Wow. Jeffrey Toobin says, ‘I regret my role’ in false equivalence coverage of HRC during the 2016 campaign. https://t.co/mRJOkzzlGL Doesn't happen often.
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) January 29, 2018
So long as President Trump continues disgracing the Oval Office, thoughtful people will probe their own role in helping him get there.
Such appeared to be the motivation behind a mea culpa issued by CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on comedian Larry Wilmore’s “Black on the Air” podcast. In a discussion of presidential politics, Wilmore argued that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, was the victim of a “coordinated attack” coming from Republicans. “Benghazi was … the expression of that attack. In fact, what’s his name, was it [former Rep. Jason] Chaffetz who actually kind of agreed that that’s what they were doing, was weakening her as a candidate.” (Wilmore may have been referring to Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who said in 2015, ““Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”)…
“And I hold myself somewhat responsible for that,” continued Toobin, a steady presence on CNN since 2002. “I think there was a lot of false equivalence in the 2016 campaign. That every time we said something, pointed out something about Donald Trump — whether it was his business interests, or grab ’em by the p–––y, we felt like, ‘Oh, we gotta, like, talk about — we gotta say something bad about Hillary.’ And I think it led to a sense of false equivalence that was misleading, and I regret my role in doing that.”…
I would really, really like to believe Toobin’s confession was the first sign that the “savvy” journalists are panicking about the ham-handed half-wittery of Trump’s enablers and sidling towards the exits. But I don’t think he spends enough time on what Calvin Trillin calls “the Sabbathday Gasbag circuit” to qualify as a leading indicator, unfortunately.
Jeffrey Toobin may be the only honest man at CNN. Yeah, I said it. https://t.co/g7OQSY0qWg
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) January 29, 2018
opiejeanne
Not ready to kiss and make up.
Elizabelle
Waiting on the Fuck the Fucking Vichy New York Times to have their moment.
Not linking, but this morning they have Clinton “reporter/derangement cheerleader” Amy Chozick tut-tutting. First time I have seen this weasel’s byline in quite a while.
A soapbox, I tell you. Look at what that Clinton witch did.
PS: Amy: get a fucking clue. It is not only Democrats who have Trump in their sights. It’s pretty much the whole advanced world that is not fascistic. Get out more, darling.
Ohio Mom
I don’t have anything pertinent to say except I hate waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep.
Van Buren
Ah, well, I’m sure the MSM has learned their lesson, and in 2020 the Democratic candidate won’t have shit flung at them on a weekly basis.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Jill Stein is going to do a rebuttal to the SOTU.
I’m actually going to watch that for the laughs.
I found a fun way to needle Bernouts. I tell them that I’m voting for Stein in 2020 because she’s the only true progressive. The response is priceless: they tell me I will be wasting my vote if I go 3rd party and it will only help drumpf. HA!
GregMulka
@Van Buren:
It’s possible. But only because they’ll still be flinging shit at the 2016 candidate.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
Betty Cracker
I get the necessity of a learning curve for the political media, I really do: Their previous experience did not adequately prepare them to cover a buffoonish demagogue who lies so shamelessly. They thought the notion of his actually becoming president was absurd and so discounted the possibility — most of us did! But at some point you have to make adjustments to new realities so you can do your goddamned job. To this day, too many in the media haven’t. Glad Toobin said his piece. May it be a clue-by-four upside other Beltway media noggins.
Betty Cracker
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Is Stein streaming hers on social media like Sanders?
RandomMonster
When Toobin says it on CNN I’ll decide if I want to believe him or be impressed. Saying it on a podcast? Way to man up dickless.
JCJ
My wife likes to watch local news. I am surprised because I am frequently pausing the TV to tell her how awful the coverage is. She realizes it herself but is able to stay calm. I rage. I am glad Tobin has said this, but then what? CNN will keep bringing on white supremacists or their supporters and normalize them.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: Trump should be needled by anyone who considers themselves to be a decent human being. He has more than earned the scorn and mockery to which he has been subjected.
I didn’t think we could have a President worse than Bush but here we are.
Elizabelle
@Patricia Kayden: I will have to send Alain some of the Trump-related magazine covers I have seen. Germany is well aware of his danger and lack of qualifications.
And all the “can he turn it around at the SOTU” reporting crap? Spare me.
chris
I’d be a lot more impressed if Toobin had spoken on a network show instead of a podcast. Hope someone makes him do it.
Leah McElrath is in complete despair, I’m not ready for that. Yet. I believe in y’all.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Betty Cracker: Stein is doing it on the green party web site. She’s calling it a GreenStream.
Holy cow! I learning for the first time Sanders is doing a SOTU response. Oh gawd.
WereBear
Yeah, that was bad enough. But like an early exposure to a virus, it also created the early forms of the Resistance.
Steve in the ATL
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
I hope both people who watch it will realize what a Russian clown she is.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
So Sanders did a SOTU response last year, as well.
it’s not a speech as we would think of one. It was an endless laundry list of grievances. He read it off a teleprompter, while sitting down, without an audience, and it left him completely stilted.
