 years ago, before I joined this board, I never would have guessed that this sentence would make so much sense.

I did a poor job of explaining because I didn't want to go into it. Distraction is a poor word choice. I think this book stuff will get tied together with the Russia stuff, then the book stuff will be discredited, maybe in absolute fashion, which will then allow Trump's followers (and the idiot media that create them) to say the whole Russia thing is also dsicredited. They make it work by tying the book to the scandal. Meanwhile, they will bash Mueller, find tiny things to blow out of proportion (like the anti-Trump texts between investigators), and run a million of their own investigations to confuse the matter. Mueller will do his thing and probably even get some people behind bars, but Trump will survive, which is all that really matters when you control both houses of Congress and the SCOTUS.

I now see that the book guy has recordings. That will make it more difficult to discredit. But keep in mind that his supporters already believe everyone is out to get Trump. EVERYONE. The first thing my brother said when I talked to him about this is that he's never seen the media attack anyone like they have attacked Trump. Nevermind that Trump is acting in ways no other president has acted .... he's the VICTIM.

Tell your brother that in fact the media is pro-trump, and in fact to the extent they continue to behave as they always have are enabling Trump (perhaps not intentionally, but in fact I believe that many of them do in fact realize the way they cover politics is how Trump was able to become President in the first place) and even more to the point, without the mainstream media, Trump would never have sniffed the Republican nomination. All those early debates could not have been designed better if the media did not want Trump to get this nomination.

This is why I'm willing to (re)consider the value of the Wolff book. Now, obviously, publishing this book has made Wolff quite wealthy, and that was probably his main goal. But in disrupting the "everything is normal" narrative being pushed by the Republicans and the mainstream media, Wolff may have done some real good here. Certainly normal journalism (if that's what you want to call the disgraceful product most of the media puts out there) has done nothing in our abnormal times. Maybe it's time for a new kind of journalism, that makes no pretense to objectivity or looking at both sides of an issue, whatever that means.

To be sure, all of this is rather speculative.