Tag Archives: The Atlantic

CNN’s Chris Licht, Yet Another Example of How Everything Trump Touches Dies.

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A week ago, reading Tim Alberta’s 15,000 word Atlantic piece on the tribulations of CNN exec Chris Licht, I kept shaking my head and saying, “This isn’t survivable.” In a rare moment of foresight (for me) I was quickly proven correct. Days later Licht was “let go” and CNN was “moving on.”

What made the story unsurvivable wasn’t just the reporting on CNN’s ratings problem or even Licht’s handling of the absurdly problematic town hall with Donald Trump, although that is very much connected, as much as it was the portrait of a much too generic corporate functionary in way over his head in terms of dealing with his primary resources, namely the anchors, reporters and staff at CNN. Had Licht been wheeled in to shore up the quarterly earnings statement at Road Runner Acme Explosives, Inc. he might still be in charge. But not when his mission was to sell a “reset” of journalistic tone and focus to hundreds of professionals whose primary skill set involves recognizing the pungent odor of bullshit.

Others have focused on all variety of details in the extraordinarily well reported piece, but Alberta — formerly at Politico and a guy with deep sources within what used to be your father’s Republican party — correctly placed particular focus on Licht’s determination to apply the concept of “absolute truth” to CNN’s presentation of the news. Alberta presses him several times on what … exactly … that means … “absolute truth?”

Chris Licht

Licht had no good answer. As Generic Corporate Man, Licht was groomed and installed by David Zaslav the current head of recently reconfigured Warner Brothers-Discovery + and himself answerable to Colorado billionaire John Malone, long-serving board member and, FWIW, the second largest land owner in the United States. If you’re scoring at home, Malone — a classic old school Republican — wasn’t pleased with CNN’s persistent hyper-critical tone toward Trump, and put his energies into getting Zaslav his job with the clear instructions to restore CNN to something like partisan neutrality, which largely determind Zaslav’s choice of Licht. (I’ll leave aside for the moment that Zaslav, paid $165 million annually, is widely viewed as Voldemort in the current strike by TV writers. Generic, AI-style scripted TV being acceptable as long as those quarterly numbers hold up.)

David Zaslav Doubles Down on Theatrical Movies at CinemaCon - Variety
David Zaslav

Point being here that this generic/neutrality shtick/vision from Malone (and other board members) which begat Zaslav which begat Licht was nakedly obvious to CNN’s employees. As Alberta and others now tell the story, rebalancing objectivity wasn’t the issue for CNN’s staff. There was acceptance of the idea of dialing back the constant Trump rage. But Licht appeared clueless about how to do that given the, um, pesky journalistic, reality-based facts at hand.

The 'King of Cable' Behind a Charter-Time Warner Cable Deal - The New York Times
John Malone

What Licht couldn’t articulate to his news team was how … exactly … do you report on so prominent a public, political figure as Trump, and those who so ardently supprt him, without reporting, objectively and accurately, with a commitment to something approaching absolute truth, that he’s a fraud and a liar as well as criminally incompetent?

Go ahead. Everyone’s listening. We’ll take notes.

Absolute truth: Trump lost the 2020 election. Trump says he didn’t. One is absolutely true, the other isn’t. Are we going to pretend both are?

This was and to some extent still is a serious issue for many levels of modern journalism, but particularly those still adherring to paradigms of reporting now wildly out-paced by characters and competitors for whom truth, absolute and otherwise, is first and foremost a sales game. What’s true is whatever the people will believe.

Back in 2016 I did a piece talking to local journalism profs and pros about injecting the word “lying” into reporting on then candidate Trump. The consensus was that “lying” should be applied only as a last resort and with full confidence of (Trump’s) intent, which of course no one could ever say, so in effect you never use the word “lying.”

That standard has clearly eroded over the ensuing seven and a half years, with even The New York Times, deploying “the ‘L’ word” … judiciously. Meanwhile, CNN, cable competitors like MSNBC and untold websites applied “lie”, “lies” and “lying” much more generously. Some would say “excessively”, though still not inaccurately or unfairly in the context of Trump.

