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I think I need to create a new category on the right sidebar: “Trump made me do it” — 35 Comments

1. Can it any longer be denied by any rational person not only that TDS is a real phenomenon, but that it has driven countless politicians, pundits, journalists and pseudo-intellectuals not only into the realm of unreason, but often over the edge into psychosis?

2. I’m making a concerted effort to follow this stuff less. It just never ends and it gets more ridiculous with time. I still care about the issues as much as ever but the coverage is so hysterical and over the top that there is little to be gained in following it.

3. I’ve long been an admirer of Koppel, but I think he’s under the illusion that the sort of rubrics which constrained liberal journalists of the Newseum era would still be in operation absent Trump and also under the illustion that journalists today have the same dispositions as his own contemporaries. (As for the ‘avalanche of lies’, do you think he could name five without consulting some bogus ‘fact-checker’ website?). It was half a generation ago that Camille Paglia remarked that people who called The New York Times the ‘paper of record’ hadn’t read it in 20 years. Ted Koppel hasn’t got a clue.

4. While we’re at it, while there has been a disagreeable decay in the quality of people who go into journalism, it’s not hard to recall sketchy characters (and dolts) from his own contemporaries and cohorts preceding and immediately succeeding. See Daniel Schorr (b. 1916, d. 2010), Dan Rather (b. 1934), Howell Raines (b. 1943). Mary Mapes (b. 1956) ain’t exactly a spring chicken.

5. Trump isn’t a politician, they don’t know how to handle a character like Trump. All their old means of shaping the narrative have turned to hysterical silliness that have brought the unhinged on the left to drop their masks and show just how far left they really are. People like Schumer and Pelosi are riding a tiger that wants to eat the ‘blue wave’. Things will get even more hysterical and violent if the ‘blue wave’ turns out to be a tiny puddle.

6. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

   Then there’s this today. Can you imagine a newspaper giving anonymity to any member of the previous administration submitting this?

7. The anonymous thing in the Times is as phony as Woodward’s book. These came out this week as the Democrats were embarrassing themselves in the Kavanaugh hearings. The coordination of the antiTrump op-eds last weekend was only one indication that this is being coordinated by someone.
   There is an interesting link at CTH about why Nike may have gone for the otherwise inexplicable Kaepernick caper.

   President Trump is likely, some would say predictably, about to levy a massive round of Section 301 tariffs on imported Chinese goods. Nike would be one of the U.S. manufacturing companies hardest hit by such a move. The current Trump administration objective toward renegotiated trade deals with China represents the most significant and mostly quantifiable threat to the Nike business plan.

   This is the epicenter of the issue.

   The hearings on $200 billion worth of Chinese tariffs ended today. It is not coincidental that Nike stakes out a political position in opposition to those pending tariffs.

   But wait…. it gets worse. The Nike contracts with China have almost certainly been sub-contracted to non-publicized, generally secret, manufacturing facilities in North Korea.

   DANDONG, China (Reuters) – Chinese textile firms are increasingly using North Korean factories to take advantage of cheaper labor across the border, traders and businesses in the border city of Dandong told Reuters.

   Nike and slave labor.

   There is a lot of diversion going on right now.

8. They did so well in their traditional roles when they covered Obama. And didn’t Kerry just say that Obama wouldn’t listen to his advice about not enforcing the red line in Syria. I wonder whether Hillary ever gave him advice he ignored.

9. “What a brilliant piece of political jujitsu:”

   Koppel’s not totally stupid; he at least knows when he’s been outplayed.

   The weird thing is that the Press simply can’t learn. Trump sets traps – very easy, very obvious traps – and the Press snaps at them. Those goofy tweets are irresistible; they swallow them whole, and are then surprised when they choke on them.

   Every. Single. Time.

   These are not intelligent people.

10. Boss…I disagree.

    President Trump has a circus wagon full of pets. He cracks his Twitter whip & they perform admirably. 😉

11. “…but the very nature of the president’s character — the preening, the boasting, the torrent of careless tweets and the avalanche of lies, the seemingly reckless assaults on pillars of the establishment…”

    They’re not “reckless”, Ted; they are very carefully aimed. Mr. Trump is the disestablishmentarian.

