Smith and Klein and their ilk still have no idea how the perjorative "fake news" came about. It's like - "Yeah we made shit up but you should still respect our journalistic integrity."
That's literally what they ask. No shame - no self awareness whatsoever. The enemies of "disinformation" are the biggest purveyors of it. And yet they don't quite grasp why the media is in freefall. Must be because the rubes are so stupid.
They all think that the reason for loss of trust in the media is that Donald Trump says people shouldn't trust the media. I'm not being provacative or hyperbolic. That is literally what 25-40% of this country thinks.
The media hacks who believe this are themselves the biggest reason for the loss of trust.
They took it upon themselves to try and take Trump down. Trump = bad so whatever it takes, we have to oppose and ultimately get rid of him. This was and is their raison d'etre.
It's like the Biden doddering old man story - all these hacks saw it. You couldn't NOT see it, if you were covering him. And in a hundred newsrooms across the country, the decision was made - quietly, discreetly - to ignore it, to attack those who noticed it, and now, to pretend that "we were misled."
But it's the rubes' fault for declining trust in media. They're too stupid to know how smart the media elite are!
I mean, look at this - the White House Correspondents' Association picks the "Photo of the Year" for 2024, and it's NOT Trump bloodied with his fist raised, it's a black and white photo of Biden looking like he's mistaken the White House fireplace for a door
Literally anyone with a single functioning brain cell, even the most partisan among us, realize the sheer power of that Trump photo. But the legacy media, dedicated as it is to "resistance" and getting rid of Trump, cannot possibly pick that photo for "Photo of the Year."
No matter how bad things get I can find solace always in the fact that I don't wake up as Ezra Klein, or Ben Smith - for real! Tireless self-promoters who contribute zip.
Steele, a Brit, and Downer, an Aussie, are both MI6 assets who launched RussiaGate. Klein, Smith and most of the msm are either tools of the globalists or useful idiots.
At least people of faith believe in a vision of beauty, goodness, redemption, and meaning and purpose of human life. Mainstream Democrats believe in nothing but their right to do whatever it takes to remain in power.
I don't know about "mainstream" as that includes some normal people who "vote blue no matter who," but it 100% is true of progressives. I think back to the DNC convention with an 18-wheeler parked outside offering free abortions and free vasectomies. The party of sex and death. Unbelievable.
I don't know any Democrats who follow principles of rational thinking. They do not have the curiosity to read anything that the NY Times or NPR or the Washington Post does not cover, they deny evidence that is right before their eyes, they deny thousands of years of foundational truths. So to me, mainstream Democrats are as crazy as progressives.
I don't think they care either way why they lost their influence...what absolutely kills them is the liberal slant of the media no longer matters. It used to influence politics more than even elections and now it's a non factor... and it's spectacular.
They are left-wing. Left-wing people believe that words are power constructs. They advocate the telling of noble lies. The idea that they should be condemned for lying is ridiculous to them.
As for the idea that “Russian influence” is bad, people forget that in the 1996 cycle the Clintons got a half million dollar donation from China and the media response was “there’s nothing wrong with that.” They don’t actually dislike foreign influence. They just dislike losing.
This is so true. I remember reading that Obama's campaign donation site did not require entry of the credit card security code for payments to be processed, making it much easier for foreign and other fraudulent contributions to be made. I mentioned this to my leftwing friends; they shrugged it off. The New York Times would still be bringing this up if Romney's site had been configured this way.
Being reminded of Mitt Romney… true conservatives in the Republican Party deserve the condemnation you hold for mainstream Democrats on account of The Progressives.
We could have had 8 years of Dr. Ron Paul, but mainstream republicans weren’t ready.
And Bill Clinton received $500,000 for giving a speech to Russian bankers in 2010, but that didn't arouse any suspicion in any of the "journalists" who were positive that Trump had somehow stolen the 2016 election.
Interesting that you call these schlomos practioners of "taqiyya."
Smith and Klein are both Jews.
“NEW YORK — The Forward celebrated its 120th anniversary with a gala that honored BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith and longtime television journalist Andrea Mitchell.
"More than 350 people attended the Monday night gala for the Forward, formerly known as the Jewish Daily Forward, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on Monday night in New York City. The event raised slightly over $1 million in ticket sales and sponsorships.I first caught the bug for journalism at the Forward,” said Smith, who worked there before going on to other publications such as Politico."
Your hypothesis may be true for consumers of their dreck, but I think figures like Klein and Smith who have been at the center of the hurricane of official lies that have been visited on America for a decade or more know what they are doing. They are acting as craven lapdogs for people with real power in other institutions. They are “sense-makers” for American imperial interests—dressing those interests up to appear as common sense for the laptop class.
They absolutely know what they're doing, they WANT to do it, they enjoy the status they get from being the craven lapdogs. They're not low level reporters, more like the NCOs of the media army. And they're not in the business of truth - they're in the business of saying/justifying whatever those higher up the lefty food chain think should be conveyed. But they call it truth; or as noted elsewhere in this thread, they see it as noble lies, bullshit that helps get at a "greater' truth.
Truth is not a progressive principle, and they tell themselves truth is relative anyway. They definitely believe that noble lies are justified to achieve their goals.
Anderson Cooper is looking strained lately. You can see something going on inside. I guess the Covid years of his news show followed by a banner “Brought to you by Pfizer “ have taken a toll. He knows.
I will never forget Jon Favreau and some other creature from the Obama Administration laughing it up with Charlie Rose about how they lied to the public about being able to keep your insurance under Obamacare. Millions of people lost their insurance and saw it replaced with something inferior or in some cases with nothing at all. They all thought that lying about that was funny. It was one of the most sickening things I have ever seen.
And I, a Medicare recipient at 87, am being penalized at 8.70 a month until I die for opting out of the apparently mandatory medication coverage because I did not need it. I would have paid for medicine that I did not take. For one year. This seemed silly to me. Obamacare or Bushcare decreed otherwise.
I’m being billed an extra $3.30/month for the crime of being without prescription drug coverage for 8 months last year, due to a glitch between Medicare and Social Security. Multiple calls to disinterested, incompetent bureaucrats at both agencies finally yielded a couple of low level staffers who knew what had happened, but lacked the authority to fix it. Messages left for supervisors went unanswered, as did a snail-mail letter to Social Security, and a report filed with the OIG. It was finally fixed in December, one day before Open Enrollment ended.
Premiums were deducted from my benefits for 8 months, though I had no coverage — and now they want me to pay a penalty. You really can’t make this stuff up.
And we’re supposed to be all brokenhearted over the bureaucrats who got fired? Please.
I continue to believe that the growing alliance between truth seekers and truth speakers (subscription journalism) is building the human truth/fact based national conversation capable of creating the unifying truth/fact based reality the free citizens of our Republic deserve.
The willingness to lie, the magnitude of the lie (Russia Gate etc.) has reached such proportion it can only be described as a psyop. It operates at industrial strength.-- Starmer's England is the illustration of what happens when it begins to fail. -- RACKET reports calling out the moral decline of clown world "legacy" journalism is vital. Add the reality that roughly sixty percent of Americans read at a sixth grade level and it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that the perps and the LIE/PSYOP they operate to cover their grift extends far beyond journalism and reporting and purposefully strikes directly at the heart of the American psyche.
A million dollar classroom that can't teach a child to read and write? It's not them. It's us. Take a serious look at the hog tough on the Potomac. We the People
failed ourselves.
A free people cannot, will not allow themselves to live inside a lie. The LIE/PSYOP as intended made us ill. It's time to get well. Depart the psyop and live.
Yep. All health insurance providers in Alaska, save one (Premera), pulled out of the state. Our premium for a fully comprehensive Cadillac plan with $1,000 deductible went from $1,200/month to $4,200/month with a $6,000 deductible for an inferior product. The PP&CACA killed our ability to save for retirement until Trump's reform in 2019 which lowered our monthly premium to $2,400/month. All of this means that we will have to work until at least 67 years of age in order to retire to a lower middle-class economy.
I know so many people who have stories like you. Most people, like 75% of the country, was perfectly happy with both their health insurance and their health care in 2010. Obamacare screwed most of those people and gave them inferior coverage and inferior care. The whole thing was nothing but a pay off to the insurance companies. It was a law that allowed the insurance companies to cancel all of their most expensive and desirable plans.
He screwed up healthcare too by adding layers of requirements for physicians to jump through to document on their records and then required electronic records so they could track the required nonsense that didn’t actually impact a patient’s health, but necessitated a new layer of administration to make sure systems were in compliance, increasing costs and complexity and straining the relationship between patients and physicians.
One can't overestimate how critical a factor the documentation requirement is in the shortage of physicians we are now experiencing. There is no research that shows it actually improves patient health. A bureacratic nightmare with the worst of consequences for patients and physicians.
