Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Their freedom requires your slavery.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

You are here: Home / This Is News Only to the Media

This Is News Only to the Media

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And yet they will ignore it:

Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.

***

And yet, from almost the moment that Trump won the White House, many mainstream journalists have been in denial about the impact of Comey’s letter. The article that led The New York Times’s website the morning after the election did not mention Comey or “FBI” even once — a bizarre development considering the dramatic headlines that the Times had given to the letter while the campaign was underway. Books on the campaign have treated Comey’s letter as an incidental factor, meanwhile. And even though Clinton herself has repeatedly brought up the letter — including in comments she made at an event in New York on Tuesday — many pundits have preferred to change the conversation when the letter comes up, waving it away instead of debating the merits of the case.

The motivation for this seems fairly clear: If Comey’s letter altered the outcome of the election, the media may have some responsibility for the result. The story dominated news coverage for the better part of a week, drowning out other headlines, whether they were negative for Clinton (such as the news about impending Obamacare premium hikes) or problematic for Trump (such as his alleged ties to Russia). And yet, the story didn’t have a punchline: Two days before the election, Comey disclosed that the emails hadn’t turned up anything new.

Fuck you Chris Cillizza.

Reader Interactions

102Comments

  4. 4.

    Timurid

    Comey’s performance at the hearing today did not exactly fill me with confidence.

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m so glad Cillizza left WaPo. The average IQ of the newsroom shot up 20 points when he dragged his tired-ass, aging frat boy shtick to CNN.

  7. 7.

    debbie

    It is absolute bullshit that Comey sent out a letter about possible emails without sending out a letter stating that Trump officials were comporting with known Russian spies. His attempt to dress it otherwise only makes his malefeasance worse.

  8. 8.

    TenguPhule

    @Timurid: Nausea, rage and loathing to the brim. I hope Adam is right and the people in FBI Natsec are a lot better then he is.

  9. 9.

    Corner Stone

    The motivation for this seems fairly clear: If Comey’s letter altered the outcome of the election, the media may have some responsibility for the result.

    Not only do they poo poo the Comey Letter as having any bearing on the outcome in order to shield themselves of any blame, they also all go back to HRC’s “Original Sin” of having an email server.

  10. 10.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    They don’t have to accept it, but they will certainly be yoked with it for the rest of their lives.

  12. 12.

    chopper

    @debbie:

    that’s the extra enraging thing. oh yeah, we’re investigating both campaigns but let’s go out of our way to only bring up one in public. fuck you, comey.

  14. 14.

    Patricia Kayden

    @rikyrah: The MSM made it clear that they hated Secretary Clinton’s guts so of course they’re not going to cover the reasons she lost. It would implicate their pro-Trump mania. I recall looking at empty podiums while MSNBC waited for Trump’s Nazi rallies to begin. I also remember Secretary Clinton giving speeches which weren’t widely covered.

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    @Timurid: Me neither. He’s a giant, puffy-eyed, sanctimonious dickhead. I hold out the slim hope that his ego will compel him to nail the Trump campaign to counter the narrative that he (Comey) threw the election. But our hopes shouldn’t have to rest on shit like that.

  16. 16.

    TenguPhule

    @Corner Stone: Which of course came from the Bengazhi Bullshit. Never forget, Republicans cut the funding and still managed to blame Clinton and Obama for it.

  17. 17.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    In more than one way, Comey’s like Trump. He may not be as bombasitic, but he won’t back down and he won’t admit to error.

  18. 18.

    Patricia Kayden

    @debbie: The theory I’ve seen is that Comey was more afraid of Republicans than he was of Democrats. Hence, the revelation about Secretary Clinton when he kept mum about the investigation into Trump’s connections with Russia.

  19. 19.

    smintheus

    “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation”

    The media also have not pointed out that Comey was lying. He didn’t know whether (a) those were actually additional emails as he insinuates (“learned of the existence of”), or (b) whether they were pertinent to anything, because the FBI had neither seen the emails nor even yet applied for a warrant to read them. Had Comey, or the news media, reported that Comey didn’t know even the few things he was pretending to know, a lot of the damage could have been avoided.

  20. 20.

    James Powell

    @TenguPhule:

    Not to mention his unjustified and unprofessional tirade in July when he announced no criminal charges. As the head of the FBI doing the investigation, all he should have said was there was no crime committed. But he delivered campaign material to Trump and the Republicans. I don’t understand why anyone would grant him the benefit of the doubt.

