Press hysteria

I detested both of the candidates for president and declined to vote for either.

What I am hearing now reminds me a lot of the hysteria about Watergate when I was a student at UT. There, we had a burglary committed by some nutcases working for Nixon's re election and the press stirred up a firestorm of constitutional dimensions. When the dust settled Nixon was guilty of a coverup and driven from office. A couple of reporters for the Washington Post won Pulitzer prizes and got rich on their dauntless skills, etc.

When the dust settled some more and decades later, the dauntless reporters turned out to be the conduits for Mark Feld, a high ranking FBI agent who was mad at Nixon because he was not appointed to head the agency when Hoover died. Look it up, it did not get a lot of attention when Feld died a few years ago but the two reporters have since admitted he was the famous "Deep Throat"

All they did was follow up on grand jury testimony that Feld leaked to them illegally.

It was a palace coup.

Now we have an incompetent know nothing president who trips over his own johnson at every turn and boy, is it selling papers and driving the cable "news" ratings.

For all I know, Trump is a masterful russian plant bent on destroying the republic as opposed to the bumbling, crass loud mouthed New Yorker I see. But I would like to suggest to all the folks who are hyperventilating over the latest "revelations" that they might want to step back, regain their breath and wait and see who is behind the veil before they start talking about impeachment.

 

I far as I can tell, these are the purported "smoking guns" that so much airtime has been devoted to over the past 24 hours

 

I saw that Dan Rather was leading the charge and said this was bigger than Watergate. You know, the one guy we can trust on presidential scandals and whether they are bigger than Watergate. Why was he fired from CBS again?

 

It's a big nothing burger of regurgitated claims after the election. The past Trump team contacts with Russian operatives were already investigated and found no collaboration.

Nothing new and illegal has come to light, but Flynn's discovered talks with the Russian official and lying about it threw gas on the dying "Trump's in bed with Russia" fire.

Even Flynn's communications are being widely accepted as legal by experts except those witch-hunting in the MSM.

But after Flynn's gutting spilled blood in the water, the sharks are blasting away with old, dismissed claims masked as new evidence to paint a DT/Russian armageddon narrative.

 

When the grandfather of fake news himself says something like that, it is a jump the shark moment

 

Exactly JF. So the FBI clears Flynn of committing illegal actions. All the past contacts involving Trump aides were already cleared of illegal action.

So nothing illegal has ever occurred involving Trump and Russia, yet we're still bathing in new MSM hysteria he's in bed with Russia and it's worse than Watergate.

Drama queen witch hunting at its finest. The same old Lib slander playbook.

 

Even NPR confirms http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...of-flynns-calls-dont-show-criminal-wrongdoing

"A current U.S. intelligence official tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the transcripts of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, although the official noted that doesn't rule out the possibility of illegal actions.

The official also says that there are recordings as well as transcripts of the calls, and that the transcripts don't suggest Flynn was acting under orders in his conversations.....
* * *
The official also said there was "absolutely nothing" in the transcripts that suggests Flynn was acting under instructions "or that the trail leads higher.""​

 

I'm curious as to why "Watergate" is the measuring stick of any political scandal.
Aren't the Wikilieaks and computer hacks a much bigger deal? Didn't they give much more information, and were a result of unsecured computers?
If I am remembering correctly, Watergate was good, old timey spying, and Nixon just happened to be caught using a tape recorder. Am I the only one who thinks each party spies and has leaked info for years?

 

@Joe Fan "The Grandfather of Fake News" may truly be the best way to describe Dan Rather.

 

Is there really on one Democrat in the country that is principled enough to be willing to call out this nonsense?
And, of all people, it is Kucinich

 

This is the same old song and dance as both Wikileaks and HC's emails.

Complete MSM disregard for the illegal actions uncovered in the real Wikileaks emails, shift focus 100% to who was behind the hacking. Both sides of that situation deserved heavy investigation and press coverage. The hacking side was all they cared to cover.

HC committed several crimes storing and destroying classified emails, MSM switches full blame to Comey for reopening the investigation when new information appeared.

Now we have multiple, highly illegal crimes committed through leaks of classified information and interactions. Again MSM shifts 100% focus to the legal yet unappealing actions the criminal acts uncovered.

In each case they bury the multiple crimes committed by their team and witch-hunt a new narrative. All this does is deeper entrench those who detest the destructive Lib agenda and openly collaborating MSM.

 

Clever tweet -- flipped the script on them a bit
If the media attacks the tweet, they attack themselves
But, its a tough one to ignore

 

whoops

 

Agreed. Are you aware the Obama admin wiretrapped the Trump campaign in October?

 

It's a fair question. I think Watergate became the measuring stick by which all Republican scandals or alleged scandals are measured not because of the seriousness of it but because it was the Democrats' and media's ultimate takedown. I think one could easily argue that other scandals both before and after involved much worse conduct. However, the Democrats and media executed their playbook perfectly and reaped the maximum political benefit.

Leaks within the administration made it pretty easy to go after Nixon and to find smoking guns. The media had been hostile to Nixon since the Alger Hiss days of the 1950s, so they were very supportive of the Watergate probe and more than happy to help out. Furthermore, they were at the pinnacle of their political power - a virtual monopoly on print and broadcast media (no internet, no cable news to compete or contradict them) and had recently had the encumbrance of tort liability for libel and slander virtually eliminated in the New York Times v. Sullivan US Supreme Court case. Lots of political power and a lack of accountability created a perfect storm to mobilize the media for political action.

Republicans also handled it perfectly for the Democrats. They weren't particularly loyal to Nixon and didn't do much to stop the investigation, and once things started to look bad, they threw him under the bus. Despite that, the media helped Democrats taint the entire Republican Party with the Watergate scandal, even though they had nothing to do with it. The result is that Democrats picked up 48 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate in the 1974 elections, which pushed them over the 2/3 mark in the House and to the 60 mark in the Senate. And of course, the GOP lost the 1976 election as well.

So if you're a Democrat, you're going to do everything you can to compare every Republican act of misconduct to Watergate, because you want to replicate Watergate. And why wouldn't you? It could not have gone much better for them.

 

I don't watch much political TV anymore - mostly because Mrs. Deez doesn't care about politics. However, one thing I've noticed in what I've read in mainstream media articles is that there is a clear double standard in priorities. During the HRC e-mail fiasco, emphasis was placed primarily on how the e-mails were acquired. Who were the leakers? Did the Russian government hack the e-mails? Very little emphasis was placed on the contents of the e-mails. Typical of that was the John Podesta interview I heard on Meet the Press. Chuck Todd didn't ask a single question about the contents of the e-mails - not one. It was all about who hacked his e-mail account.

In the Flynn fiasco, the contents of the leaks is virtually all that's being talked about - what he said to the Russians, etc. There's virtually no issue being made of how and why his conversation was monitored or how it was made public. It was a complete 180 degree reversal from the handling of the HRC e-mail hack/leak.

Like I said in the other thread, I think Trump was right to fire Flynn. However, the leaking of the discussion is very worrisome. If government insiders who aren't accountable are using their power for political purposes, that's a serious problem - more serious than what Flynn even allegedly did.

 

Here is article and 4m video rundown of what Obama is doing to oppose Trump and protect his legacy by New York Post writer Paul Sperry -- worth a look

http://nypost.com/2017/02/11/how-obama-is-scheming-to-sabotage-trumps-presidency/