Won't ever happen, because the one thing your modern leftist can never do, ever, is admit they were wrong. Covid, Biden's age, you name it - they were wrong, demonstrably wrong, yet all the mea culpas try to place the blame elsewhere
Interestingly, despite all their rationale for their delusional TDS, they appear to have never considered the “Akam’s Razor” explanation that Hillary was an awful candidate with a horrible campaign strategy (remember her “Deplorables” gaffe) and the Comey “investigation”/coverup? Although they referenced some “doubts”, none of these “journalists” did ANY research or fact-checking to verify the dossiers validity.
I don't think these people Smith, Klein, etc, believe anything they say. I think every word they say and write is either a proven "likes" getter, or a test to see if they can create a new one. That's all there is to it, and as long as there are dumbass Americans willing to make it profitable for them, they'll continue to do it. Consider this: How much activity and notoriety did Smith's new "ambivalence" create?
How do you get Americans to see what's right in front of their faces? You don't. It has to bite their friggin nose off first, and leave them bleeding and suffering. That's Americans.
EDIT: If 40% of Americans believed what they read in The Onion, you'd be alarmed, right?
I think it's actually doublethink. No one outside the Party bubble has trouble seeing BS, but inside it, they have to train themselves to see 2+2=5 as a survival strategy.
I lost two close friendships, spanning several decades, over the 2020 election. I mean close (I flew to Israel for one's daughter's Bat Mitzvah, and they both attended the baptisms of my children).
I've always found Trump kind of grotesque, but I felt I had to vote for him in 2020 because the intelligence services and federal law enforcement tried to arrange so I could not, and I would vote for the devil himself to push back against that. (While there were other issues, the need to push back against selective and bogus prosecutions of political opponents was decisive for me in 2024.)
In my last conversation with these two friends (we used to be the Three Musketeers), I thought I could find some common ground by saying, "Don't you think they kind of overpromised and under-delivered on the whole 'Trump is taking orders from the Kremlin' thing?" I deliberately put it in such an understated way that I thought they'd have to agree. From there, I was going to try to get them to see that Trump's opponents "broke the norms" more seriously than he did, or at least understand that a decent person--their friend for more than 20 years--could think that.
But with all the evidence that had emerged by the summer of 2020, they still vehemently disagreed, and found it disgusting and enraging that I would even say that. One of them said, "There was plenty of evidence of attempted collusion." (I'm a lawyer and have no idea what that means; it certainly isn't in the federal criminal code). The other said that it was very "sad" that I had become so "deluded" as to support a "fascist." And that was the last time we spoke.
You really can't overstate the damage from the Russia collusion hoax (especially combined with the Very Fine People hoax). It played such a huge role in making us unable even to talk to each other. In my case, it cost me personally in ways that are still painful. You can make new friends. You can't make new friendships that span decades of the major moments of your life.
So yes, Matt. These laughing hyenas Smith and Klein make me so furious I could spit.
Your story is familiar, "Skeptic". I too am a lawyer of long standing and have no idea what "attempted collusion" means. I too, have lost what I thought were long time "friends" over the Clinton "Russiagate" debacle. I did not vote for Mr. Trump the first time he ran for President and won. Like you, I found his style distasteful. But I sure as hell voted for him this time around and will literally 'got to the mat' for him from this point on. ALL of those involved with having prompted, and still promoting, the Russiagate affair myth are guilty of actively working to destroy the political fabric of our great Country. it is not even an arguable observation. it is a FACT.
I'm sad for you. I'm sad for me, too. I would have thought I was crazy if it weren't for Racket News. I miss the friends who think Ben & Ezra are reporters.
Don't forget about COVID. True Fauci believers still unwilling to wrestle with Gruber and krause's resignations at the FDA over the clot shot. Gaslighting is the new religion of the left. Not sure how that gets reversed. They are praying to new gods.
They're not paying a price. Delusion is reality and if you can fashion a compelling enough delusion that others can share, you can avoid thinking about reality and simply live in your headspace.
In my opinion that’s one of the most frustrating aspects of all of this : they’re not paying any price…yet. I’m still hopeful but am getting impatient. There doesn’t seem to be any real measurable consequences for these people spreading lies and damaging the cohesion of society. Rarely if ever are there printed retractions or corrections, and if they happen, it’s in small print buried in a place few will see. Makes me sick.
There a lot of old boomer hippies that refuse to acknowledge that the party they’ve voted for since the 60s has a poor track record when it comes to promoting peace, love, and understanding, and also really sucks at governance.
So the Gen X and millenial liberals are unlikely to shed their more poisonous beliefs any time soon.
I found it extraordinary that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie were outraged that RFK Jr. was criticizing our healthcare system which has produced the unhealthiest population in the developed world for the most money spent. Great success story! I used to admire both, but they really are disgusting sell outs.
I had almost exactly the same experience, not about Russia, but Trump related. It's very disconcerting that good friends can't step back and at least consider why you might think that way.
It would be too embarrassing to admit they were wrong. Can we make up a word, phrase, concept that might make it more palatable for them? You know how they like words and catchy phrases. Not more than would fit on a bumper sticker, however.
I'm sorry for your loss, as that's what it is. When this happens to you, it's like your friend has died. The results of this effort by the many in the media to distort the truth has been the ending of long term friendships, friendships which should have been based upon respect and admiration and love dissolving over something as personally uncontrollable as election outcomes and regime change. Trump derangement syndrome is real, and it goes in both directions. Try putting a negative comment about something the Trump white house is doing in a Trump friendly chat and find out. I've heard and seen so many of these types of stories that it seems the loss of friendships is more than coincidental. Many of the people I used to work with and associate with are democrats. I found out a long time ago that it was easier to not discuss politics with my coworkers in Seattle, or my immediate family and friends who may recoil physically when Trump is mentioned. This is a larger problem than just "journalists" who are misleading in their "reporting."
Maybe we need to put the blame on the people who behave this way, as well as on the opportunistic liars who fed them the lies. When the truth is unveiled, isn't it the responsibility of the once fooled to react appropriately? To see that they were hoodwinked and to be angry with the liar who hoodwinked them, rather than double down on the lie.
The truth has been unveiled. Twitter files, Robert Muller findings, Barrington declaration, etc. If you're in an echo chamber that says all of that is Russian disinformation, you're in mental quicksand.
Indeed we are responsible for our own actions and for finding and understanding the truth. Like so many other maladies of the psyche, they have to want to change and part of that change is developing and using critical thinking skills. In order to see the truth, you have to look for it. It's really hard to change your beliefs once you have them. Some folks, like the cult at Johnstown, will drink the kool aid even knowing it will kill them. Once the relationship is terminated, there's not a lot we can do, they need to come to it through some other mechanism.
Beautifully written post. I was hoping to move on from Trump at the beginning of 2024. But I remember the day I learned that he had been indicted. I was flabbergasted. I wrote a check to his campaign that day. The indictment quite literally forced me into the Trump camp. I have often wondered how many people were similarly motivated to vote for Trump as a reaction to that dreadful abuse of the criminal justice system.
This may have been the most frightening aspect of the TDS and DNC opportunism. the notion of fairness and justice was sullied beyond what I ever thought possible in America. I don't think most people realize what we lost then.
Wasn't sure about my vote either. But with each indictment I made a campaign donation to Trump. And with each indictment my vote became further solidified.
Not a lawyer, but a former intelligence analyst in the Army.
I tried to explain to people how intel analysts rank information by the credibility of the sources, and preferably multiple sources.
If the source provides zero evidence for their claim, and there are no other credible sources backing it up, then we would not label it as reliable intel.
There was a whole scandal during the Bush and Obama admins where the CIA was giving Afghan sources RFID chips to drop outside the homes of Taliban collaborators, and then the CIA would use a Reaper drone to blow up the building when they saw the target enter. Turned out a lot of people were volunteering to be CIA sources and then dropping the bomb-magnet chips outside the houses of tribal rivals who were not in the Taliban.
Ezra Klein and these other coddled fairies 🧚 are the ones crafting narratives from sources with zero credibility, but they don’t care. The anonymous source tells them what they want to hear, and they just roll with it.
You are not alone in your experience. It wasn't Russiagate, as horriffic as it was, but the "pandemic" bioweapon that was the catalyst for my losing many friends. They had not just seen what I saw all during the Russia hoax, so when the bioweapon was released onto populations around the globe, I saw very early on that it was a massively coordinated event. I may not have been so skepitcal of it, had I not just seen the deep state trying to sabotage a sitting US president with the lying media doing their bidding. So, when I refused to get the jab, and after the first year, refused to wear a mask any longer, I lost many friends who throught I was selfish. My refusal was not because I wanted to be more comfortable and breathe the air like we are born to do or to not try to help alleviate a so-called pandemic, it was because I was refusing to enable or contribute to further tyrranical control of our country and our lives. It was so clear to me that it had nothing to do with public health.
So, I feel you pain. I lost my close friends, was frozen out by a Board of Directors I was on -literally, they would no longer answer my emails or talk to me. I moved clear across the country to live in a sensible red state and have had to start over in buiding a new life. It was well worth it though, because I do have new friendships, and I don't have to live a compartmentalized life where I cannot speak frankly in my own neighborhood.