  23. 23.

    efgoldman

    @debbie:

    He may not be as bombasitic, but he won’t back down and he won’t admit to error.

    He is, of course, the last integridudinous, honesty, truthinessfull, man with honorability.

  25. 25.

    James Powell

    @TenguPhule:

    Which of course came from the Bengazhi Bullshit.

    And the Benghazi Bullshit, like the Emails Bullshit, the Clinton Foundation Bullshit, the Whitewater Bullshit, and the War on Gore Bullshit, was promoted and given mainstream legitimacy by the oh so liberal New York Times. Somebody really high up at that paper absolutely hates the Clintons and has since the early 90s. They’ve been promoting whatever bullshit the Republicans feed them for years.

    I would love to see their whole operation go down. We neither need nor benefit from a supposedly liberal paper of record. The NYT is and has been an enthusiastic collaborator in the Republican propaganda programs since Reagan. Let it die. We need something new.

  27. 27.

    Goku

    So. Any bets to how long it’ll be before N(R) comes in to tell us how Comey’s letter was a nothing burger and the DemocRATS need to fuck over women and minorities to chase people who will never vote for a Dem?

  31. 31.

    TenguPhule

    @James Powell:

    I don’t understand why anyone would grant him the benefit of the doubt.

    I believe we’re still required to in a criminal trial.

    For now.

  32. 32.

    Corner Stone

    Erin McPike has gone The Full Wingnut.
    Nobody go The Full Wingnut. It’s a bad look.

  35. 35.

    Goku

    @TenguPhule: He or she would never answer me about the Wilmer tax return issue. What does he have to hide? Doesn’t Wilmer believe in transparency? Nothing to hide, pony it up

  36. 36.

    TenguPhule

    @James Powell: The FNYT can still serve us one last noble service by being the first paper destroyed during Emperor Trump’s rise to power. Its no Alderaan, but a rallying cry is a rallying cry.

  39. 39.

    ruemara

    I rather wish to torch an entire sector of the 4th estate. I don’t recall being this mad over something that wasn’t personal.

  40. 40.

    TenguPhule

    @Corner Stone: Deadline for that is tomorrow. Last count I saw was only 20 solid & wavering nos and 46 undecideds.

    ETA: We need 22 Nos for bill kill

  41. 41.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I don’t think Scarborough even knows why he’s doing what he’s doing at this point, but I suspect (hope) a few dumbass Republican MoCs who see him on muted TVs in the mythic House gym think his voice is important

    Joe Scarborough
    That vote will also impact 100% of your district and your political future.
    Know all the facts before you vote.
    House Republicans, be smart.
    Be conservative and demand a CBO score before voting on a bill that will impact 1/6th of the economy.

    a lot of people on the cable elected are addicted to will be clucking and power-wagging about a CBO score

  42. 42.

    Villago Delenda Est

    My nym. Again and again.

    Wipe them out. All of them. Extra whuppin on Mrs. Greenspan and Chuckles the fucking Toddler.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Chad Pergram‏ @ ChadPergram 6 min
    Am told Hse GOP just a few votes shy on health care now but believe they can bring them across line in next few hours.

    I suspect everybody here has already called, some of use to multiple offices. Resist-bot will send faxes.

  48. 48.

    efgoldman

    @TenguPhule:

    The FNYT can still serve us one last noble service by being the first paper destroyed during Emperor Trump’s rise to power.

    In the real worlds where the rest of us live, the NYT is hugely profitable for its owners, and therefore provides a really nice paycheck to their minions. It’s not going anywhere

  50. 50.

    TenguPhule

    Prepare to be sick

    “I think it is really important that all of us understand the difference between policy and values,” the secretary of state, a former oil executive, said as part of what he described as an “overarching view” on Trump’s “America first” mantra, a phrase denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for its links to 1940s Nazi sympathiser.

    “Our values around freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated – those are our values. Those are not our policies.

    Real America über alles, über alles in der Welt!

    I’m ready to wake up from this nightmare any time now. Get me out of the Framework!

  51. 51.

    wjs

    Nate Silver is covering his ass, and rightly so. He is profoundly interested in being right, and the whole 2016 election blew up in his face as well as everyone else’s face. So, here you have a guy who knows numbers trying to figure out how he got it wrong in an honest and transparent way and the data keeps leading him back to the Comey letter. It’s pretty cut and dried at this point– the thumb was on the fucking scale and America lost. Silver wants to know why, and he’s going to tell people why and everyone predisposed to think his work was “intruding” on their knowledge and command of politics is having a shit fit about it.