Well, atleast he didn’t use a bullhorn.
Kay
Just the periodic reminder that it’s still going though, this campaign, ongoing:
Trump and Republicans are worse than they were in the campaign, which is not all that surprising, since now they have (nearly) unchecked power. Smearing Clinton was a political problem for Clinton and debates about journalistic integrity during campaigns are kind of interesting. BUT. Now we have a much bigger problem Now they have actual power, which they are using more and more aggressively to obstruct investigations and stay in power.
Going along until they had unchecked power was… not good. In hindsight.
Apologies are nice but timing really is everything. The learning curve wasn’t fast enough to be of much use to anyone.
It’s bad when the President and his Party are working as hard as they can to obstruct investigations into the President. That’s worse than when they (successfully) played political media during the campaign. There were and are real consequences for this failure and they’re not just continuing, they’re intensifying.
Robert Mueller shouldn’t be the only check on Donald Trump, and he is. Trump himself is worse than he was during the campaign and Republicans have (now, with the passage of the tax bill) dropped all opposition to him and oversight over him. It’s still getting worse.
Betty Cracker
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I’m just grateful the networks aren’t broadcasting Sanders’ rebuttal as the official Democratic Party response.
AxelFoley
@Elizabelle:
Well, Amy, someone has to stand up Trump, since GOPers in Congress are abdicating their responsibilities in providing checks and balances and media assholes like you carry water for that orange shitgibbon. I’m glad our celebrities have taken up the challenge.
On, and fuck Toobin, too.
And fuck Bernie and Jill, while I’m at it.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Julian Assange accidentally contacted a fake twitter account posing as Sean Hannity this weekend and tried to pass along negative information on Mark Warner (Dem Senator on the Intel Committee)
This has to be coming from the Russians. If the WH or RNC wanted to pass along negative material to their propaganda arm they wouldn’t need an intermediary.
It’s brazen how Putin and Drumpf/RNC are still working hand-in-glove.
Baud
Now I’m wondering if I should do a response to the SOTU.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Might do a post on the languishing sanctions later today if I have time and someone more competent in international affairs (i.e., anyone else!) doesn’t get to it first. Those sanctions passed in the Senate by something like 95-5 last summer and were heralded as a surprising check on Trump. He signed it under duress at the last possible moment, complaining all the while.
And now the decimated State Dept., led by a recipient of Putin’s “Order of Friendship,” says the mere threat was enough to stop Russian interference in our election? What a load of horse shit. It’s beyond outrageous.
Kay
Also, in the interest of mea culpas, which are really too late anyway but I suppose conscience-cleansing, the Benghazi hysteria was promoted and “mainstreamed” by Jake Tapper. The NYTimes gets the email hysteria- that’s all on them, but Benghazi is all Jake Tapper. He did the interview where Susan Rice recited diplomatic boilerplate which he turned into evidence of wrongdoing and the scoop of the century. There’s nothing IN that Tapper interview. CNN flogged it for months.
They never had jack shit with Benghazi. Nothing. They had nothing. Not only that, they never found anything. They bet they WOULD find something and they covered it exactly as if they HAD found something but in fact, they never did.
Baud
@Baud:
Here is my response to the SOTU.
https://youtu.be/pDmGhethEoQ
AxelFoley
@Baud:
Do eeeeit!!!
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Right. That happens a lot. “See! It’s functioning! It’s not a complete breakdown! Checks ‘n balances!”
Then it turns out to be Trump lying again and it gets worse. Again. How many times are they going to give him the benefit of the doubt? He lies. He’s a liar. The people who work for him are liars. Their promises are worthless.
I wonder if they’ll wait until after the midterms to report on Russian interference in the midterms like they did with the presidential. It doesn’t matter if they report it after the election! It’s useless to us. There can be “too late”. After the election is “too late”. Telling us the day after the election is not the same as telling us the day before. One is timely and useful and the other is not.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Kelly = Martin Bormann
Kay
Jeffrey Toobin is a pundit so this doesn’t apply to him, but maybe instead of waiting until after the midterms to see if there was Russian interference in the midterms they could look at that now. There’s a window. Six months after the midterms is not good enough. That’s a failure.
mai naem mobile
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: why isn’t Twitter or the IC doing this crap instead of some random guy on twitter who just happens to have a fake twitter Sean Hannity account? Where’s the Democrats’ legit version of Wikileaks? It just seems we are sitting around doing shut while the GOP and the Russians are destroying the country with disinformation.
WereBear
I admit I am somewhat enjoying Trump flopping about, bellowing stuff like “What is this ‘law’ stuff I keep hearing? What you do you mean I can’t do it? Why can’t I fire them?”
He thought he was being crowned King, no doubt.
Kay
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Kelly was one of the institutional checks on Trump. Supposedly. So that went well.
“See? It works! It’s not failing!”
I picture this as a series of nets that we’re falling thru in descending order. We’re nowhere near bottom yet, but the pace has picked up since Trump paid them off with the tax giveaway.
