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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEzra Klein: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the logic of alternative facts
Donald Trump, Fox News, and the logic of alternative facts
The Nunes memo and the FBI texts gave Trump the alternative story he needed.
By Ezra Klein@ezraklein Feb 9, 2018, 11:40am EST
If youre a liberal, the past week in politics looked like a series of strange self-owns from the Fox News/Trumpist wing of the Republican Party.
First there was the memo from Rep. Devin Nunes, which Sean Hannity hyped would reveal a scandal worse than Watergate but proved a dud upon release. Instead of corroborating a conservative line that the case against President Donald Trump was politically motivated, it instead confirmed the New York Timess reporting that the FBIs inquiry began with Trump adviser George Papadopouloss loose talk.
Then there were new text messages between FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her lover Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who later served on, and was then fired from, Robert Muellers probe. Page and Strzoks past personal texts showed they hoped Trump would lose the election. The new set included a provocative line: Then-President Obama wants to know everything were doing, Page said.
Conservative reaction was instantaneous. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said the texts revealed Obamas personal involvement in the Clinton email scandal and the FBI investigation of it. House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said that it means the president [Obama] wants to know what theyre doing to stop Trump. Trump himself tweeted: NEW FBI TEXTS ARE BOMBSHELLS!
All of this proved wrong. As ThinkProgresss Judd Legum noted, the date of the texts September 2, 2016 was after the initial investigation into Clintons emails was closed and before the discovery of emails on Anthony Weiners laptop (which happened on September 28, 2016, and briefly led to the Clinton investigation being reopened). The Wall Street Journal then reported that the texts referred to preparation to brief Mr. Obama about Russian interference in that years election. That aligns with the public timeline: We know Obama confronted Vladimir Putin about Russias election meddling on September 4, during the September 2016 G20 meeting, so it makes sense that he was being briefed a few days before that.
Finally, Fox News dropped a report on Thursday showing that in March 2017, Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who has been helping lead the Intelligence Committees Russia investigation, texted with a Russian oligarch in order to get information on, and potentially meet with, Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous Russia dossier. It isnt clear what wrongdoing this is supposed to show its reasonable enough that a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee would have wanted to interview Steele, given that his work was influential but it elicited a predictable Trump tweet:
Link to tweet
Less predictable was Sen. Marco Rubios sharp response, accusing both Trump and Fox News of trying to spin a scandal out of nothing, and noting that Warner didnt get caught; hed told the Intelligence Committee exactly what he was doing:
Link to tweet
Fox News knew that Warner had disclosed the texts to the committee but didnt mention it until the seventh paragraph of the story, and didnt explain that Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chair of the Intelligence Committee, was aware of Warners efforts until the very end of the story.
One way of looking at this past week is as a failure for the conservative spin machine. All three stories crumbled upon contact with the barest scrutiny, embarrassing the outlets and politicians that credulously or cynically promoted them.
The other way of looking at it is as a stunning success, one that gave Trump and his defenders exactly what they wanted.
more...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/9/16991410/trump-fox-nunes-fbi-warner-texts
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