    Comey’s name will forever be synonymous with handing a presidential election to the Republican Party. That’s his legacy, and the media’s legacy is that they enabled him to get away with it.

  53. 53.

    feebog

    I watched that entire block of testimony from Comey. To say he had to make a choice between a bad decision and a catastrophe is bullshit. He simply could have obtained the warrant, had his team go through the emails and drop it quietly. He said there were some indications that some of the emails were from the first three months following her confirmation and they did not have those. But he also said they were trying to determine “intent”. He already had years of emails and had determined there was no “intent”. What did he expect to find, an email from HRC to Huma saying “lets evade the government email system”? Come on.

  54. 54.

    TenguPhule

    @efgoldman:

    the NYT is hugely profitable for its owners

    Not lately. And definitely not after screwing the pooch on their own branding.

  56. 56.

    PsiFighter37

    @feebog: He’s a fucking moron. Comey thinks he is way smarter than he actually is.

    Bill Clinton really should’ve stayed off of Loretta Lynch’s plane in June. Both of them should have known that would be bad optics. They never meet, and Comey – literally – never utters a goddamn word about this case in public.

  57. 57.

    Quinerly

    Looks like the House has the votes. Voting tomorrow on repeal of Obamacare and their pos bill. MSNBC reporting.

  59. 59.

    Patricia Kayden

    @wjs:

    Comey’s name will forever be synonymous with handing a presidential election to the Republican Party. That’s his legacy, and the media’s legacy is that they enabled him to get away with it.

    I really don’t see why Comey would consider this a bad legacy though. He’s Republican. I gather that handing the election to the Republican Party was a plus for him. He certainly wasn’t going to do anything to help the Democratic Party win.

    @PsiFighter37: Isn’t that amazing that President Clinton’s misstep partially led to his wife’s loss. Lynch should have ran off the plane when she saw him coming. Sigh.

  60. 60.

    SatanicPanic

    Sucks not having a GOPer rep to call and yell at. I mean it doesn’t suck, but I really want someone to yell at.

  61. 61.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Quinerly: Damn. So sorry to hear that. Plus tomorrow, Trump signs an Executive Order legalizing anti-gay discrimination. It’s going to be a horrible day.

  62. 62.

    Quinerly

    @TenguPhule: @Patricia Kayden:
    MSNBC broke into Tweety reporting it. Tweety is still going along like he doesn’t know. Did I misunderstand? I was doing three different things and stopped to get to the room with the tv. Anyone else?

  63. 63.

    efgoldman

    @SatanicPanic:

    I really want someone to yell at.

    You can yell at me; I really don’t have anything better to do tonite except watch hockey.

  64. 64.

    efgoldman

    @Quinerly:

    Tweety is still going along like he doesn’t know.

    It’s likely Incoherent Shouty Asshole’s (I refuse to call him by the name of a beloved cartoon bird) show was pre-recorded.

  65. 65.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    IIRC there are three or four FL MoCs on the undecided list. Is DB influential, seen as smart by junior colleagues?

    Scott Wong‏ @ scottwongDC 3 min
    [email protected] GOPLeader says they have the votes on health, but Rep. @ MarioDB (R-FL) just emerged from Ryan’s office saying he was still UNDECIDED.

    Matt Fuller‏ @ MEPFuller 22 mi
    I keep looking at this whip list, trying to see how they get there.
    I think it’s still very tight for Republicans.

  66. 66.

    SatanicPanic

    @efgoldman: That’s very nice of you to offer to be my shoulder to yell at. Ok here goes:

    DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNN IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

  67. 67.

    Roger Moore

    @wjs:

    He is profoundly interested in being right, and the whole 2016 election blew up in his face as well as everyone else’s face.

    Actually, it blew up in his face much less than in the other polling aggregators’. He was always much more conservative in his win probability for Hillary than just about anyone else. He spent the last few weeks before the election saying it was not in the bag because it was still close enough for a swing to put the election within reach.

  68. 68.

    dmsilev

    @Quinerly:

    Looks like the House has the votes. Voting tomorrow on repeal of Obamacare and their pos bill. MSNBC reporting.

    Or they want people to think they have the votes and they’re running a bluff. Like what happened in March. Keep the pressure on wherever possible; this isn’t necessarily over.