It was all exceedingly painful, though. I'll never shake the memory of it off, but I have moved on and life has gotten better again. That's what I am leading to. The people we have lost, we have to let go of and move on. It sucks and never should have happened. None of us should ever have had to live through all we have lived through. If your lifelong friends abandoned you, it is their deficiency of character that let that happen. I predict you will gain new friends with much stronger character. God bless.
I think the pandemic response opened a lot of eyes as to the lies and overreach of the government and the media that weren’t previously opened during Trump’s tenure, unfortunately not until after the 2020 election. But the damage they wrought was extensive in terms of learning loss and isolation for children, loss of income for working class people, isolation of elderly from families, absolute attempts to destroy physicians who were treating patients with anything outside the “approved protocol” which likely led to increased mortality. Working in pediatrics it was quickly obvious that even the initial virus was not a threat to kids (other than the rare MISC) and the isolation itself was not good for mental health. Not to mention the idea that online school was never going to be as good as in person. Fortunately, where I live, in person school was an option in the fall of 2020, and by spring of 21, pretty much everyone was back in school. Mandatory masking stopped in late spring of 21, and sanity slowly returned.
You’re fortunate. This was not the case in CA where schools were closed for two years and the state of emergency that allowed our governor to function as a king, bypassing legislative approval for many things, persisted for three plus years.
Have you seen the recent research done by the Univ of Zurich on Reddit? The LLMs (AI) proved to be significantly more successful at brainwashing than human shills. Your intelligent friends (& some of mine) are surely victims of sophisticated AI LLM systems (from foreign countries, our CIA, corporate lobbyists, etc.) in their social and preferred legacy media sources. Of course the legacy media isn't talking about this.
I could not relate to your experience more. It is even worse now. I could emotionally separate my feelings from ideas for a long time, but now the anger I feel is becoming too much.
I am feeling more fear than anger now. These people will not give up, and their attacks will become increasingly dangerous to our freedom. That is what is behind their projections of tyrany onto Trump.
Your handle, Skeptic, is a thought process everyone should adopt. The most powerful point of your disclosure: the friendship was indeed deep if it overcame the stigma of engaging in religious rituals of a religion that counters one’s own. It is truly telling how potent propaganda can be and a person’s need to protect itself from self-examination.
My version of that story is my Dad. And he IS a lawyer.
It’s been utterly bizarre watching a man who builds legal cases for a living completely unable to rationally approach the topic. He isn’t just dug in, his brain turns off when you bring it up.
If you showed me actual evidence Trump was involved with Putin, I would be angry at Trump. But if you show people like my Dad evidence that the whole thing was a fraud, they start vomiting angry nonsense and asserting things as fact that they just made up out of thin air until you go away.
I think Trump’s second landslide victory broke the spell in a lot of ways and its starting to get better, though.
Once they bought into the lies there was no way back; facing the humiliation for having been seduced, emotionally manipulated is not something most people are mature enough to do. The ego is too fragile.
They will never apologize, never acknowledge any of the truth that has come out even in some of the mainstream media about the Russia hoax, the Fine People Hoax, Covid insanity, Fauci. I’ve lost all my old friends and much of my family. I’ve tried to engage respectfully and have been met with cruelty, smugness and “fact checking” from all their approved sources.
It has been evil—and I don’t use that word lightly—for the media to twist the minds of the public so relentlessly with zero regard for truth, yet consumers of this crap bear some responsibility. Most are educated and should be ashamed. The whole Covid “science” thing was extraordinary—how private schools were safe to be open but public schools were not, and mom and pop stores were dangerous germ vectors but Walmart was fine.
Been there. Just lying low with family and friends I value. I am clinging to the hope that if I don't push the issue, in time they will come to see what I have come to see.
We don’t hate these hacks enough. The more absurd phenomenon is how many “smart” people still believe these “experts”. Many of the largest substacks are daily heroin drips of Trump derangement. Yet the numbers are suspicious. How much are they astroturfed? https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/trump-derangement-substack-correspondents-dinner
Self-siloed individuals have a shield that protects their vulnerable pride from accidently discovering they were wrong. My youngest brother, a SoCal prof, is too smart to see he is a patsy of media con-artists.
Even after it was well documented the Russia deal was a hoax, my brother said it was true and those that believed otherwise were all flat-earthers. Obviously two information sources to choose from.
My response was no more email or text conversation with political overtones. He shares Trump's birthday, just 8 years younger.
People fail to appreciate the radicalizing effect of the Russia narrative falling apart and Americans realizing that Russiagate was nothing more than Clinton oppo research laundered through legacy media and our national security apparatus. The detrimental impact on our civic health is incalculable.
Actually I don't think they are capable of not believing it. To accept that it was wrong is to accept that they were in fact promulgating lies. Nobody wants to admit to that. Even to themselves (the easiest person to fool).
Her constant use of a Russian word should make her suspect of being a Russian agent herself, by her own logic. But such a position would require logical consistency, and that's a luxury that the Defenders of Democracy cannot afford.
Right. It was Comey who caused Hillary to lose. It wasn’t her incessant lying about her own behavior. It wasn’t her disdain for deplorable Americans. It wasn’t her support for the Iraq invasion. We know so much more now, about the origins of the Steele Dossier, and how the intel services and Obama himself buried what they knew, even after the election. These scumbags are forever tarnished and nothing can change that.
It is worth mentioning how the Comey thing went down- Comey brought the potential for illegal activity by Clinton and then decided, as if he was the prosecutor (not essentially the chief of police), that it wasn't worth prosecuting! That is not how it works anywhere...so yeah, scum for sure across the board.
They let Cheryl Mills, Hillary's chief of staff at the State Department who helped her set up the server, act as her lawyer during the interview. That meant that a lot of what they did together was now privileged, and the FBI couldn't ask about it, aw shucks...
It really is something, their reality is that the free pass Comey gave in failing to prosecute Clinton after finding out about heretofore unknown classified information on her email server is what cost Clinton the election. Where are those classified documents that Clinton had, I wonder?
Meanwhile the FBI is looking for classified docs in Melania's underwear drawer. Totally not a double standard
It aggravates me more and more as I remember it all which is why I kept my first comment brief. I felt my blood pressure rising. It is not even the classified documents, it is the "what else" was she hiding on that server- my guess is a lot of stuff involving contributions to Clinton foundation or worse, "I want to thank Bill for his awesome speech (that we paid $250k for), looking forward to our upcoming meeting to discuss XYZ..." This is a woman who made $100k in the 80s on a $1000 investment in cattle futures after all. I am sure they took it up a notch in the big leagues. You don't get a house in Chappaqua on the President's pension.
Most of the elected Republicans said nary a word. Many had the facts, they knew, like McCain and Graham. I believe that made them complicit.
The idea of Trump being an agent of a foreign nation was down right stupid. I had no idea who he was when he announced, not being a TV watcher or a newspaper reader. He never showed up at all in my conservative circles. His take-down of the 16 others on the debate stage made him my guy - the thought of another McCain or Romney was hazardous to my well-being.
Plenty of establishment GOP types wanted Trump to lose in 2016 - it was an "open" secret. As for the origin? America's alphabet agencies outsourced the smear to the Brits in 2015, according to the Brits:
As a former newsweekly editor, if I was Klein's editor now, I would have hauled him into my office and told him to correct his untrue -- and unethical -- statements publicly. You can't be a journalist and be slimy like that and pretend you didn't say what you did.
This speaks to the utter lack of honesty and ethics in corporate media like the NYT. No wonder readers' trust is at an all-time low. They earned it.
same—i was editor/publisher of a newsweekly in the 90s. no one *wanted* to lie back then. that’s not why we got into the business. there was talk of “advocacy journalism,” but that just meant announcing one’s viewpoint when covering something the reporter takes a stand on. but if reporters wanted to “take a stand” that went in op-ed, not news.
i think the entire profession is broken forever now, esp print, but broadcast too.
Yes, as an editor in the 90s myself, I preached to my staff -- and to anyone who would listen -- that advocacy was fine, objectivity was not. One had to be honest about one's viewpoint (research-based, of course) -- and fair to those who disagreed by interviewing them to make their argument as well.
Seems like the temptation to bend some rules in order to help a cause one 'knows' to be just eventually becomes too great. Hence the politicization, and corresponding forfeiture of trust, of so many institutions.
substack is subverted as The Free Press platforms these douchebags. How did a truth seeking alternative to WaPo, Vox, NYT and Bloomberg platform and hire editors and writers from outlets that have lied through their teeth. My guess is they now have investors they need to please. The horseshoe theory of independent media is it eventually becomes mainstream media.
Agreed. Ezra Klein kinda triggered my reaction to investor driven sites on substack, as he was platformed on TFP, along with dozens of other mainstream “Experts”.
No, I believed TFP to be independent of the mainstream sources I had mentioned. Although I did cancel my subscription to TFP right away. I fell for bait and switch:-(
Mark Twain noted, “If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
Who is shocked that the media lied? Our media has been Pravda for more than many decades. NY Times reporter Walter Duranty feared upsetting his Stalin supporters and told Americans that the Holodomor was not happening in the 1930s Ukraine. Duranty got a Pulitzer for lying to us.