Waspuppet
@WereBear: Who could have predicted that giving the presidency to someone who’s never had a real job before and has never demonstrated any particular affection for this country might turn out badly?
Well, the liberals did, but ew liberals amirite?
And one other thing: Toobin couldn’t remember whether it was Chaffetz or McCarthy? HOW much does he get paid to follow American politics again?!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Betty Cracker: I’m not optimistic…listen to Maura Liasson’s segment on NPR this morning. It is a perfection of false equivalency both sideserism. For example… neither side can agree on whether the climate is warming or crime rates have dropped. No mention that one side believes THE TRUTH and the other is spouting made up BS, because that would mean one side is more to blame than the other.
O. Felix Culpa
Good morning! Satby sends her greetings from Thailand, where she is frolicking with elephants. I’d provide a link to a happy elephant picture but lack the skillz and time. Must leave soon to gambol with goats.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.)
You had a post up at 1:00, and now this one at 4:30. You have a lot of these middle-of-the-night posts. I know it isn’t my business, but when do you sleep?
rikyrah
@Ohio Mom:
Me too
debbie
Toobin’s full of shit until he drops the “somewhat” from his confession.
debbie
@WereBear:
Even better, he never thought there would be any consequences for spewing bile for eight years. Suck on the Laws of the Universe, you fat fucker.
Quinerly
@Baud: Poco has his response ready.? He has been working on it between hikes on Santa Ana Pueblo lands and naps.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker:
Oh God yes!
SiubhanDuinne
@Waspuppet:
That was apparently Wilmore, not Toobin. I’m more inclined to give him a pass.
Luthe
If Toobin really wants to make it up to the American people, he can call out all of Trump’s lies and the media’s bullshit up through the mid-terms and carry water for every Dem running. Maybe then he will be worthy of forgiveness.
Scotian
Toobin’s mea culpa is far Too little, far Too late, and far Too self serving for me. It was clear within the first year of the Benghazi incident that the GOP controlled Congress was using it to attack in any and all ways Obama and especially HRC. The referral to the FBI was from said GOP controlled committees. The LEAKING which was RAMPANT came from GOP controlled committees. Yet how much focus was there on that part of the story? Virtual nil, while “But her emailz!!!” and “THE OPTICS!!!” were a constant refrain and subject for analysis, including as I recall multiple multiple times from TOOBIN!
Sorry, but the so called real fact based press in the USA, not least CNN domestic, owns this problem and has yet to show a willingness to accept it let alone own it and deal with it so it does not happen again. Toobin can take his feeble attempt at such and once he gets his compatriots on board and the network itself then it might be worth something, but until then?
Fuck him, the horse he rode in on and flogged to death (aka HRC’s Emailz) and those that employed him in that process. It would be one thing (still a bad thing, don’t get me wrong, but it would be an internal issue, and not the global threat it turned out to be) if this only caused a domestic nightmare for Americans, but no, it actually created a massive destabilization of the world order and especially the free world’s ability to defend itself.
Thanks, Toobin et al.
manyakitty
@Baud: Yes! At least you’d be interesting.
Ben Cisco
Sounds to me like he looked up and (finally) smelled the torches. Nothing motivates quite like trying to keep one’s head attached.
No Drought No More
Fuck Toobin and his media ilk. Both he, they, and most importantly, the corporations that sign his paycheck knew perfectly well what he was doing all along. He’s a bullshit artist. It’s why he got his job in the first place.
KickBoxBanana
Constantly amazed at how people on the left are willing to forgive and forget at the drop of a hat. So now you all think J Rubin and Toobin are your bros now? Lol. Anyone who believes that for one second is an idiot.
Steve in the ATL
@opiejeanne:
That’s what she said!
Uh, sorry. I’m confused by the time change—is it Balloon Juice After Dark or not?
Boatboy_srq
Dog catches car again. Tonbun iS merely chagrined that in defeating the Democrat, the GOTea empowered the deplorable boorish basket case.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Too funny! I had never seen that movie. I love the “thank you” at the end.
JustRuss
Re Toobin, call me cynical but I’m not expecting much. Recall how badly our press got played during the run up to Iraq 2, yet there was barely any fallout. At least they did eventually turn on Bush, so there’s hope they may start calling out Trump’s more egregious behavior. But once Trump is gone it will be back to business as usual. Corporate media loves Republicans, who would have guessed?
kindness
Toobin is just afraid. He’s afraid that the way things are going, the Trump Regime will go full out Gestapo in order to continue to cling to power. And the reverberations of it will be some good (and some bad) people will be put up against the wall. I hope that is hyperbole but it isn’t as far fetched as the idea might once have been.
ChrisGrrr
@Luthe: Yup. Far too little, far too late. Way too many people are being hurt and will be hurt by the minority “in power.” The national press profitmongers and compromised legislators and oh-so-righteous white evangelicals are not the only ones sharing the blame. People with integrity all over the world will be working to correct the acts and omissions of our current Federal “government” for many decades.
Dmbeaster
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: lol lol lol lol lol