The question for Licht and now for post-CNN and other news organizations still timorous about calling Trump and his hyper-partisan acolytes what they clearly/absolutely are, is how do you assert journalistic credibility when you decline to describe accurately and in the common vernacular what is so vividly apparent? What are you protecting yourself or your audience from?

Countless norms have been broken by Trump’s rampage across the international stage. The once sagacious concept of a balanced presentation of both sides of story, essentially communicating validity in both points of view, has taken a particularly brutal battering in The Age of Trump. Most reporters and most audiences are too smart, and have access to too many other venues of information, to see neutrality as an asset.

What they see instead is timidity, and often complicity.

After 19 Dead Fourth-Graders It’s Time to Apply “Muscular Bravado.”

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Like everything else, reaction to Beto O’Rourke’s crashing of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s post Uvalde press conference immediately split into two separate camps. Tribe A was indignant that anyone, much less Abbott’s rival, would “exploit a tragedy” for “political gain”. Tapes of the incident include voices from the stage around Abbott calling O’Rourke a “son of a bitch” and ordering him thrown out of the building.

The other camp, of which I’m a part, applauded O’Rourke for having the chutzpah, the cojones, the level of proportionate moral indignation to get in the face of a cynically self-serving cast of gun-slaughter enablers, right then and there with all cameras rolling. And this was before we learned how much of what Abbott and other “leaders” of Texas’ law enforcement community was saying at that presser was pretty much utter bullshit.

The O’Rourke Incident instantly recalled an interview with Atlantic writer, Anne Applebaum, that I was listening to driving back from up north this past Tuesday, almost simultaneous with the murder of 19 kids and two adults at yet another America school. Applebaum was the guest on New York Times columnist Ezra Klein’s podcast and the topic was her new introduction to the classic book by Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism.”

Klein is an interviewer with an exemplary talent for drilling down to the most salient issues of whatever topic he’s covering. And soon the discussion was moving into the “why” of people’s response to often crude, authoritarian leaders and their flagrantly obvious perfidies. I encourage you to listen to the entire episode for all that Klein and Applebaum get in to.

But at one point Applebaum used the phrase “muscular bravado” to explain the appeal of characters like Donald Trump.

Rogues like Trump present themselves as unfettered-by-common-rules-of-decorum warriors defending what large masses of people want defended. Or at least as “fighters” antagonizing the same people large masses want antagonized. The responses are not entirely rational. But it often translates to “heroic” in the eyes of people, as Applebaum and Arendt say, isolated by their ignorance and fearful of what they don’t understand.

A salient point here being that in 2022 USA this kind of bravado is entirely in the possession of Trumpist Republicans, and this explains much of the imbalance of energy and enthusiasm between Republicans and Democrats.

The takeaway is that politics/leadership is a profoundly emotional game. Barack Obama swung millions his way in 2008 through charisma and the belief that he had the strength and bravery/star-power to make change happen. More to the point, liberals, Democrats and the millions rightfully repulsed and horrified by the complicity of Republicans in America’s gun slaughter, erosion of Constitutional rights, degradation of our court system, indifference to climate change, wildly out of balance tax system, etc. have no real choice but to accept the power and importance of “muscular bravado” in rallying voters.

Liberals may accept this in theory, but are often embarrassed by it in reality. Bravado of a sort that appeals to largely non-ideological, non-partisan voters strikes the average policy-intense liberal as corny and suspicious, and beneath the dignity of a serious leader.

The dilemma for liberals, is that bravado works, on swing voters if not them. And in our current moment, as we reel from yet another grade school slaughter, genuinely indignant bravado could be a very effective emotional trigger for voters.

O’Rourke isn’t a newby to gun reform. He’s favored a flat-out ban on assault rifles for a while now. So I’m accepting his indignation as genuine. He’s demonstrated he’ll take the political risk that comes with his position on the issue. Just as with his “stunt” at Abbott’s press conference he’s demonstrated he’s prepared to take the blowback for getting right up in the grilles of the ghouls (Ted Cruz was standing behind Abbott) and accuse them for their complicity.

Liberals are notoriously not single-issue voters. Get a Democrat or a Democratic politician going on what needs to be done to set the country right and you invariably get a list longer than a Cheesecake Factory menu.