Although there are still good journalists in this corrupt world, it often feels like no one cares or that justice does not prevail. Gareth Jones, who told the truth on the Ukraine famine story, died with seemingly no justice: “A Tale of Two Journalists: Walter Duranty and Gareth Jones” | National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide
Matt, this might be the best article I've ever read on the collusion hoax.
I've always known the media is full of people out to 'get Trump'. But it's startling how dishonest and evil they really are.
They KNEW deep down the whole thing was a hoax, but they wanted to believe it so badly they made the choice to blast the story 24/7 for a couple of years.
And it worked. The Democrats trounced the GOP in the midterms, thereby ending the Trump presidency.
Yeah, Ben Smith and Ezra Klein are sleazy as hell. To commit the evils they have and then pretend to be above it all and smarter than the rest of us. They can go to Hell.
It's really true, it's not enough to say they're wrong or bad, they should just go to hell. They don't give a flying shit that their lies caused terrible damage to individual people like Carter Page for example
In 8 years, the Obama Administration let Russia take Crimea from Ukraine, keep a large portion of Georgia, and send its mercenaries to Syria to prop up the Assad regime which then used nerve gas on its own people. The Obama Administration did absolutely nothing in response to any of this, except for mock Mitt Romney for even suggesting Russia may be a problem.
Meanwhile Hillary Clinton pressured Canada into selling Russia most of its Uranium. I don't think the public or the media ever fully appreciated the significance of that. Since 1992, neither Russia nor the US has been able to test its nuclear weapons stockpile. The US has spent billions of dollars developing a very sophisticated testing and maintenance program to ensure the reliability of its now very old stockpile. Russia lacks both the technical ability and resources to do that. Instead, Russia just periodically rebuilds the Plutonium cores and the rest of their warheads with new material. That way they don't have to test or worry about if the aging material still works. Doing that takes a lot of Uranium, which Russia didn't have until Hillary sold it to them.
In the four years Trump was in office, Russia did nothing except get a bunch of the Wagner Group slaughtered after they made the mistake of attacking US Marines and Army in Syria. Yet, Klein and Smith were convinced and still don't think it was unreasonable to think Trump was the Russian agent. These people are appalling.
For 10 years the Kiev regime murdered civilians for speaking Russian. The CIA established biological weapons labs in Ukraine ( starting in 2010). You still have Cold War Russophobia.
Yeah, because the Russians would never lie to you. That has never happened before. You just keep believing whatever confirms what you want to believe. Truth and reality as it is is not a good role for you.,
I really can't stand the Republicans, by and large.
But I feel strongly that Ezra Klein and Rachael Maddow should get into their liberal lear jet, and fly away. Maybe make one stop on the way out at SFO , to pick up Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris.
At this point, I would be hard pressed to come up with even one. Bernie, I suppose...I would have said Dick Durbin 3 years ago, but he betrayed his fealty to the colleges over the people in 2022...
But the party is so corrupted at this point, no matter what ones character/policies might be, just having a D next to your name is problematic, frankly.
I could say the same for the Republicans btw...don't get me wrong. Show me the guy who wants to both cut spending AND Tax the Rich, reduce the size of the federal government, protect our civil liberties, restore our privacy, greatly restrict the data gathering capabilities of big tech, and that is the guy I like. Something like an "Updated Eisenhower" maybe...LOL
I was a long-time journalist. I love journalism. But for the past 10 years or so, I have been reading news stories and saying to myself: "Clean-up on aisle seven." That is, I pay attention to the framing of information and not just the information. Too many national and world stories are not just about information but about a journalist putting a thumb on the scale. When the scale is not balanced, you get spillage and thus the mess journalism finds itself in today.
I have always contended that the Buzzfeed publication of the Steele Dossier was a significant moment in the unraveling we continue to see in legacy media today. You nailed it when you wrote:
"Looking back, though, that fringy status of Buzzfeed just helped complete a complex end-run around the safeguards against fake news."
The mess in journalism will continue as long as journalists who lead with their thumbs look back on the mess they've made with ambivalence.
I do an awful lot of that same "clean up on aisle 7" stuff too, no matter which outlet I'm reading. It's a good idea to visit a variety of different sources, because news stories can be presented in so many different ways, it can be challenging to get to the truth.
Russiagate is just one fling in the history of a serial cheater who keeps complaining to his buddies how how his wife needs to get counseling to deal with her trust issues.
Smith and Klein and their ilk still have no idea how the perjorative "fake news" came about. It's like - "Yeah we made shit up but you should still respect our journalistic integrity."
That's literally what they ask. No shame - no self awareness whatsoever. The enemies of "disinformation" are the biggest purveyors of it. And yet they don't quite grasp why the media is in freefall. Must be because the rubes are so stupid.
They all think that the reason for loss of trust in the media is that Donald Trump says people shouldn't trust the media. I'm not being provacative or hyperbolic. That is literally what 25-40% of this country thinks.
The media hacks who believe this are themselves the biggest reason for the loss of trust.
They took it upon themselves to try and take Trump down. Trump = bad so whatever it takes, we have to oppose and ultimately get rid of him. This was and is their raison d'etre.
It's like the Biden doddering old man story - all these hacks saw it. You couldn't NOT see it, if you were covering him. And in a hundred newsrooms across the country, the decision was made - quietly, discreetly - to ignore it, to attack those who noticed it, and now, to pretend that "we were misled."
But it's the rubes' fault for declining trust in media. They're too stupid to know how smart the media elite are!
I mean, look at this - the White House Correspondents' Association picks the "Photo of the Year" for 2024, and it's NOT Trump bloodied with his fist raised, it's a black and white photo of Biden looking like he's mistaken the White House fireplace for a door
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/was-chosen-photo-2024-tds-impaired-media
Literally anyone with a single functioning brain cell, even the most partisan among us, realize the sheer power of that Trump photo. But the legacy media, dedicated as it is to "resistance" and getting rid of Trump, cannot possibly pick that photo for "Photo of the Year."
It was in that iconic moment that Donald Trump won his bid for re-election, imo. You can’t fake that courage under fire.
They don't actually believe it. They use it as a tool of propaganda.
Ezra tries hard to convince himself, Ben far less so. Ask Ez, he'll tell you he's sincere. "You can trust me! TM"
🎯
No matter how bad things get I can find solace always in the fact that I don't wake up as Ezra Klein, or Ben Smith - for real! Tireless self-promoters who contribute zip.
Possibly proving they can 'have it both ways'.
Steele, a Brit, and Downer, an Aussie, are both MI6 assets who launched RussiaGate. Klein, Smith and most of the msm are either tools of the globalists or useful idiots.
They are in the marketing business and paid well by their clients, they market propaganda.
I vote for useful idiots.
I vote for evil.
At least people of faith believe in a vision of beauty, goodness, redemption, and meaning and purpose of human life. Mainstream Democrats believe in nothing but their right to do whatever it takes to remain in power.
I don't know about "mainstream" as that includes some normal people who "vote blue no matter who," but it 100% is true of progressives. I think back to the DNC convention with an 18-wheeler parked outside offering free abortions and free vasectomies. The party of sex and death. Unbelievable.
I don't know any Democrats who follow principles of rational thinking. They do not have the curiosity to read anything that the NY Times or NPR or the Washington Post does not cover, they deny evidence that is right before their eyes, they deny thousands of years of foundational truths. So to me, mainstream Democrats are as crazy as progressives.
I'll never forget the day a friend looked horrified when I said that I also read National Review. Truly horrified.
I don't think they care either way why they lost their influence...what absolutely kills them is the liberal slant of the media no longer matters. It used to influence politics more than even elections and now it's a non factor... and it's spectacular.
They are left-wing. Left-wing people believe that words are power constructs. They advocate the telling of noble lies. The idea that they should be condemned for lying is ridiculous to them.
As for the idea that “Russian influence” is bad, people forget that in the 1996 cycle the Clintons got a half million dollar donation from China and the media response was “there’s nothing wrong with that.” They don’t actually dislike foreign influence. They just dislike losing.
Noble lies - that's it, right there. Lying in the service of a greater good. Or so they think.
Like the public health officials.
Their process:
1) decide how they want people to act
2) determine what they can say to make people act that way
3) tell them that whether it is true or not
"The people didn't trust public health officials because public health officials didn't trust the people"
This is so true. I remember reading that Obama's campaign donation site did not require entry of the credit card security code for payments to be processed, making it much easier for foreign and other fraudulent contributions to be made. I mentioned this to my leftwing friends; they shrugged it off. The New York Times would still be bringing this up if Romney's site had been configured this way.
Being reminded of Mitt Romney… true conservatives in the Republican Party deserve the condemnation you hold for mainstream Democrats on account of The Progressives.
We could have had 8 years of Dr. Ron Paul, but mainstream republicans weren’t ready.
