2016 Election

Obama’s poison

Featured image Writing for The Scroll, Tablet‘s Substack, Park MacDougald has quickly established himself as one of my favorite columnists. On the day before the election Park drew attention to the January 17, 2017 transcript of “Remarks by the president in roundtable with progressive journalists.” At the time “the president” was still Barack Obama. Hans Mahncke and Jeff Carlson note that the transcript was dredged up in 2022 via the Freedom of »

The Evolution of Electoral Fraud

Featured image In 1962, there was a Senate race in South Dakota between Republican Joseph Bottum and Democrat George McGovern. The seat was open due to the death of Republican Francis Case. I was just a kid, but I remember that election well. Bottum was the favorite, but in the closing days of the race the Democrats spread a rumor that he was an alcoholic. That ploy may have been crude, but »

Three damn things

Featured image In his post on Bill Barr, Lloyd Billingsley draws on One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General to mount a critique of Barr’s service as AG in two administrations, the second time at the behest of President Trump. Along with former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, I thought Barr was one of Trump’s most impressive appointees. If Trump were to be reelected in 2024, »

The Party that Cried Wolf

Featured image Desperate to take the focus off the FBI’s investigation into her use of a private server during her tenure as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton and her sycophants strangled reality beyond all recognition to build the case that then-candidate Donald Trump was an agent of Russia. Although Clinton lost the 2016 election, their efforts mired Trump’s campaign and then his nascent presidency in scandal for three years. And to this »

How Dare Trump Question the Election Result?

Featured image Now that Donald Trump has been indicted for questioning the result of the 2020 presidential election, we should never forget that the last time the Democrats admitted that a Republican had legitimately been elected president was in 1988, when George H.W. Bush carried 40 states. Democrats have denounced every Republican president since then as illegitimate (including George W. Bush twice). Roll the tape: »

Will There By Any Media Accountability?

Featured image Kudos due to Jake Tapper for saying on CNN that the Durham Report completely vindicates Donald Trump: CNN'S Jake Tapper says the Durham report — which found the Russian collusion probe should've never been launched — is "devastating to the FBI" pic.twitter.com/HXxSOssuN4 — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 15, 2023 Will there be any accountability for the media for their part in this travesty? Will the Washington Post or New York »

This is end of republic stuff and America can’t survive it

Featured image The Durham investigation has concluded what most of us knew all along. There was no legal basis for the FBI’s 2016 probe into the Trump campaign or the Mueller investigation that followed. It was all a lie. The FBI, once a highly-revered American institution, teamed up with the Hillary Clinton campaign to (try to) rig the presidential election. And they were all in on it. Then-President Barack Obama was briefed »

Breaking: Durham Report Exposes FBI Partisanship

Featured image Justice Department special counsel John Durham has at long last released his final report into the FBI’s investigation of the Trump Russia hoax of 2016, and even the mainstream media can’t conceal or disguise the blows Durham delivers at the FBI. Moreover, besides launching an investigation of Trump based on nothing and not telling him, Durham notes that very different handling of corroborated evidence that foreign interests were trying to »

The disinformation hoax

Featured image In late March Tablet published Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” Subhead accompanied by the profile of a blackbird’s head: “Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation.” (The subhead and graphic allude to the Wallace Stevens poem). It’s a long-form essay that runs to some 13,000 words. The introduction is followed by a table of contents with links to the chapters: I. Russophobia Returns, Unexpectedly: The »

In a Just World, Final Witness in Bragg’s Grand Jury Would Have Ended the Case Against Trump

Featured image Attorney Robert Costello, who represented former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in 2018, was the final witness to appear before the grand jury in New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump. Following two hours of testimony earlier in the day, Costello joined Tucker Carlson on Monday night to weigh in. Costello attacked Cohen’s credibility. He described Bragg’s case as “weak,“ and said that Cohen has »

DeSantis Takes a Swipe at Trump in Response to His Possible Indictment [Updated: Trump Swipes Back]

Featured image Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has taken fire over the last two days for his silence regarding rumors that former President Donald Trump might be indicted by New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg for alleged hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, in 2016. His response managed to upset both Trump supporters and critics alike. Asked to weigh in at a Monday morning event, the Florida governor replied: »

A Twitter Files footnote (11)

Featured image With a little help from Andrew McCarthy I wrote about former New York Times investigative reporter Jeff Gerth’s four-part Columbia Journalism Review retrospective on the bigfoot media’s promotion of the Russia hoax in “The deep meaning of ‘no comment.'” Aaron Maté took up Gerth’s series in the February 15 RCP column “Unchastened by Russiagate, the NY Times Doubles Down in Its Special Counsel Coverage.” Now Maté has interviewed Gerth in »

The deep meaning of “no comment”

Featured image Former New York Times investigative reporter Jeff Gerth has written a lengthy retrospective on the coverage of the Trump presidency and the award-winning journalism supporting the Russia hoax in particular. Indeed, we regularly mocked the coverage of the Russia hoax, as in my five-part mock epic Dossiad ridiculing the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. It is useful to have Gerth’s 24,000-word series as published in four parts by the Columbia Journalism »

Notes on the Twitter Files (14)

Featured image Yesterday afternoon Matt Taibbi posted a 40-part thread that stands as the fourteenth installment of the Twitter Files. It can be accessed via the first tweet in the thread below. The thread is unrolled here on the Thread Reader app. Taibbi comments on the thread in the related post at his TK News site on Substack in “America Needs Truth and Reconciliation on Russiagate.” 1.THREAD: Twitter Files #14THE RUSSIAGATE LIESOne: »

Mainstream Media Confesses Russia Hoax At Last

Featured image The Washington Post, today: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters Russian influence operations on Twitter in the 2016 presidential election reached relatively few users, most of whom were highly partisan Republicans, and the Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior, according to a study out this morning. The study, which the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics »

The Twitter Files so far

Featured image I have followed the Twitter Files as posted by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, and David Zweig in a series of Notes on the Twitter Files. Taibbi has now posted a set of capsule summaries of each of the 12 installments posted on Twitter so far at his TK News site on Substack. It is posted here in accessible form. Most of Taibbi’s posts at TK News are behind »

Notes on the Twitter Files (11)

Featured image Matt Taibbi posted two more Twitter Files threads yesterday afternoon. They are the eleventh and twelfth such threads posted by the journalists to whom Elon Musk has opened the files of old Twitter. Taibbi has taken the lead in documenting The eleventh thread includes 33 tweets that can be accessed via the first (below). 1.THREAD: The Twitter FilesHow Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, »