But 19 more dead fourth-graders presents as unequivocal a single-minded life-or-death issue as any imaginable, and O’Rourke is correctly calculating that no matter how short our attention spans, the outrage over gun-mutilated grade schoolers is something that carries deep, long-lasting moral outrage. Horror-struck outrage of a kind that can — and should — be resurrected repeatedly, with muscular bravado, for months until November and years beyond that until the cynics are driven back under their rocks.

The final point being, Republicans have no good faith response to their role in our gun insanity. With an unabashed siege on their corruption and reckless disregard for … children! … Democrats have an issue that like Joe Pesci in some Marty Scorsese mob movie they can hold Republicans’ faces to the burner with.

They need to do it.

The Times Drops the Big One and a Modest Proposal for a Deal with Donny.

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Consider the crowd I travel with, but I was startled by how many people read Bart Gellman’s piece in The Atlantic — the one about all the manners of hell that could play out if/when Trump refuses to concede defeat in November. But I suspect many more will be reading The New York Times deep and epic dive into the fraud and incompetence revealed within the past 20 years of The Donald’s tax records.

If it doesn’t tell us everything we’ve wanted to know about Trump’s finances — and there’s no “specificity” about money that may have come in from Russians — it’s as good as we’re likely to get until the day Cy Vance in New York lays it out in a public trial. It’s a long read, as was the Times’ 2018 Pulitzer-winner detailing the fraud old man Fred Trump and family ran for decades while building up the fortune … that Donald quickly blew on casinos, bad steaks and cheap vodka.

While this latest Times piece confirms virtually everything any clear-headed adult suspected of a carnival act like Trump for the past 30 years, it will likely mean nothing to MAGA nation, assuming they even hear a word about it in their thickly-insulated echo chamber. But the moderator of next Tuesday’s first debate, Chris Wallace of FoxNews, will commit journalistic malpractice if he doesn’t push Trump on what is in the Times story.

That said, my alleged mind has jumped to something else. Something both James Carville and ex-Obama chief of staff and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have been saying over the past few days.

Namely, that all the noise Trump (and Bill Barr) have been making about the “rigged” election and “getting rid of the ballots” and the “continuation” is a tactical device to build leverage for a “deal” with Biden once Trump is defeated. (I’ve written about this before, because I think it is palpable likelihood. Like a layer of flop sweat forming under a bad con man’s comb over.)

As today’s Times story lays out, Trump is in (ridiculously) deep debt, with huge bills coming due in the next couple years, for which he is personally on the hook. And the tab gets bigger if he loses his much-referenced tax audit (over $100 million including penalties), and bigger still if New York and god knows how many stiffed contractors, harassed women, former employees go after him … hard … post the immunity of the White House.

Trump desperately … and I do mean desperately … needs a way out of this looming apocalypse. One way is if he wins the election. But barring that he needs something like blanket immunity from the state of New York. And that would mean striking … a deal.

As I’ve said before, only a hopeless idiot would enter into any deal with Trump that didn’t have airtight conditions and abusive-level penalties.

So this is my proposal:

Trump agrees to concede the election. In return, the Biden administration, in union with Andrew Cuomo and Vance in New York set the following conditions for Trump — and his family, (since Ivanka and the boys appear to have fat chunks of fraud splatter in their laps as well) — to avoid prosecution.

The deal requires Trump to submit to a public interrogation by tax and white collar fraud attorney/prosecutors into any and all of his business dealings, from the time he took over from his father through to today. This would include everything involving the Russians, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks, and any other thug-ocracy he’s been trolling for loose change.

It also stipulates “the deal” is voided the second Trump lies, “misstates” or “mischaracterizes” any pertinent fact.

Why “public”?

Because the story of Trump and the foundational lies of Trumpism has to be told. It has to be admitted to and confessed by Trump himself. History has to be written by the winners … from the mouth of the loser.

Gellman’s post-election hellscape is based on the premise that “we will never know”. That the fog and stench of Trumpism and Federalist Society Bill Barr-ism is desaigned to prevent anything from ever being truly knowable. (Such is Putin’s game in Russia.)