I don't see how true conservatives in the Republican Party deserve condemnation. Perhaps I have misunderstood your comment.
And Bill Clinton received $500,000 for giving a speech to Russian bankers in 2010, but that didn't arouse any suspicion in any of the "journalists" who were positive that Trump had somehow stolen the 2016 election.
https://www.newsweek.com/clinton-russia-uranium-deal-689321
And then his wife signed off on the part of the Russian uranium deal she had to approve.
Tacky taqiyya from the too good to be tendentious.
‘Truth’ is anything that furthers the cause.
Interesting that you call these schlomos practioners of "taqiyya."
Smith and Klein are both Jews.
“NEW YORK — The Forward celebrated its 120th anniversary with a gala that honored BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith and longtime television journalist Andrea Mitchell.
"More than 350 people attended the Monday night gala for the Forward, formerly known as the Jewish Daily Forward, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on Monday night in New York City. The event raised slightly over $1 million in ticket sales and sponsorships.I first caught the bug for journalism at the Forward,” said Smith, who worked there before going on to other publications such as Politico."
Your hypothesis may be true for consumers of their dreck, but I think figures like Klein and Smith who have been at the center of the hurricane of official lies that have been visited on America for a decade or more know what they are doing. They are acting as craven lapdogs for people with real power in other institutions. They are “sense-makers” for American imperial interests—dressing those interests up to appear as common sense for the laptop class.
They absolutely know what they're doing, they WANT to do it, they enjoy the status they get from being the craven lapdogs. They're not low level reporters, more like the NCOs of the media army. And they're not in the business of truth - they're in the business of saying/justifying whatever those higher up the lefty food chain think should be conveyed. But they call it truth; or as noted elsewhere in this thread, they see it as noble lies, bullshit that helps get at a "greater' truth.
Greater power. FIFY.
Truth is not a progressive principle, and they tell themselves truth is relative anyway. They definitely believe that noble lies are justified to achieve their goals.
Anderson Cooper is looking strained lately. You can see something going on inside. I guess the Covid years of his news show followed by a banner “Brought to you by Pfizer “ have taken a toll. He knows.
This is so well stated by you.
I will never forget Jon Favreau and some other creature from the Obama Administration laughing it up with Charlie Rose about how they lied to the public about being able to keep your insurance under Obamacare. Millions of people lost their insurance and saw it replaced with something inferior or in some cases with nothing at all. They all thought that lying about that was funny. It was one of the most sickening things I have ever seen.
Self employed here. We had our insurance dropped twice in 5 months at the inception of aca. Us and 800,000 others in California alone.
I was subjected to the IRS seizure of my refund one year, for having committed the crime of not being able to afford insurance.
Thanks, Barack!
And I, a Medicare recipient at 87, am being penalized at 8.70 a month until I die for opting out of the apparently mandatory medication coverage because I did not need it. I would have paid for medicine that I did not take. For one year. This seemed silly to me. Obamacare or Bushcare decreed otherwise.
That sounds familiar.
I’m being billed an extra $3.30/month for the crime of being without prescription drug coverage for 8 months last year, due to a glitch between Medicare and Social Security. Multiple calls to disinterested, incompetent bureaucrats at both agencies finally yielded a couple of low level staffers who knew what had happened, but lacked the authority to fix it. Messages left for supervisors went unanswered, as did a snail-mail letter to Social Security, and a report filed with the OIG. It was finally fixed in December, one day before Open Enrollment ended.
Premiums were deducted from my benefits for 8 months, though I had no coverage — and now they want me to pay a penalty. You really can’t make this stuff up.
And we’re supposed to be all brokenhearted over the bureaucrats who got fired? Please.
You are referring to another scumbag, Jonathan Gruber.
You really have to have a home score card of scumbags to keep up with all of them.
We need a Hamilton 68 Dashboard Of Scumbags.
We have to keep saying their names so nobody forgets
I continue to believe that the growing alliance between truth seekers and truth speakers (subscription journalism) is building the human truth/fact based national conversation capable of creating the unifying truth/fact based reality the free citizens of our Republic deserve.
The willingness to lie, the magnitude of the lie (Russia Gate etc.) has reached such proportion it can only be described as a psyop. It operates at industrial strength.-- Starmer's England is the illustration of what happens when it begins to fail. -- RACKET reports calling out the moral decline of clown world "legacy" journalism is vital. Add the reality that roughly sixty percent of Americans read at a sixth grade level and it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that the perps and the LIE/PSYOP they operate to cover their grift extends far beyond journalism and reporting and purposefully strikes directly at the heart of the American psyche.
A million dollar classroom that can't teach a child to read and write? It's not them. It's us. Take a serious look at the hog tough on the Potomac. We the People
failed ourselves.
A free people cannot, will not allow themselves to live inside a lie. The LIE/PSYOP as intended made us ill. It's time to get well. Depart the psyop and live.
has made us il
I used to joke on Conservative Treehouse about running to WalMart to get another white board, my 1st two were full.
Yep. All health insurance providers in Alaska, save one (Premera), pulled out of the state. Our premium for a fully comprehensive Cadillac plan with $1,000 deductible went from $1,200/month to $4,200/month with a $6,000 deductible for an inferior product. The PP&CACA killed our ability to save for retirement until Trump's reform in 2019 which lowered our monthly premium to $2,400/month. All of this means that we will have to work until at least 67 years of age in order to retire to a lower middle-class economy.
I know so many people who have stories like you. Most people, like 75% of the country, was perfectly happy with both their health insurance and their health care in 2010. Obamacare screwed most of those people and gave them inferior coverage and inferior care. The whole thing was nothing but a pay off to the insurance companies. It was a law that allowed the insurance companies to cancel all of their most expensive and desirable plans.
He screwed up healthcare too by adding layers of requirements for physicians to jump through to document on their records and then required electronic records so they could track the required nonsense that didn’t actually impact a patient’s health, but necessitated a new layer of administration to make sure systems were in compliance, increasing costs and complexity and straining the relationship between patients and physicians.
One can't overestimate how critical a factor the documentation requirement is in the shortage of physicians we are now experiencing. There is no research that shows it actually improves patient health. A bureacratic nightmare with the worst of consequences for patients and physicians.
Possible to share that link. Important for people to see this. Thanks.
It is what they demand of their humiliated/emasculated base. For the base to counter it, they would have to admit they were dupes.
Won't ever happen, because the one thing your modern leftist can never do, ever, is admit they were wrong. Covid, Biden's age, you name it - they were wrong, demonstrably wrong, yet all the mea culpas try to place the blame elsewhere
Yes. There is no shame or mea culpas. It boggles my mind. And their clueless readers still think they were truth tellers.
☝️ underrated comment right here ☝️
Interestingly, despite all their rationale for their delusional TDS, they appear to have never considered the “Akam’s Razor” explanation that Hillary was an awful candidate with a horrible campaign strategy (remember her “Deplorables” gaffe) and the Comey “investigation”/coverup? Although they referenced some “doubts”, none of these “journalists” did ANY research or fact-checking to verify the dossiers validity.
Clinton might have been the only politician in the Democratic party who would have lost to Trump in 2016 😂
The first person you gaslight is yourself. Every time.
I love this.
I don't think these people Smith, Klein, etc, believe anything they say. I think every word they say and write is either a proven "likes" getter, or a test to see if they can create a new one. That's all there is to it, and as long as there are dumbass Americans willing to make it profitable for them, they'll continue to do it. Consider this: How much activity and notoriety did Smith's new "ambivalence" create?
How do you get Americans to see what's right in front of their faces? You don't. It has to bite their friggin nose off first, and leave them bleeding and suffering. That's Americans.
EDIT: If 40% of Americans believed what they read in The Onion, you'd be alarmed, right?
I think it's actually doublethink. No one outside the Party bubble has trouble seeing BS, but inside it, they have to train themselves to see 2+2=5 as a survival strategy.
Perfectly stated. They were like a self-contained Hegelian dialectic:
First, create the PROBLEM by publishing nonsense;
Second, REACT by screaming about all the nonsense out there besides you’re own…
Third, “SOLVE” the problem by forgetting the core American principle about freedom of speech and then supporting the Censorship Industrial Complex.
It’s quite despicable, really.
And they "loved the traffic".
🎯
I lost two close friendships, spanning several decades, over the 2020 election. I mean close (I flew to Israel for one's daughter's Bat Mitzvah, and they both attended the baptisms of my children).
I've always found Trump kind of grotesque, but I felt I had to vote for him in 2020 because the intelligence services and federal law enforcement tried to arrange so I could not, and I would vote for the devil himself to push back against that. (While there were other issues, the need to push back against selective and bogus prosecutions of political opponents was decisive for me in 2024.)
In my last conversation with these two friends (we used to be the Three Musketeers), I thought I could find some common ground by saying, "Don't you think they kind of overpromised and under-delivered on the whole 'Trump is taking orders from the Kremlin' thing?" I deliberately put it in such an understated way that I thought they'd have to agree. From there, I was going to try to get them to see that Trump's opponents "broke the norms" more seriously than he did, or at least understand that a decent person--their friend for more than 20 years--could think that.