  69. 69.

    Quinerly

    Ok, I didn’t misunderstand. CNN also reporting Thursday vote. Godddamn….tomorrow is brutal.

  70. 70.

    piratedan

    gotta admire the brass fucking balls on the GOP… I mean this guy went ahead and blew up the unspoken rule that the FBI stays out of politics and not only did this guy decide to blow up the Dems about the handling of classified material in a dubious fashion (per se), he decided, in his professional opinion that this was MORE important than the GOP candidate was associating with known foreign agents, mobsters and apparently colluding with them to work against his opponent as well as acting as a front for laundering dirty foreign money… yeah… given everything we SUSPECT about Trump, he thought Clinton’s was the “greater” threat to the Republic.

    So, as far as him maintaining his “integrity” and handling the current investigations properly… I’d just as soon either see his ass fired, if not prosecuted for aiding and abetting treason.

  71. 71.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Scarborough and Mika tongue bathed Trump’s behind during the election cycle so I can’t take him too seriously now. We all know why Republicans are not going to allow the CBO to score their atrocity of a “healthcare” bill.

  72. 72.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Dianne Feinstein nails it. Comey said he had to choose between very bad and catastrophe, and thus it was no choice. But he didn’t say what the catastrophe would have been. Somebody needs to ask him about that.

    The rumor is that there is a real hate-Clinton faction in the New York FBI office. The catastrophe may have been that they would have leaked the news about the Weiner laptop in a more damaging way than Comey did. I take that to mean much more damaging to Comey.

    This is why we need an independent investigation of the whole mess.

  77. 77.

    Mike J

    Last week, we learned that science fiction author William Gibson changed his next novel, Agency, after the outcome of last November’s election. We caught up with Gibson to chat about his upcoming book, and now we have our first look at the cover.

    The story takes place in the same world as Gibson’s 2014 novel The Peripheral, which is set in the near future in the 22nd century. Agency will take place on a similar format: one part is set in an alternate world where Hillary Clinton won the election, another in the 22nd century

    If you haven’t read The Peripheral you have been cheating yourself.

  80. 80.

    chopper

    @JMG:

    you know if it passes by like a few votes on the third goddamn attempt the media is still going to fawn over trump and his “negotiating skills”.

    like if it took three tries for O to barely get Obamacare over the finish line they’d be just laughing at him.

  81. 81.

    ruemara

    @Cheryl Rofer: Your take is my take. He said, or I think it was him, that the NY office was “Trump-land”. Which means they could “leak” and you could be hearing outright fabrications. And, yes, I do believe they are so compromised to lie, if they really thought to interfere in the elections. I took my neutrality very seriously as a government worker and all I did was turn on cameras for a local gov. These guys were and are law enforcement. They repulse me.

  84. 84.

    efgoldman

    @Quinerly:

    He’s usually live.

    I can’t believe he gives up a nice DC expense account dinner to do his shitty show

  85. 85.

    No Drought No More

    “The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election
    So why won’t the media admit as much”?

    That’s a good question Nate Silver asks. But forget “the media”. “The media” answers to no one. “The media” doesn’t seek out anyone’s vote. “The media” doesn’t take an oath to protect the country from all enemies both foreign and domestic.

    The same question is better asked of congressional democrats. They’re the ones that have chosen to let the FBI director’s treachery slide. They’re the ones that have chosen to ignore it altogether, as if it never happened.. By my lights, their attitude towards Comey having stabbed our democracy in the back is on par with their craven decision to turn a collective blind eye towards the Bush-Cheney plot to war.

  89. 89.

    MisterForkbeard

    @SatanicPanic: I’m pretty sure that anything they said would be immediately shat on by the media as “sore loser democrats making up shit and trying to lie and stir up the country”, the same way they’re doing to Hillary right now.

  90. 90.

    Quinerly

    @efgoldman:
    I don’t watch Matthews very much but when I have recently, I just assumed he was still live. Been without cable…actually any tv (and no WI-FI) since Thursday night. Binge listening in the background all day. Can’t believe they have the votes.

  94. 94.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @PsiFighter37: o

    Bill Clinton really should’ve stayed off of Loretta Lynch’s plane in June. Both of them should have known that would be bad optics. They never meet, and Comey – literally – never utters a goddamn word about this case in public.