I believe Adam Schiff for one will eloquently argue that accepting anything less than a full peeling of the Trump myth simply enables a smarter, less louche and preposterous Trump from picking up the pieces and starting all over again. Even the most oblivious and deficient Trumper has to be presented with stark evidence that they’ve been conned … again.

Thirty nine percent will ignore the Times’ tax blockbuster and/or dismiss it as “fake news”, and Biden still needs a solid victory in Florida election night and a landslide overall to neuter any plausible claim Trump and Barr might present.

But the basis is now visibly forming to squeeze Trump into a corner from which his only escape is a Walk of Shame, to reference the entirely apt “Game of Thrones.”

How Much Worse Can This Get? A Whole Lot.

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It’s tough sometimes being a cheery, what me worry?, live-in-the-moment, glass half-full kind of guy. If you’re like me, you look around and say, “They couldn’t fck this up any worse than they have.” But if you said that, like me, you’d be wrong. Very wrong. Take for example the other day after reading two pieces, one from Politico and the other from The Atlantic, back-to back. The effect, on me at least, was to check Google Flights for a one-way ticket to New Zealand.

The Politico piece was titled, “Experts Knew a Pandemic was Coming. Here’s What They’re Worried About Next. Nine disasters we still aren’t ready for.”

Some of the scenarios experts were consulted about include, of course, “The Big One”, the mega-quake that levels Seattle or the Bay Area or LA. Based not just on the level of federal government preparation for a disaster like this entirely forseeable coronavirus pandemic, but the response to post-Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, experts see no way the current underfunded, chaotically-managed federal system is ready to capably respond to a major, long-term disaster hitting a large metropolitan area.

Among other scenarios are: loose nukes, any serious planning for mass migration up from tropical regions as climate changes spikes humidity to unlivable levels, all the bio-terrorist attacks you, me and Hollywood can imagine and so on.

The takeaway is very reminiscent of Michael Lewis’ most recent book, “The Fifth Risk.”

In the months after the Trump election in 2016, Lewis went around to key government agencies, the Energy Department, the Agriculture Department and others and found a common bewilderment. Unlike every previous transition, from say George W. to Obama, the in-coming Trump administration never bothered to send anyone to be educated on the details of how the agencies actually ran. No one showed up. PowerPoints and thick three-ring binders and top agency officials sat ignored … until they were eventually unceremoniously replaced with cronies and grifters like Wilbur Ross, Rick Perry, Ryan Zinke and on and on. And at that point even worse bungling, corruption and mis-management became the order of the day.

Dan Balz of The Washington Post revisits much the same theme in a story yesterday morning, titled “Coronavirus pandemic exposes how US has hollowed out its government.”

But as bad as all that is, #1 on Politico’s list is the international rise of white supremacy. #1, they say. Specifically, the swelling radicalization of home grown, far-right zealot/terrorists inspired and directed via the internet, exactly the way ISIS recruits and trains its holy “warriors”. To this Politico moves on to and melds in the rage-stoking power of “deep fakes” and waves of nefarious misinformation peddling via social media, a la Russia in 2016.

Is there anyone so naive to think that that kind of chaos-inducing activity will not be expanded and improved upon this coming fall? Why would anyone think that? Our adversaries — Putin, North Korea, whoever — don’t have to attack us with guns and bombs. The chaos we inflict on ourselves — because of misinformation and misplaced zealotry — will create all the destruction they could want.

So … while I was still digesting those dystopian, high-probability scenarios, I waded int The Atlantic story. It’s titled, “Nothing Can Stop What is Coming” and it underline something I’ve worried about a lot over the last four years.

In January 2016 yours truly, NostraLambertus, wrote piece titled, “Why Trump Can Win It All, and I Mean ‘All’ “. My concern then was that Trump was appealing to a serious, previously untapped chunk of the population. A sub-set that rarely if ever voted, a crowd for whom he was the long-awaited candidate of their most fevered dreams. For them Trump had an appeal far different and far stronger than any ordinary Republican or Democrat.

I didn’t quite say it at the time. But it’s an appeal that borders on the religious.

The Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance begins her piece with a long take-out on QAnon, the wildly popular-though-faceless-and-nameless source of bizarre coded conspiracies. Like the one about the pizza joint in D.C. where Hillary Clinton and other Illuminati-style Democrats were running a child sex ring.