But with all the evidence that had emerged by the summer of 2020, they still vehemently disagreed, and found it disgusting and enraging that I would even say that. One of them said, "There was plenty of evidence of attempted collusion." (I'm a lawyer and have no idea what that means; it certainly isn't in the federal criminal code). The other said that it was very "sad" that I had become so "deluded" as to support a "fascist." And that was the last time we spoke.
You really can't overstate the damage from the Russia collusion hoax (especially combined with the Very Fine People hoax). It played such a huge role in making us unable even to talk to each other. In my case, it cost me personally in ways that are still painful. You can make new friends. You can't make new friendships that span decades of the major moments of your life.
So yes, Matt. These laughing hyenas Smith and Klein make me so furious I could spit.
Your story is familiar, "Skeptic". I too am a lawyer of long standing and have no idea what "attempted collusion" means. I too, have lost what I thought were long time "friends" over the Clinton "Russiagate" debacle. I did not vote for Mr. Trump the first time he ran for President and won. Like you, I found his style distasteful. But I sure as hell voted for him this time around and will literally 'got to the mat' for him from this point on. ALL of those involved with having prompted, and still promoting, the Russiagate affair myth are guilty of actively working to destroy the political fabric of our great Country. it is not even an arguable observation. it is a FACT.
Well said- so important! Thank you!
I'm sad for you. I'm sad for me, too. I would have thought I was crazy if it weren't for Racket News. I miss the friends who think Ben & Ezra are reporters.
Exactly!
Sorry to hear your story, friend. So many of us have experienced the same. Yes, media lies do have real world, tragic, consequences.
Don't forget about COVID. True Fauci believers still unwilling to wrestle with Gruber and krause's resignations at the FDA over the clot shot. Gaslighting is the new religion of the left. Not sure how that gets reversed. They are praying to new gods.
They have to lose so much, and pay such a heavy price, that they have no course but to start telling the truth.
I have my doubts, but that is the only way forward that I see.
They're not paying a price. Delusion is reality and if you can fashion a compelling enough delusion that others can share, you can avoid thinking about reality and simply live in your headspace.
We all know people like this. It's cult behavior.
"Delusion is reality"--that says it so well.
In my opinion that’s one of the most frustrating aspects of all of this : they’re not paying any price…yet. I’m still hopeful but am getting impatient. There doesn’t seem to be any real measurable consequences for these people spreading lies and damaging the cohesion of society. Rarely if ever are there printed retractions or corrections, and if they happen, it’s in small print buried in a place few will see. Makes me sick.
There a lot of old boomer hippies that refuse to acknowledge that the party they’ve voted for since the 60s has a poor track record when it comes to promoting peace, love, and understanding, and also really sucks at governance.
So the Gen X and millenial liberals are unlikely to shed their more poisonous beliefs any time soon.
There’s never actually been a Good that has come from democrats.
Not even one.
I found it extraordinary that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie were outraged that RFK Jr. was criticizing our healthcare system which has produced the unhealthiest population in the developed world for the most money spent. Great success story! I used to admire both, but they really are disgusting sell outs.
I never admired either one and yes it’s very sad. They’re numbers one and two in taking money from pharma. Explains a lot-
A friend just loaned me "The Real Anthony Fauci", by RFK. Stunning in the evil he describes...and documents.
I had almost exactly the same experience, not about Russia, but Trump related. It's very disconcerting that good friends can't step back and at least consider why you might think that way.
Agreed.
I have a group of friends that I label as Liberal...
The common denominator, is that ALL of them watch/read MSM.
And they can't stop forwarding you NYT and NYer links.
"See, see..! I told you so!"
Isn't the common denominator that they are all self-reverential retards?
You're correct, it actually is.
I cannot argue with them.
Forgot, all of them are multi-vaxxed, & continue to believe.
I'm not...
And they're still wearing masks! How pathetic is that???
Funny that!
I live in small town, cottage country, Ontario.
Not a day goes by when I don't see a lone person, masked, driving a car...
You know, masks work.
Haven't a clue how...
It would be too embarrassing to admit they were wrong. Can we make up a word, phrase, concept that might make it more palatable for them? You know how they like words and catchy phrases. Not more than would fit on a bumper sticker, however.
As of 2023, or thereabouts, the NYT readership wa 98% Democrat. Fox News it was 98% Republican. I wonder if those number have changed for Fox News?
Ì figure NYT readership approaches 100%.
20 odd years ago, I would buy a Sunday NYT if travelling.
It was OK then.
Fox?
I suspect viewership is 50/50 now.
More than disconcerting -it is heartbreaking when family is broken by politics.
Time for a re-write of The Emperor's New Clothes.
We will have to find ways to interrupt this kind of loss when good friends react this way. Any ideas?
I'm sorry for your loss, as that's what it is. When this happens to you, it's like your friend has died. The results of this effort by the many in the media to distort the truth has been the ending of long term friendships, friendships which should have been based upon respect and admiration and love dissolving over something as personally uncontrollable as election outcomes and regime change. Trump derangement syndrome is real, and it goes in both directions. Try putting a negative comment about something the Trump white house is doing in a Trump friendly chat and find out. I've heard and seen so many of these types of stories that it seems the loss of friendships is more than coincidental. Many of the people I used to work with and associate with are democrats. I found out a long time ago that it was easier to not discuss politics with my coworkers in Seattle, or my immediate family and friends who may recoil physically when Trump is mentioned. This is a larger problem than just "journalists" who are misleading in their "reporting."
Maybe we need to put the blame on the people who behave this way, as well as on the opportunistic liars who fed them the lies. When the truth is unveiled, isn't it the responsibility of the once fooled to react appropriately? To see that they were hoodwinked and to be angry with the liar who hoodwinked them, rather than double down on the lie.
The truth has been unveiled. Twitter files, Robert Muller findings, Barrington declaration, etc. If you're in an echo chamber that says all of that is Russian disinformation, you're in mental quicksand.
Indeed we are responsible for our own actions and for finding and understanding the truth. Like so many other maladies of the psyche, they have to want to change and part of that change is developing and using critical thinking skills. In order to see the truth, you have to look for it. It's really hard to change your beliefs once you have them. Some folks, like the cult at Johnstown, will drink the kool aid even knowing it will kill them. Once the relationship is terminated, there's not a lot we can do, they need to come to it through some other mechanism.
Beautifully written post. I was hoping to move on from Trump at the beginning of 2024. But I remember the day I learned that he had been indicted. I was flabbergasted. I wrote a check to his campaign that day. The indictment quite literally forced me into the Trump camp. I have often wondered how many people were similarly motivated to vote for Trump as a reaction to that dreadful abuse of the criminal justice system.
I can relate. The blatant abuse of the justice system has been appalling to me, demonstrating a willingness to destroy norms for private gain.
This may have been the most frightening aspect of the TDS and DNC opportunism. the notion of fairness and justice was sullied beyond what I ever thought possible in America. I don't think most people realize what we lost then.
Wasn't sure about my vote either. But with each indictment I made a campaign donation to Trump. And with each indictment my vote became further solidified.
I think a large number of people reacted as you did. That lawfare was so ridiculous that it completely backfired on the Democrat sponsors, thankfully.
Kafkaesque redux.
Not a lawyer, but a former intelligence analyst in the Army.
I tried to explain to people how intel analysts rank information by the credibility of the sources, and preferably multiple sources.
If the source provides zero evidence for their claim, and there are no other credible sources backing it up, then we would not label it as reliable intel.
There was a whole scandal during the Bush and Obama admins where the CIA was giving Afghan sources RFID chips to drop outside the homes of Taliban collaborators, and then the CIA would use a Reaper drone to blow up the building when they saw the target enter. Turned out a lot of people were volunteering to be CIA sources and then dropping the bomb-magnet chips outside the houses of tribal rivals who were not in the Taliban.
Ezra Klein and these other coddled fairies 🧚 are the ones crafting narratives from sources with zero credibility, but they don’t care. The anonymous source tells them what they want to hear, and they just roll with it.
And it is impossible-- if you care-- to realize that some don't care.
You are not alone in your experience. It wasn't Russiagate, as horriffic as it was, but the "pandemic" bioweapon that was the catalyst for my losing many friends. They had not just seen what I saw all during the Russia hoax, so when the bioweapon was released onto populations around the globe, I saw very early on that it was a massively coordinated event. I may not have been so skepitcal of it, had I not just seen the deep state trying to sabotage a sitting US president with the lying media doing their bidding. So, when I refused to get the jab, and after the first year, refused to wear a mask any longer, I lost many friends who throught I was selfish. My refusal was not because I wanted to be more comfortable and breathe the air like we are born to do or to not try to help alleviate a so-called pandemic, it was because I was refusing to enable or contribute to further tyrranical control of our country and our lives. It was so clear to me that it had nothing to do with public health.