12. My cat without a hat would vote for Trump. Get out the cat vote?

    My dog is more circumspect.

13. The hearings on $200 billion worth of Chinese tariffs ended today. It is not coincidental that Nike stakes out a political position in opposition to those pending tariffs.

    Good point. The benefit to globalists includes profits from labor and environmental arbitrage (i.e. implicit tariffs). Go Green!

14. Trump isn’t a politician, they don’t know how to handle a character like Trump.

    Trump was excommunicated by progressive liberal sects.

    Trump was forged in the belly of the beast. So far, he has stood his ground. Time will tell to what effect.

    Yesterday’s liberal is today’s conservative. #PrinciplesMatter

15. Poor, poor “journalists.” They could have tried harder to be objective, and to report occurrences without editorializing, or at least without much. Instead, they chose poorly. Sad.

16. O, Lordy! The debble made ’em do it.

17. Reach the Id, find an idiot.

18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kaiLcwHXB4&t=26s

    Ted Koppel is Geraldine

19. Koppel:

    Whether by strategy or inadvertence, President Trump has drawn much of the media into a distortion of their traditional roles.

    I would presume that Koppel believes that “objectivity” was the mainstay of the media’s traditional role. The press was partisan long before Trump became President. Trump is merely pointing out the partisan stance of the press. Which the press doesn’t like.

    James Acosta is upset that Trump has called the press the enemy of the people- or some such phrase. Politico reporter Marc Caputo called Trump supporters toothless “garbage people.” Sounds to me as if Caputo defined himself as an enemy of Trump supporters- “apology” or no apology.

20. Mike K on September 5, 2018 at 5:41 pm at 5:41 pm said:
    The anonymous thing in the Times is as phony as Woodward’s book.

    * * *
    The Russians made them do it.

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/09/05/anonymous-op-ed-at-nyt-celebrates-the-deep-state/

    “I think a Russian bot wrote it (or certainly could have written it), using nothing but the mainstream media coverage of the Trump administration for the last 18 months. (And I do mean a “bot.” An AI program could easily have come up with this editorial.)

    It’s exactly what you would write, if you were submitting an op-ed from the infamous office building in St. Petersburg and trying to pass yourself off as a “senior Trump official” to the New York Times. You’d send them what they expect to hear.

    They’ve been signaling for months what they expect to hear, so that part isn’t hard. There’s a bit more of the Washington Post’s editorial sensibility in this, and that’s what you’d pick in order to come off as more authentically “Washington” in tone.

    But the whole thing is an exercise in bias confirmation. If you already thought Trump was amoral, unprincipled, anti-democratic, impetuous, adversarial, petty, ineffective, ranting, impulsive, half-baked, ill-informed, and reckless – well, this is the op-ed for you.

    …
    The piece mirrors the talking points of media themes and scripted Democratic responses so exactly, it’s impossible to take seriously as the cri de coeur of a genuine administration insider. It partakes fully of the cultural left’s totemic perspective on what words and concepts mean. At the end, it alludes to the events of the John McCain funeral week in the exact terms proclaimed by members of the mainstream media, as well as the prominent eulogists.

    Maybe it did come from an administration insider, but it’s obviously not one who thinks for himself, or seems to have a reason for being there. I could have written this op-ed, inside an hour, working off of the memes-n-themes retailed relentlessly by the MSM. Any competent writer of daily commentary could have done so.”

21. I think folks are making a huge mistake attributing the left’s actions as some sort of derangement syndrome.

    It is nothing of the sort.

    It is a COORDINATED and INTENTIONAL effort to depose a duly elected president. It is an American style, slow motion coup d’etat as opposed to the more traditional Latin American style in which the coup’s target is just murdered.

    One of the greatest propagandists that ever lived, Joseph Goebbels, remarked that “repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” This is why there is a 24/7/365 effort by “democrats” and their propaganda arm, the mainstream media, to disseminate negative “news” about Trump.
    Do not think for a moment that this level of persistent propaganda is ineffective; history shows it is very effective.
    Readers of Neo and other conservative websites may not be fooled, but 90% of the voters do not frequent conservative websites.
    And billionaires like Soros and Steyer – and other left wing elitists- are funding efforts (e.g., demonstrations by “activists;” funding the transportation and legal fees of the violent ANTIFA – a remarkably similar clone of Hitler’s Brown Shirts and BLM, etc.) to keep up the persistent drum of the hate Trump agenda.
    You will note that the “democrat” leadership has uttered NOT ONE WORD of condemnation of the violence committed by ANTIFA or BLM.
    Why?
    Because they SUPPORT and AGREE with the violent tactics; the ends justifies the means.