LaFrance takes readers on an unsettling history and survey of QAnon and a half dozen other irrational, obscene, frequently racist and violence-oriented sites like 4chan, 8chan and 8kun, as well as the characters, both conniving and sad, associated with them. All that before rolling up her investigation into a truly scary summation.

She writes, “I have known [a political-science professor at the University of Miami named Joseph] Uscinski for years … . Many people assume, he told me, that a propensity for conspiracy thinking is predictable along ideological lines. That’s wrong, he explained. It’s better to think of conspiracy thinking as independent of party politics. It’s a particular form of mind-wiring. [Emphasis mine.] And it’s generally characterized by acceptance of the following propositions: Our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret places. Although we ostensibly live in a democracy, a small group of people run everything, but we don’t know who they are. When big events occur—pandemics, recessions, wars, terrorist attacks—it is because that secretive group is working against the rest of us.

“QAnon isn’t a far-right conspiracy, the way it’s often described, Uscinski went on, despite its obviously pro-Trump narrative. And that’s because Trump isn’t a typical far-right politician. Q appeals to people with the greatest attraction to conspiracy thinking of any kind, and that appeal crosses ideological lines.”

She then moves to her closing statement.

She says, “QAnon carries on a tradition of apocalyptic thinking that has spanned thousands of years. It offers a polemic to empower those who feel adrift. … The Seventh-day Adventists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are thriving religious movements indigenous to America. Do not be surprised if QAnon becomes another. It already has more adherents by far than either of those two denominations had in the first decades of their existence. People are expressing their faith through devoted study of Q drops as installments of a foundational text, through the development of Q-worshipping groups, and through sweeping expressions of gratitude for what Q has brought to their lives. Does it matter that we do not know who Q is? The divine is always a mystery. Does it matter that basic aspects of Q’s teachings cannot be confirmed? The basic tenets of Christianity cannot be confirmed. Among the people of QAnon, faith remains absolute. True believers describe a feeling of rebirth, an irreversible arousal to existential knowledge. They are certain that a Great Awakening is coming. They’ll wait as long as they must for deliverance.”

The nut of it all is pretty obvious: Such people, as described above, are the fiery, white-hot core of Trump’s base. To them he is a key figure in what they regard as a god-like, divine plan. Trump is, in effect, the earthly vessel for the long-awaited cleansing apocalypse. And because of their “mind-wiring” they are unable to be convinced otherwise or to ever abandon him.

This white-hot core is primed and eager to accept anything they’re told by QAnon, who could be anyone. (Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson is convinced QAnon gets most of his inside information from White House communications advisor, Dan Scavino. BTW: Here’s a clip of Wilson in early 2018, imagining a “Mad Max” post-Trump landscape.)

More to point in terms of what’s coming this fall, there’s every reason to believe this “religious” core will act on whatever irrational, magical thinking they’re guided toward by QAnon, some other “divine” source or by Trump himself. There’s certainly no reason to think they’re disillusioned. To the contrary, they’re prepping for the battle. By every indication, they will mobilize and vote for Trump in even greater numbers than they did in 2016.

Likewise, who is prepared to assume they’ll accept Trump’s defeat, if it happens this November?

Think Marco Rubio is “Moderate?” Think Again.

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The popularity of Donald Trump among Republicans poses huge long-term threats to the Republican Party. In a nation that is increasingly diverse, the nomination of Trump could further cement the party’s image as the party of bullying white bigots and misogynists. But if there is a silver lining associated with the dark Trump cloud, it is this: It sometimes creates the perception that Trump rivals like Senator Marco Rubio are “moderate” by comparison.  If Rubio gets the nomination, such a “moderate” label would serve him well.