So, I feel you pain. I lost my close friends, was frozen out by a Board of Directors I was on -literally, they would no longer answer my emails or talk to me. I moved clear across the country to live in a sensible red state and have had to start over in buiding a new life. It was well worth it though, because I do have new friendships, and I don't have to live a compartmentalized life where I cannot speak frankly in my own neighborhood.
It was all exceedingly painful, though. I'll never shake the memory of it off, but I have moved on and life has gotten better again. That's what I am leading to. The people we have lost, we have to let go of and move on. It sucks and never should have happened. None of us should ever have had to live through all we have lived through. If your lifelong friends abandoned you, it is their deficiency of character that let that happen. I predict you will gain new friends with much stronger character. God bless.
I think the pandemic response opened a lot of eyes as to the lies and overreach of the government and the media that weren’t previously opened during Trump’s tenure, unfortunately not until after the 2020 election. But the damage they wrought was extensive in terms of learning loss and isolation for children, loss of income for working class people, isolation of elderly from families, absolute attempts to destroy physicians who were treating patients with anything outside the “approved protocol” which likely led to increased mortality. Working in pediatrics it was quickly obvious that even the initial virus was not a threat to kids (other than the rare MISC) and the isolation itself was not good for mental health. Not to mention the idea that online school was never going to be as good as in person. Fortunately, where I live, in person school was an option in the fall of 2020, and by spring of 21, pretty much everyone was back in school. Mandatory masking stopped in late spring of 21, and sanity slowly returned.
You’re fortunate. This was not the case in CA where schools were closed for two years and the state of emergency that allowed our governor to function as a king, bypassing legislative approval for many things, persisted for three plus years.
Met a family that moved from CA to TX so their kids could go to in person school. Both parents worked, so online school didn’t really work.
Kids need to be in school. Online school doesn’t work for most kids.
Thank you for this. Godspeed!
It certainly wasn’t funny or something to be proud about. It affected our lives and our country at both the macro and micro levels.
The fact that we are discussing it here is just one of the many repercussions of lying and profiteering from the false information.
Boomerangs 🪃 can deliver great damage.
Have you seen the recent research done by the Univ of Zurich on Reddit? The LLMs (AI) proved to be significantly more successful at brainwashing than human shills. Your intelligent friends (& some of mine) are surely victims of sophisticated AI LLM systems (from foreign countries, our CIA, corporate lobbyists, etc.) in their social and preferred legacy media sources. Of course the legacy media isn't talking about this.
I could not relate to your experience more. It is even worse now. I could emotionally separate my feelings from ideas for a long time, but now the anger I feel is becoming too much.
I am feeling more fear than anger now. These people will not give up, and their attacks will become increasingly dangerous to our freedom. That is what is behind their projections of tyrany onto Trump.
The need to divide illustrates their desire to conquer. Those who say they want nothing to do with you ultimately want to conquer you.
Your handle, Skeptic, is a thought process everyone should adopt. The most powerful point of your disclosure: the friendship was indeed deep if it overcame the stigma of engaging in religious rituals of a religion that counters one’s own. It is truly telling how potent propaganda can be and a person’s need to protect itself from self-examination.
My version of that story is my Dad. And he IS a lawyer.
It’s been utterly bizarre watching a man who builds legal cases for a living completely unable to rationally approach the topic. He isn’t just dug in, his brain turns off when you bring it up.
If you showed me actual evidence Trump was involved with Putin, I would be angry at Trump. But if you show people like my Dad evidence that the whole thing was a fraud, they start vomiting angry nonsense and asserting things as fact that they just made up out of thin air until you go away.
I think Trump’s second landslide victory broke the spell in a lot of ways and its starting to get better, though.
Once they bought into the lies there was no way back; facing the humiliation for having been seduced, emotionally manipulated is not something most people are mature enough to do. The ego is too fragile.
Do your ex friends still suffer from TDS?
I don't know. They broke off the friendship.
I would resume it, but under the circumstances, I'd need an apology first. I don't think that will be forthcoming.
They will never apologize, never acknowledge any of the truth that has come out even in some of the mainstream media about the Russia hoax, the Fine People Hoax, Covid insanity, Fauci. I’ve lost all my old friends and much of my family. I’ve tried to engage respectfully and have been met with cruelty, smugness and “fact checking” from all their approved sources.
It has been evil—and I don’t use that word lightly—for the media to twist the minds of the public so relentlessly with zero regard for truth, yet consumers of this crap bear some responsibility. Most are educated and should be ashamed. The whole Covid “science” thing was extraordinary—how private schools were safe to be open but public schools were not, and mom and pop stores were dangerous germ vectors but Walmart was fine.
Been there. Just lying low with family and friends I value. I am clinging to the hope that if I don't push the issue, in time they will come to see what I have come to see.
It sucks there are so many victims of propaganda. We probably all are in at least whatever our one area that is our personal Achilles blind spot.
We don’t hate these hacks enough. The more absurd phenomenon is how many “smart” people still believe these “experts”. Many of the largest substacks are daily heroin drips of Trump derangement. Yet the numbers are suspicious. How much are they astroturfed? https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/trump-derangement-substack-correspondents-dinner
Self-siloed individuals have a shield that protects their vulnerable pride from accidently discovering they were wrong. My youngest brother, a SoCal prof, is too smart to see he is a patsy of media con-artists.
Even after it was well documented the Russia deal was a hoax, my brother said it was true and those that believed otherwise were all flat-earthers. Obviously two information sources to choose from.
My response was no more email or text conversation with political overtones. He shares Trump's birthday, just 8 years younger.
It's easy not to admire these contemptible hacks Matt.
"We don’t hate these hacks enough."
I do.
People fail to appreciate the radicalizing effect of the Russia narrative falling apart and Americans realizing that Russiagate was nothing more than Clinton oppo research laundered through legacy media and our national security apparatus. The detrimental impact on our civic health is incalculable.
And many still believe it, including most of my friends. It's become part of the fabric of their reality.
Actually I don't think they are capable of not believing it. To accept that it was wrong is to accept that they were in fact promulgating lies. Nobody wants to admit to that. Even to themselves (the easiest person to fool).
Like that quote attributed to Mark Twain: “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
Well, I changed. So I can't help thinking that others may be able to also.
Rachel Maddow is unrepentant. She loved trotting out the word "kompromat," it made her feel cool and smart.
Her constant use of a Russian word should make her suspect of being a Russian agent herself, by her own logic. But such a position would require logical consistency, and that's a luxury that the Defenders of Democracy cannot afford.
Arguably, Seth Rich died for helping to make sure the narrative fell apart.
I still want to see what's on his laptop
Right. It was Comey who caused Hillary to lose. It wasn’t her incessant lying about her own behavior. It wasn’t her disdain for deplorable Americans. It wasn’t her support for the Iraq invasion. We know so much more now, about the origins of the Steele Dossier, and how the intel services and Obama himself buried what they knew, even after the election. These scumbags are forever tarnished and nothing can change that.
It is worth mentioning how the Comey thing went down- Comey brought the potential for illegal activity by Clinton and then decided, as if he was the prosecutor (not essentially the chief of police), that it wasn't worth prosecuting! That is not how it works anywhere...so yeah, scum for sure across the board.
After the FBI offered 5 key Clinton staffers and lawyers immunity without requiring sworn testimony….something the FBI almost never does.
Those 5 all pled the fifth for their official FBI interviews that were not conducted until after immunity was secure.
Comey had his people tank their own investigation.
They let Cheryl Mills, Hillary's chief of staff at the State Department who helped her set up the server, act as her lawyer during the interview. That meant that a lot of what they did together was now privileged, and the FBI couldn't ask about it, aw shucks...
It really is something, their reality is that the free pass Comey gave in failing to prosecute Clinton after finding out about heretofore unknown classified information on her email server is what cost Clinton the election. Where are those classified documents that Clinton had, I wonder?
Meanwhile the FBI is looking for classified docs in Melania's underwear drawer. Totally not a double standard
It aggravates me more and more as I remember it all which is why I kept my first comment brief. I felt my blood pressure rising. It is not even the classified documents, it is the "what else" was she hiding on that server- my guess is a lot of stuff involving contributions to Clinton foundation or worse, "I want to thank Bill for his awesome speech (that we paid $250k for), looking forward to our upcoming meeting to discuss XYZ..." This is a woman who made $100k in the 80s on a $1000 investment in cattle futures after all. I am sure they took it up a notch in the big leagues. You don't get a house in Chappaqua on the President's pension.
Yup. The most unlikeable candidate for President since 1960 Richard Nixon.
Russiagate was almost a perfect truth test for the two parties.
Either Trump was a Russian asset, as the Democrats said.
Or it was a pack of lies, as the Republicans claimed.
Both could not be true.
I followed is as closely as I could, and it red pilled me.
Most of the elected Republicans said nary a word. Many had the facts, they knew, like McCain and Graham. I believe that made them complicit.
The idea of Trump being an agent of a foreign nation was down right stupid. I had no idea who he was when he announced, not being a TV watcher or a newspaper reader. He never showed up at all in my conservative circles. His take-down of the 16 others on the debate stage made him my guy - the thought of another McCain or Romney was hazardous to my well-being.
