65 Comments

It’s wildly undesirable to even post this on social media because of all the verbal abuse you would receive. Centrist, MSNBC “liberals” have a bubble at least as impermeable as Fox News addicts’. Having said that, Matt is doing important work. Thanks for that

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The last paragraph hit hard. Of all the Orwellian labeling that's gone on in the Trump era, to me the one which is most apt is the deliberate forgetfulness within the endless swirl of information (and the status of most of that information as false, misleading, or unimportant). We've been in many ways an amnesiac state for a long time, but it's ratcheted up to terrifying places. We have the collective cultural memory of children. And when it comes to people whose integrity used to be subject to some level of popular policing (journalists, pundits, politicians), they have no need to correct themselves or admit to falsehood, because everything marches on at a furious, whirlwind pace and no one knows where they are anymore. Information and interpretation enter into the world and then seem to vanish as we immediately go forth to the next thing.

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The straight in the eye bald faced lie is now considered a proper remedy for a pulitzer prize winning "journalist" to utilize when defending their award winning "work". How about those apples?

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I remember hearing media icons during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal admitting that the news had become entertainment rather than factual. Trump is also entertainment. Many of your commentators claim to be free market capitalists. Well ...surprise..surprise..media companies like making money. My only problem with your analysis is that you don’t include the right wing media. Aren’t Limbaugh,Breitbart,Fox,Glen Beck,Alex Jones etc. also the media? What do you think about the accuracy of their reporting?

As for Trump and the Russian story. I agree with you that Trump and family were probably not involved. Trump is too reckless and stupid to have been clued in by the Russians. The only problem is Manafort. I will never understand why he admits to giving internal polling info. to the Russians.Maybe you can explain this to me.Given how Facebook posts can be targeted to specific voters...maybe that’s it.

I ,and I guess you ,suspected all along that Trump resisted releasing his tax returns because they would show him to be insolvent. Truly wealthy people never brag about how much they’re worth. But a narcissist like a Trump would rather risk jail than admit he was broke. In my view “Uncle Donald” couldn’t run a hot dog stand on his own. Until he blew it with 6 bankruptcies,his daddy’s money kept him alive. And then came the Apprentice...Trump could only succeed as an entertainer. And..the beat goes on.

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45 Landslide

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I am not commenting on the main thesis of this post because there is nothing more to say. It is indisputably correct. I do want to comment on an aside in this story:

"Like many 'bombshells,' the Times tax story contains real information, including potentially real outrages, like bank fraud or deducting consulting fees paid to his daughter. The headline revelation is Trump as metaphor for American finance generally, showing the appearance of wealth resting atop absurd fictions, with monster debts rolled into the next ice age..."

First, I don't understand what the outrage would be from paying his daughter or anyone else consulting fees - whether for work they actually did or didn't. When you pay consulting fees and deduct them from corporate taxes, you 1099 the consultant who then pays taxes on the fees received. Given Ivanka's tax rate, this maneuver is highly likely to have resulted in more total taxes being paid. Second, please don't credit the NY Times with revealing a damn thing about Trump's debts. That has been publicly available information every single year of his presidency. This gets filed every year:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/storage.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/31221516/Trump-Donald-J.-2020Annual-278-1.pdf

His debts are listed in full on Form 278e. It begins on page 35. Are his debts "monstrous"? Hardly. His principal lenders are completely ordinary and mundane commercial mortgage and CMBS mezz lenders. Any first year RE analyst would take one look at these credit facilities and tell you from the interest rates alone, these are mid-tier leveraged assets, in no way indicative of monstrous debt. I have yet to see a reporter even compare these loans to the tax-assessed property value. I wonder if that's because it wouldn't further the narrative.

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This one too

For the better part of a century, most journalists understood there’s no such thing as objectivity. It was accepted that every decision, from the size and placement of headlines to the order of quotes to whether or not to cover a thing at all, reflects editorial opinion. That didn’t mean trying to get things right wasn’t a worthy aspirational goal, but it did mean we knew papers like the Times were mostly being silly when they marketed themselves as incorruptible arbiters of The One Truth.

Now the business has reversed course, acting like a gang of college freshmen who’ve just read Beyond Good and Evil for the first time. Objectivity is dead! There’s no truth! Everything is permitted! The cardinalate has gone from pompous overconfidence in its factual rectitude to a bizarre postmodernist pose where nothing matters, man, and truth is whatever we can get away with saying.

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Matt is a truth-teller!

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Who Cares right? Its exactly the point. No matter what the MSM says these days about Trump, most of his voters//fanboys won't believe it. He spoke of fake news, the MSM followed through and, well, posted fake news. The paper of record, how laughable it is now. How far the NY times has fallen. I would be disgusted if I met anyone from the NY times, where a decade ago, I would of been impressed. Even the skater punk turned YouTube reporter, Tim Pool, has more credibility then the NY times these days.

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This is a terrific analysis. I really wish you would do an abreviated version and make that public because there are so many people I'd like to forward it to.

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Matt has been wrestling with this the better part of his journalistic career. We are in the eye-ball and click bait era where the social media giants have gutted the ideal of a free press. The creators are now at the mercy of the curator and the massive advertising apparatus. That’s why Matt going direct to his audience is the best thing he’s done. Listen to his conversation with Sam Harris or Joe Rogan about this. I’m willing to support Matt because he’s not beholden to current media business model. Trump is right about alone thing—at least the Mew York Times is failing one this area.

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The Congress, of which Joe Biden was a member for 35+ years, writes the tax laws which we are compelled to follow. They have accommodated the lobbyists with thousands of tax avoidance measures and thus it is not surprising that Trump took advantage of those like 99.99% of the rest of the tax paying population.

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Here's the money shot of this piece..

As infuriating, disturbing, and ethically absent as Trump often appears to be, he’s sustained by his opposition being as unashamed to lie as he is, and being humorless, hectoring bores besides (witness Hannah-Jones, in the middle of the “true founding” double-down, insisting with a straight face that “truth is the goal” and “transparency and accountability are essential to a functioning democracy”). It’s the only possible thing that could give him legitimacy, which is starting to feel intentional. Either that, or the core of this is turf war: having snuck past the usual gatekeepers to the White House, Trump appropriated the reality-distorting power the political establishment reserved for itself. You don’t get to lie to the public, that’s our job! Hence the venom, which feels too intimate to be anything but close professional jealousy.

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Hey Matt-

Technical question-

I can't see the post, even thought it says subscribed. When I go to cancel my subscription, it says I have benefits through the end of the year.

I'm currently at a $40 subscription- could it be I need to do the $50 subscription plan to see it? (I also can't upgrade to that one for some reason.)

I know I'm not the only one with this issue, let us know what we need to do.

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As someone who was 100% on board with the Dossier and Russian collusion I was sure Trump's taxes would have shown that - he was hiding that. So to me that was the bombshell of the Times report. If it's there - they haven't released it yet. Although I will admit I did not read it. I have tuned it all out because wasn't it just seconds ago we were on "losers and suckers"? None of it has moved Trump's approval ratings in the least bit. The "Trump is bad" messages is only taking us so far.

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Trump has turned the media into an image of himself. I have to go outside the mainstream media to get honest reporting.

He has also made a portion of the left and media elite turn a blind eye to abuses on their side.

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