    In the days of Stalin or Hitler, the “journalists” of Izvestia, Pravda, Der Sturmer, Der Deutsche Beobachter, and radio, were compelled to promote the pro-govt. line, otherwise they would wind up in some Siberian death camp.

    Today, here in the USA our news “reporters” VOLUNTARILY and WILLINGLY engage in propaganda; a far more insidious and, yes, treasonous, act because they can claim, and they do, that they are “independent” news outlets.
    In Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany, at least everybody knew that the govt. controlled the message.

    Does anyone really believe the persistent hate-Trump propaganda media and the anti-free-speech, totalitarian/political indoctrination policies observed on college campuses are just a coincidence?

    Folks need to wake up.

    The ferocity of the Trump opposition has at least brought to the surface the real goals of the democrat party and their fellow travelers of ANTIFA, BLM, Soros, Steyer, et. al; and that is, one way or another, the evisceration of the Constitution and with it, our Constitutional Republic.

    The coordinated attacks on the First and Second Amendments of the Constitution by the democrats and their fellow travelers are the SAME groups that are promoting the anti-Trump propaganda.

    There is NO anti Trump “syndrome.”
    What there is, is a full scale effort of the hard core left to take control of the US govt, regardless of the wishes of the voters.

    Wake up folks.

22. I didn’t imagine a Trump presidency would be this entertaining. He fires off some unpresidential tweets and journalists all scream, “Squirrel!” and are off like a pack of baying hounds. Meanwhile Trump & his people are doing things that have got the economy moving along nicely and put the world on notice that he’s in office to do make the best deal he can for the US. Trump may not have pets but he’s turned the media into a bunch of trained seals.

23. And another thing, the press needs detachment as well as objectivity. Few of them have either.

24. Here is the headline from the lead story on the New York Times today (as delivered in my inbox):

    Top News

    WHITE HOUSE MEMO
    Trump Lashes Out After Reports of ‘Quiet Resistance’ by Staff

    Got it? Trump Lashes Out. Trump was attacked in an anonymous editorial, called all sorts of bad things, had his ethics and intelligence questioned, and when he responds they editorialize that response as lashing out.

    And they wonder why we don’t listen to them.

25. John Tyler:

    Agreed that it’s a planned and coordinated propaganda effort.

    The people who have gone a bit round the bend, however, are not the propagandists (although some of them may have at this point). It’s many of the readers of the propaganda. I personally know a number of people who seem to be beside themselves with fear and rage.

26. Yes Neo, I was about to respond to John Tyler similarly. John is correct, It IS an attempted coup, but I too know people who are totally upset – suffering at a personal level – by Trump and will probably crawl over broken glass to help the Democrats to win the midterms. I feel those midterms are completely unpredictable at this stage and it is a contest between the antics of Democrats, Deep Staters and Never Trumpers turning off voters and The Donald and his antics turing off voters. I also think that there will be fireworks from both sides coming up to the election – October surprises real and otherwise with unpredictable results. I mean Mueller may leak something apparently convincing on Trump and he may gain votes, and he may – say release the classified memos proving the phoneyed up FISA application to spy on him, and it may energise Democrats. My gut says it may work out well for Trump if the Dems take the house and impeach but not convict him and generate a wave of disgust that reelects him in 2020. The Black vote could even swing decisively to Trump – Candice and Kanye are a powerful combo. But that is all speculation, and John Tyler is right on the money naming what we are seeing – a coup by people on both sides of politics and in the bureaucracy who are so entitled and blind they seem to me bent on a path of self destruction. I don’t think Trump is anywhere nearly as self destructive and is actually taking care of the country’s business very well indeed. We are in for a torrid couple of months.

27. Trump’s America’s Sun Tzu

    Give the “enemy” reason for optimism, throw him tasty fodder, coax him to peg you a reckless fool, let him increase in self-confidence, lead him make his move, then with specter of a heavy hand check mate him.