Neocons didn’t want a Republican president who wasn’t all in for more wars of choice.
Understand that it is very difficult for people to accept that they have been willing dupes. Even when they were.
Still I don’t think we as a society are required to coddle the delusional. They are still out there making a good living on TV.
Plenty of establishment GOP types wanted Trump to lose in 2016 - it was an "open" secret. As for the origin? America's alphabet agencies outsourced the smear to the Brits in 2015, according to the Brits:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia
As a former newsweekly editor, if I was Klein's editor now, I would have hauled him into my office and told him to correct his untrue -- and unethical -- statements publicly. You can't be a journalist and be slimy like that and pretend you didn't say what you did.
This speaks to the utter lack of honesty and ethics in corporate media like the NYT. No wonder readers' trust is at an all-time low. They earned it.
same—i was editor/publisher of a newsweekly in the 90s. no one *wanted* to lie back then. that’s not why we got into the business. there was talk of “advocacy journalism,” but that just meant announcing one’s viewpoint when covering something the reporter takes a stand on. but if reporters wanted to “take a stand” that went in op-ed, not news.
i think the entire profession is broken forever now, esp print, but broadcast too.
Yes, as an editor in the 90s myself, I preached to my staff -- and to anyone who would listen -- that advocacy was fine, objectivity was not. One had to be honest about one's viewpoint (research-based, of course) -- and fair to those who disagreed by interviewing them to make their argument as well.
Seems like the temptation to bend some rules in order to help a cause one 'knows' to be just eventually becomes too great. Hence the politicization, and corresponding forfeiture of trust, of so many institutions.
substack is subverted as The Free Press platforms these douchebags. How did a truth seeking alternative to WaPo, Vox, NYT and Bloomberg platform and hire editors and writers from outlets that have lied through their teeth. My guess is they now have investors they need to please. The horseshoe theory of independent media is it eventually becomes mainstream media.
Yes, dropped my sub to FP and went founding here at RN. Don't need to censor FP, just don't give them $$.
These cretins shouldn't be censored but should continue to be called out.
This article comes to us by way of a long established Substack which is not the Free Press.
Agreed. Ezra Klein kinda triggered my reaction to investor driven sites on substack, as he was platformed on TFP, along with dozens of other mainstream “Experts”.
You want sub Substack to start deplatforming and censoring people?
No, I believed TFP to be independent of the mainstream sources I had mentioned. Although I did cancel my subscription to TFP right away. I fell for bait and switch:-(
You aren't the first person I've seen make this observation.
Mark Twain noted, “If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
Who is shocked that the media lied? Our media has been Pravda for more than many decades. NY Times reporter Walter Duranty feared upsetting his Stalin supporters and told Americans that the Holodomor was not happening in the 1930s Ukraine. Duranty got a Pulitzer for lying to us.
Although there are still good journalists in this corrupt world, it often feels like no one cares or that justice does not prevail. Gareth Jones, who told the truth on the Ukraine famine story, died with seemingly no justice: “A Tale of Two Journalists: Walter Duranty and Gareth Jones” | National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide
The NY Times and Washington Post won Pulitzers for Russiagate. They have not returned their prizes. This award is completely discredited.
You have to admit that the Pulitzer Prize is as prestigious as a Nobel Peace Prize
To give it the respect it deserves, should call it the "Spewlitzer Prize." Has the advantage of the same pronunciation as Pulitzer.
Honk if you agree
Walter Duranty and his Pulitzer say hello
Gareth Jones a hero.
💯
That quote originated with Thomas Jefferson.
For sociopaths, facts are of interest only to the extent that they can be weaponized. The same can be said of lies.
The only thing that is relevant is whether they get the desired results.
Don’t forget a sociopath’s favorite phrase later.
“Mistakes were made.”
Matt, this might be the best article I've ever read on the collusion hoax.
I've always known the media is full of people out to 'get Trump'. But it's startling how dishonest and evil they really are.
They KNEW deep down the whole thing was a hoax, but they wanted to believe it so badly they made the choice to blast the story 24/7 for a couple of years.
And it worked. The Democrats trounced the GOP in the midterms, thereby ending the Trump presidency.
The public can't hate these people enough.
Yeah, Ben Smith and Ezra Klein are sleazy as hell. To commit the evils they have and then pretend to be above it all and smarter than the rest of us. They can go to Hell.
It's really true, it's not enough to say they're wrong or bad, they should just go to hell. They don't give a flying shit that their lies caused terrible damage to individual people like Carter Page for example
They have shown us who they are. Shame on us if we believe them.
In 8 years, the Obama Administration let Russia take Crimea from Ukraine, keep a large portion of Georgia, and send its mercenaries to Syria to prop up the Assad regime which then used nerve gas on its own people. The Obama Administration did absolutely nothing in response to any of this, except for mock Mitt Romney for even suggesting Russia may be a problem.
Meanwhile Hillary Clinton pressured Canada into selling Russia most of its Uranium. I don't think the public or the media ever fully appreciated the significance of that. Since 1992, neither Russia nor the US has been able to test its nuclear weapons stockpile. The US has spent billions of dollars developing a very sophisticated testing and maintenance program to ensure the reliability of its now very old stockpile. Russia lacks both the technical ability and resources to do that. Instead, Russia just periodically rebuilds the Plutonium cores and the rest of their warheads with new material. That way they don't have to test or worry about if the aging material still works. Doing that takes a lot of Uranium, which Russia didn't have until Hillary sold it to them.
In the four years Trump was in office, Russia did nothing except get a bunch of the Wagner Group slaughtered after they made the mistake of attacking US Marines and Army in Syria. Yet, Klein and Smith were convinced and still don't think it was unreasonable to think Trump was the Russian agent. These people are appalling.
For 10 years the Kiev regime murdered civilians for speaking Russian. The CIA established biological weapons labs in Ukraine ( starting in 2010). You still have Cold War Russophobia.
How is stating facts evidence of Russophobia?
Assad gassing his own people is just another hoax. Gray Zone has done significant coverage of said hoax.
It was not a hoax. The evidence was overwhelming.
That's precious. OK, you keep believing the US intelligence apparatus. They've never lied us into war before, so I'm sure they're being truthful now.
Yeah, because the Russians would never lie to you. That has never happened before. You just keep believing whatever confirms what you want to believe. Truth and reality as it is is not a good role for you.,
What I find odd is that there are still folks who remain fully bought in to the Russia hoax.
Was visiting with family a month ago, and some were still ruminating about it.
It was disconcerting.....
It's more prevalent than you can imagine. TDS is real.
I really can't stand the Republicans, by and large.
But I feel strongly that Ezra Klein and Rachael Maddow should get into their liberal lear jet, and fly away. Maybe make one stop on the way out at SFO , to pick up Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris.
I feel the same way. I became an independent last year after being a staunch Democrat for so many years.
It is just disgusting. So many other people feel the same way. Like...SO MANY...
I can handle a lot of things but I cannot accept someone lying to me.
What serving democrats do you admire ?
At this point, I would be hard pressed to come up with even one. Bernie, I suppose...I would have said Dick Durbin 3 years ago, but he betrayed his fealty to the colleges over the people in 2022...
But the party is so corrupted at this point, no matter what ones character/policies might be, just having a D next to your name is problematic, frankly.
I could say the same for the Republicans btw...don't get me wrong. Show me the guy who wants to both cut spending AND Tax the Rich, reduce the size of the federal government, protect our civil liberties, restore our privacy, greatly restrict the data gathering capabilities of big tech, and that is the guy I like. Something like an "Updated Eisenhower" maybe...LOL
Thomas Massie?
Yeah. He's not terrible. Rand Paul also possibly not bad.
You like "Bernie, I suppose" as a Democrat? Thought he was Ind.? Besides- that man is a tool...
He caucuses with the Dems, so...
Which shows he's dishonest and disingenuous...
Which shows he's dishonest and disingenuous...
I was a long-time journalist. I love journalism. But for the past 10 years or so, I have been reading news stories and saying to myself: "Clean-up on aisle seven." That is, I pay attention to the framing of information and not just the information. Too many national and world stories are not just about information but about a journalist putting a thumb on the scale. When the scale is not balanced, you get spillage and thus the mess journalism finds itself in today.
I have always contended that the Buzzfeed publication of the Steele Dossier was a significant moment in the unraveling we continue to see in legacy media today. You nailed it when you wrote:
"Looking back, though, that fringy status of Buzzfeed just helped complete a complex end-run around the safeguards against fake news."
The mess in journalism will continue as long as journalists who lead with their thumbs look back on the mess they've made with ambivalence.
I do an awful lot of that same "clean up on aisle 7" stuff too, no matter which outlet I'm reading. It's a good idea to visit a variety of different sources, because news stories can be presented in so many different ways, it can be challenging to get to the truth.
Russiagate is just one fling in the history of a serial cheater who keeps complaining to his buddies how how his wife needs to get counseling to deal with her trust issues.