Fake News
October 31, 2018 — Steven Hayward
My impression is that Trump has been steadily growing stronger and more confident as president since his inauguration. He still has some very bad moments and ill-advised tweets, but it is a fantasy that he will be driven from office barring anything truly scandalous from the Mueller investigation, and I’m pretty sure we’d have had it by now if there was anything to the Russia collusion story. I’m thinking there’s
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October 21, 2018 — Scott Johnson
I was asked by our local chapter of the Cardozo Society — an affinity group of Jewish lawyers of which I am a member — to speak over lunch as a counterpart to ABA Foundation Fellow and historian Victoria Saker Woeste on the subject of fake news at the society’s October 8 continuing legal education program. Ms. Woeste was the featured speaker. Her theme was that the term “fake news”
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September 20, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It is hard to single out the most egregious media treatment of the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh because the field is so large and the competition so intense. But The Guardian at least deserves to make the Finals with its story today entitled “‘No accident’ Brett Kavanaugh’s female law clerks ‘looked like models’, Yale professor told students.” It is a transparent attempt to paint Kavanaugh as a sexist
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September 13, 2018 — Steven Hayward
• As has already been noted here in the latest Green Weenie Award, the climatistas are all spun up to say that Hurricane Florence proves that catastrophic climate change is upon us and that we need to hand over our car keys to Al Gore right now. If you pay attention to extreme weather trends, you’ll know that the period between Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and last year saw no
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August 25, 2018 — Scott Johnson
I first met Lanny Davis when he came up to Dartmouth, as I recall, in the spring of 1971. Lanny had come up to pitch students on the presidential campaign of Edmund Muskie. Lanny was the National Director of Youth Coalition for Muskie at the time. Judging by the turnout that night, it was a small coalition. He seemed like a decent guy. Even then I knew enough to keep
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August 19, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post ran a front page story today called “As Trump hurls racial invective, GOP is quiet.” The story begins with this sentence: The president of the United States had just lobbed another racially charged insult — this time calling his former top African American adviser a “dog” — but Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) had no interest in talking about it. (Emphasis added) Notice how the Post backs away
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August 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I noted here last night the desperate attempt of the left to smear Brett Kavanaugh by trolling for possible cellphone photos of him at Washington Nationals baseball games, and hoping that somebody somewhere would be working up some good photoshops fit for the moment, especially since I am too snowed under this week to do it myself. Fortunately faithful Power Line reader Stephen Manning is up to the challenge, and
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August 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Got a whole bunch of short items to get off my spindle this morning. • So Elon Musk says the Saudis are interested in financing Tesla to go private. Why would the Saudis want to become the major financial player in an electric car company? I simply can’t imagine. I guess Musk is too young to remember an old Johnny Carson Tonight Show line about an idea being as bad
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August 11, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump today condemned “all types of racism and acts of violence.” That’s a good thing. However, the Trump-hating Washington Post seized on the occasion to condemn Trump for alleged “racially tinged” statements. “Racially tinged” is a weasel phrase. A statement is either racist or it isn’t. When the statement pertains, however loosely, to race but isn’t racist, those obsessed with race or, in this case, Trump-hatred call it “racially
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August 7, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
On Sunday, I exposed as “fake news” a New York Times article touting President Trump’s “admission” that the purpose of his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer was to obtain negative information about Hillary Clinton. In fact, Trump’s statement wasn’t news at all. He said the same thing more than a year ago. Moreover, the Times, misstated Trump’s “admission.” It characterized his statement as an admission that the meeting “focused”
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August 5, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
The New York Times breathlessly reports: “President Admits Focus of Trump Tower Meeting Was Getting Dirt on Clinton.” But in portraying this “admission” as news, the Times is playing fast and loose with the English language. In the process, it is dishing out fake news. What Trump acknowledged was that “this was a meeting to get information on an opponent.” In other words, the purpose of holding the meeting, from
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July 10, 2018 — John Hinderaker
There is pleasure to be had in watching Democrats make fools of themselves. As expected, President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has brought out the crazy in America’s liberals. We have already noted an example or two. But there is much more enjoyment to be had. The Reagan Battalion offers this left-wing Twitter mashup: Leftist Twitter in Full Meltdown Mode. (Kavanaugh edition) pic.twitter.com/KrxHinxsn7 — The Reagan
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June 20, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Watching the collective media and political class freak out over the “crisis” of immigration enforcement at the border sent me to my bookshelf to dust off Daniel Boorstin’s classic 1961 book, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Step back for a moment from the whack-a-mole problem of sorting out fact from fiction in this current drama; the way this is playing out is a perfect case study in
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June 8, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Jane Mayer is a failed reporter for the New Yorker who has tried to make a career out of smearing Charles and David Koch. Her latest effort is headlined, “One Koch Brother Forces the Other Out of the Family Business.” The story begins with the merest kernel of truth: David Koch, a 78-year-old cancer survivor, is in declining health. Accordingly, he is retiring from his positions at Koch Industries. David’s
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May 18, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I know, “liberal media” is redundant, and pointing out the hypocrisy of the left is a tedious, never-ending chore, but the coverage of Trump’s comments about the MS-13 gang being “animals” is beyond even the most egregious examples of liberal mendacity. I’m pretty sure Americans understand by now that Trump is often clumsy in his statements, especially his off-the-cuff remarks. In the age of internet searches, it is a simple
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April 5, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Dan Rather has soldiered on since Rathergate. He has persisted in the face of professional disgrace. Indeed, he has retracted apologies previously offered for the fakery that ended his storied career with CBS News. He rendered the apologies with his fingers crossed behind his back. He didn’t mean them. In his 2012 memoir Rather Outspoken, Rather stands by the underlying Rathergate story and the fabricated documents on which it was
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March 7, 2018 — Steven Hayward
A lot of liberal media types are deploring the deplorable people who deplore the media because of the result of this chart drawn from Gallup survey data showing that Democratic trust in the (Trump-hating) media is soaring, while discriminating people (that is, Republicans) continue to have less and less regard for the media: Surprise, surprise! I wonder what could be causing this “polarization”? Maybe things like this, from the newspaper
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