    You may be right. You probably are. But godsdammitall, I don’t want to live in a world in which every spontaneous interaction, every spur-of-the-moment greeting, needs to be measured and evaluated based on the fucking perceived or potential optics. Even consummate politicians at some point are entitled to act for a few minutes without having to weigh the political consequences. Yeah, they “should have known.” Yeah, they “could have predicted.” Fuckit, they are human beings.

  95. 95.

    No Drought No More

    @SatanicPanic: I reasonably expected them to make an issue of Comey’s perfidy, as Al Franken last October vowed he would do after the election. But they inexcusably STFU about it instead. It’s too late now to do much good. After their months long of silence, it would sound like sour grapes.. But if the tables had been turned, do you doubt the republican party would have hesitated to demand Comey’s resignation? or keep demanding it until they got it? Still, better late than never. Comey is a crooked, king-shot cop, and there’s no excuse for them to treat him otherwise. There never was.

  97. 97.

    Turgidson

    @chopper:

    that’s the extra enraging thing. oh yeah, we’re investigating both campaigns but let’s go out of our way to only bring up one in public. fuck you, comey.

    That, alone, is bad enough.

    Add to that that the HRC investigation was about whether a fucking email server, which does not appear to have been hacked or compromised, had inappropriately housed a trivial amount of classified information (and I’ll say it again, I’d bet dollars to donuts that almost every State Department diplomat or relatively high-level staffer with the necessary clearances who used a Blackberry with regularity had a similar volume of inappropriate classified information on their device as was found in HRC’s emails)…while the Trump investigation was about whether the fucking campaign was openly colluding with a fucking hostile power to rig the FUCKING election…

    …and he thought it was imperative to immediately notify Congress (and he damn well knew, by extension, the media and voting public within minutes of Congress’ receipt) about some emails on fucking Anthony Weiner’s fucking laptop (which any idiot could have told him were almost certainly duplicates of shit they’d already reviewed when they cleared HRC the first time) in a letter so artfully vague that everyone on the planet was allowed to draw whatever the fuck conclusions they wanted from it…

    …but decided the Russia-trying-to-install-a-fucking-racist-dipshit-maybe–with-the-dipshit’s-active-assistance (which is kinda, well, you know…sorta like…treason) investigation had to be kept under wraps.

    I mean. How the fuck can he possibly sleep at night comfortable that he made the right decision on that one? Was he that afraid of Republicans saying mean things about him? Really? What a fucking clueless asshole.

  98. 98.

    Gvg

    @No Drought No More: last October the republicans already controlled congress and they calculated that they couldn’t get someone better to replace him through confirmation. They already hadn’t gotten a Supream court justice confirmed. It was certain they couldn’t get a good competant replacement. After the election, the situation is worse. I think the calculations were correct but boy does it make me mad. However it’s not the democrats in congresses fault, it’s the insane stupid voters and their treasonous GOP congress people from their gerrymander damn districts. Clear? Don’t blame the victims nor those who try to help. Blame the malicious.

  99. 99.

    Raoul

    Fuck you Chris Cillizza Dean P. Baquet.

    Cillizza is an absolute prick (and is proving it daily with his drooling over Ivanka). But it is Dean Baquet as Editor in Chief at the Times, and his class of enablers at other major papers and news channels, who were and remain the real problem in the press.

  101. 101.

    SWMBO

    You folks are naïve and innocent and pure. Also deluded. Comey’s reputation is not tarnished by this. It was made by this. He cock blocked Hillary and kept her out of the White House. He can write his own ticket after that.
    Trump is not going to replace Comey. Have you forgotten when Comey came to the WH after the inauguration? When he called Comey over? When Comey nearly pulled out his knee pads and worked the room? Comey gave Trump the keys to the WH and Treasury. He’s not going anywhere.
    Everyone keeps going on about the Rogue NY FBI office. That’s bullshit. They were doing exactly what Comey wanted. They dug up SOMETHING on HRC that brought her down. The Rogues bit was just kabuki. This was supervised.
    Comey wasn’t afraid of everyone but the Democrats. He was afraid of the Democrats. Especially if HRC won. He had been after her for years and finally brought her down. There would have been investigations if she had won. Because they needed something to LOCK HER UP with.
    You all are acting like Comey is independent and honorable and pure. This is bullshit. He’s a partisan hack who got lucky and isn’t going to be held accountable for what he did. Just like the media that fluffed his sorry ass isn’t going to be held accountable. I give you Dick Cheney and 43 as an example. They have NEVER been fully investigated and held accountable. And they never will.
    I weep for the future.

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