    Examples: Tehran, Pyong yang, Beijing, Moscow, Pretoria, Raqqa, Mosul, Havana, Ottowa, Damascus…

    MSM, Hollywood, Democricans, Republicrats, academia…

28. The MSM and the liberal punditocracy were perfectly fine with all the omissions, distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies—and lawlessness—that were flowing out of the Obama administration on a regular basis.

    Perfectly fine.

    Moreover, they were parroting, promoting and defending these omissions, distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies.

    Regularly. Consistently. Unceasingly.

    Since Trump was elected, however, the MSM and the liberal punditocracy (along with some notably hysterical Never-Trump Republicans) have, somehow, discovered “dishonesty”—that is, as long as it can be pinned on Trump—and have pounced on every possible “lie”, “crime” and “misdemeanor” supposedly committed by Trump, freely inventing along the way.

    And they expect Americans to believe them.

    I guess the funny thing is that many Americans do believe them.

    (Or should that be, the tragic thing?)

    File under: “It’s the (mind-boggling) hypocrisy, stupid!”

29. “Maybe it did come from an administration insider, but it’s obviously not one who thinks for himself, or seems to have a reason for being there.”

    An interesting theory is that he is a Pence speech writer as the op-ed uses the term “Lodestar” which Pence also uses in speeches. Pence could have hired a NeverTrumper not aware of the presence of a mole. There are lots of Bush people around the admin, as well. Trump did not have a shadow government, as is the usual case and had to hire some Bush people.

30. Where is a James Jesus Angleton when you need him?

31. It is my understanding that only about half the Obama appointee holdovers have been terminated and replaced because of Democrat obstruction and Trump’s slow, feckless and incompetent nomination process. A lot of these would be what are called “senior officials in the Trump Administration”.

    Also remember too that PJ Media and J. Christian Adams documented that Holder packed the DOJ/FBI by hiring nothing but radicals in the top couple hundred positions of the civil service. No doubt the NSA and every other high level civil service hire in every other department, agency, bureau and commission has been similarly stacked as well.

    They’re all still there, too, poisoning Trump’s agenda. Even with all this kerfuffle about DOJ/FBI corruption, not one of these hires has come under fire yet. Many of them could also be called “career senior officials in the Trump administration”.

    On Day One, Trump should have had on his desk the names of every Obama holdover and every top level civil service position filled by hiring and promotion since 2009 with the express goal of replacing them or reassigning them to Point Barrow as a Top Priority.

    His second priority should have been to push for Civil Service reform, and then tax reform, The Wall, immigration reform and the rest.

    Instead, he hires Sessions, who appoints the deeply corrupt Rod Rosenstein as #2, then walks away from responsibility for anything important in the DOJ/FBI, and that’s how we got here with the Deep State still firmly in charge of most of the Executive Branch or mucking it up for Trump’s appointees.

32. Koppel is lying. Journalists have ALWAYS been like this behind the scenes and he knows it. Now they’re just out in the open.

    “…it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies—unless one counts journalists.”
    –George Orwell, “Homage to Catalonia” (1938)

    “Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true—except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.”
    —Knoll’s Law of Media Accuracy (Erwin Knoll, editor, “The Progressive”)

33. This is an example of what I humbly call “Scott’s First Law of Conspiracy Theories” (first observed in the aftermath of Waco):

    “Some on the right will see government wrongdoing and conclude that an organized conspiracy simply must have been behind it. Many on the left conclude that, because there was no conspiracy, there was no government wrongdoing.” *

    It’s two sides of the same coin. Koppel thinks that the absence of a “secrecy society” means there is no entrenched resistance in the civil service.

    *Note that one of these things is much stupider than the other.

34. Do NOT mess with Mr. Trump. You will be mocked into submission; normal people will laugh and point at you, your dog will bite you and your cats will pee on your shoes, socks, bare feet…and from there, it gets WAAAAAAY uglier.

35. NateWhilk on September 6, 2018 at 1:33 pm at 1:33 pm said:
    ..

    “Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true—except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.”
    —Knoll’s Law of Media Accuracy (Erwin Knoll, editor, “The Progressive”)
    * * *
    Knoll’s observation is also known in an extended form as the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

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