That’s quite a gift to Senator Rubio, because he is far from a moderate. Rubio’s positions put him far, far to the right on the American political spectrum. For instance:

  • Marco_Rubio_Tea_PartyRubio ran for Senate in Florida as the candidate of the extremist Tea Party, not as the moderate alternative to the Tea Party.
  • He has a lifetime pro-choice record of 0% from NARAL Pro-choice America.
  • On safety net issues, the Alliance for Retired Americans gives him a lifetime voting record rating of just 5%.
  • On environmental issues, the League of Conservation Voters gives him a lifetime voting record score of only 9%.
  • On science issues, the Evolution Institute rates his voting record a rock bottom 0%.
  • On veterans issues, the Disabled Veterans of America gave the flag waving Rubio a 0% on its most recent rating.
  • Overall, the American Conservative Union (ACU) gives Rubio a lifetime voting record rating of 98%. In other words, Senator Rubio favored this ultra-conservative group’s positions 98% of the time. For context, conservative Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) got an 87% rating, conservative House Speaker John Boehner got an 83% rating, and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), an actual “moderate,” got a 47% ACU rating.

Admittedly, the definition of a political “moderate” is not a precise one. But I think we all can agree that the definition of “moderate” is not “one who supports conservative or liberal positions 98% of the time.”

no_moderate_Rebulicans_chartBy any reasonable measure, Senator Rubio is a far-right extremist, as is Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich (88% lifetime ACU rating), who is also sometimes inaccurately labeled a moderate by simplistic pundits.  Political scientists have documented the fact that Republican members of Congress have moved sharply to the right in recent years, and that seismic shift away from the political center is reflected in this year’s field of Republican presidential contenders.

Senator Rubio is not even a moderate in comparison to Mr. Trump. Rubio is more considerably conservative than Trump on several issues, such as affirmative action, Planned Parenthood funding, a progressive income tax, gay rights, and an assault weapon ban.

It is true that Senator Rubio’s rhetorical tone is more mild than Trump’s, and that often drives shallow pundits’ characterization of him as a “moderate.” The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart explains Rubio’s smooth style well:

Rubio has mastered the same technique Barack Obama used so effectively when he was seeking the presidency. When faced with a controversial issue, he doffs his cap to the other side, pleads for civility and respect, insists that it’s a hard call—and then comes out exactly where you’d expect him to come out. On social issues, Rubio is as predictably conservative as Obama is predictably liberal. What they share is their moderate-sounding rhetorical style.

But in the end, moderation is not a function of decibels and diplomacy. Ultimately, it is a function of positions on the issues. If moderate voters are searching for a substantive moderate in this year’s Republican presidential field, the truth is they’re not going to find one.

Pawlenty Can’t Compete With A Guy Who Cuts The Boss’s Tax Rate To 1%

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I must admit, I felt sorry for former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty this weekend.

Governor Pawlenty traveled the country cheerleading for Mitt Romney.  He swallowed his pride and lavishly praised one of the least likeable presidential candidates in modern history, hoping to finally move up from Groomsman to Best Man.   He had the power tie Double Windsored, and was pumped to be on the Sunday talk shows, with the pundits predicting he was the frontrunner.

But alas, it was not to be.  Again.

Four years ago, when Pawlenty was passed up for Sarah Palin, he recalled this glum little scene somewhere on an Eagan cul de sac:

 Just after I got off the phone with McCain, I took our dog out for a walk so she could do her dog’s duty…As I put the little bag over my hand and bent down to pick up her poop, I thought to myself, Well, this is the only number two I’ll be picking up today.

But this time, Mr. Pawlenty should have seen the brush off coming.  After all, how in the world do you compete with a guy who cuts the boss’s tax rate to 1%?

Actually, 0.82%.  That’s the effective tax rate, Mathew O’Brien at The Atlantic points out, that millionare Mitt would pay under Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, instead of the 13.9% he paid under the Bush tax rates.  Now, a 14% tax rate for a multi-millionaire might seem plenty shameful to most of us, but Congressman Ryan was savvy enough to sweeten the deal, and win the race to the bottom.  The Atlantic explains:

 “How would someone with more than $21 million in taxable income pay so little? Well, the vast majority of Romney’s income came from capital gains, interest, and dividends. And Ryan wants to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends.”

In the Republican Party, “1% for the 1%” is a proposition that is nearly impossible to top.  It makes the hearts of millionaire candidates and Super PAC funders go pitter-patter.

So, Governor Pawlenty, as you bent over the family dog’s offering this weekend, I hope you took solace in the knowledge that this time you never stood a chance.

– Loveland