That tweet pretty much encapsulates what I think is happening here with Barr. He’s telling Trump to STFU and let him cover up Trump’s crimes on his own terms. But Trump won’t shut up, and, frankly, why should he? He got away with it before and he will again, as long as Republicans have enough votes in the Senate, which they always will have.
Also, the Times is hopelessly compromised by their bitter clinging to the notion that there will be some decent person who Trump hires that will finally turn things around. Not gonna happen.
Update: NPR has the same problem as the Times:
Cheryl Rofer
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Cheryl Rofer: The former editor of the Buffalo News, as usual, sums it up perfectly.
rp
I suppose an extremely charitable reading of the NYTimes is that they know what’s going on and are amplifying the message that Barr is challenging Trump in order to piss him off. I don’t actually think that’s what the Times is doing, but it could have that effect.
The other issue here is that the MSM might be dumb or compromised enough to fall for the kabuki, but the other intended audiences, the DOJ and the DC legal community, aren’t that stupid.
jeffreyw
@Cheryl Rofer: They are stage hands in the big show and the show must go on.
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer:
I say “obstruct” you say “justice.”
OzarkHillbilly
@rp: If that was their intent they should front page a new Barr story every day from now until trump finally cans him for stealing the limelight that rightfully belongs to trump.
Chris Johnson
Another possibility is this: Trump is crumbling by the day. All he has to do is sit tight and do what he’s told and the Russian masters will try to give him a ‘re-election’, lots of the MAGATs are satisfied, they’re all ready to cheat if he just doesn’t screw it up!
And he can’t stop. He’s going to wreck things for them because he cannot stop throwing his weight around and making it completely obvious that everything is completely broken.
If Barr, McConnell, and the NYT are all trying to tell him to chill, I read that as a trifecta of Russian agents desperately trying to keep things in check. Just add Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard to get the whole collection! And they’re not saying keep going: they’re saying, for the love of god STOP. You can read it as kabuki theater, or you can read it as ‘stop screwing this up for us!’
Hildebrand
What surprises me is that anyone is still surprised that the NYT and NPR and other similar outlets hold out hope that someone in the Trump orbit will turn out to be a human being capable of wanting to hold Trump accountable for his criminality. Of course they hold out hope, its called being a human being. We want someone, anyone, to stand up to the idiot-in-chief. They are desperate to believe that someone, anyone, will find a way to rein in the asshole. They keep Charlie Browning every situation because they can’t not.
Because if that’s not the case, then they are simply embarrassed that their fellow aristocrat won’t stop saying the quiet parts out loud, which may eventually tip off the hoi polloi to their collective knavery.
snoey
This bit from Barr is prime weaselspeak:
“impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors and the department that we’re doing our work with integrity”
Lying with a straight face is hard – give me some help here.
jimmiraybob
Yeah.
Remember when that Don Vito Corleone dude used to all the time be tweeting about who he’s having whacked and why he’s having them whacked and why whacking his enemies is a good thing? And his top whack guy gave that interview saying that all his boss’s tweeting about whacking was making his job impossible?
Good times.
A Ghost To Most
Once again, since some are slow learners: FTFNYT.
Crashman06
@rp: They’re still desperately trying to pretend like things are normal. That and, I guess, they just flat out worship power and the people who wield it.
Frankensteinbeck
Barr is performing kabuki. Trump is not. He’s not disciplined enough. How mad he actually is about this I don’t know, as the only thing I’ve seen is a form “No, Trump isn’t spitting foam mad that anyone would dare contradict him on TV! What are you talking about???” letter from his staff.
An interesting possibility did occur to me. I don’t think it’s what’s happening, but it’s worth considering: Trump is the archetype Bad Boss. He’s been in rage mode since Barr was hired. It’s possible that Barr is increasingly chafing that he’s given Trump the most skilled and dedicated sycophancy that Trump has ever gotten, and all he gets for it is snarling and assholery.
Betty Cracker
Trump already flipped Barr off with both middle fingers this morning:
Doesn’t matter if it was a real or staged act of defiance. It can’t be allowed to stand when the person the whole kabuki is designed to protect is an incontinent, sociopathic baboon who won’t cooperate with his own consiglieri.
Just think about it: if Trump were capable of just keeping his big fat yap shut for five fucking minutes, there would have been no Mueller investigation or impeachment trial. He’ll pick at this scab too. He can’t stop himself.
This must drive minions like Barr insane. Or at least, I hope it does. The inconvenience of coping with their man-baby’s self-destructive urges is likely the only consequence they’ll ever face.
Mathguy
@Hildebrand: You know that your second paragraph is reality, not the first.
bbleh
NPR has the same problem as the Times
It’s not at all clear to me that they have a “problem.” I think what they have instead is a business strategy aimed at their target demographic, i.e., the college-educated upper-middle and upper classes, who are extremely wallet-conscious and therefore inclined to Republican — or at best corporatist Democratic — economic policies, and who are most concerned about not rocking the boat. It’s therefore important for the Times and NPR to do what they can to keep things steady on — keep Trump from going too far off the deep end, torpedo the candidacies of Sanders and Warren, etc. — and in any case to make it appear that things are steady on. Respectable and soothing, sort of like Episcopalian Christianity or Conservative Judaism.
MattF
Given that Barr did the dirty on Stone’s sentencing before complaining about Trump’s tweets, I don’t see how anyone who posseses a cerebral cortex can miss the message.
Salty Sam
Fuck NPR
PenAndKey
This, a thousand times over. The NYT and NPR aren’t naive or pining for some mythical “noble statesman”. They’re in the business of protecting their donors and owners interests. It’s been obvious, for years, that those interests align with the GOP and they’re not bystanders in the destruction of our fourth estate, they’re willing accomplices. Our mistake is in pretending they’re any better than the GOP.
Why else do you think the common trope about a Democratic political aspirant being torn down for some minor quibble while their GOP opponent does far worse without a peep happens so consistently?
James E Powell
The NYT didn’t fall for a con, they did what they always do: protect & promote Trump whenever possible. Same with NPR. The repeated complaints that they are making mistakes or “don’t know how to deal with Trump” are just bullshit. They know exactly what they are doing. The helped put him in the White House because he’s good for business and good for the ruling class. They want to keep him there.
Four more years of Trump & McConnell will create a supreme court and federal judiciary that will form a Federalist Society wall against progressive legislation that will last 40 – 50 years.
Chris Johnson
That’s another thing that I find hopeful in a sense.
Trump is no longer capable of distinguishing the people trying to help him, from his enemies. He’s completely round the bend, with a Twitter, ruining all their well-laid evil plans.
And they try to caution him, and he gets madder and blames THEM.
*fingertip-kiss* karma!
David Fud
I have come to the conclusion that our experiments with new paradigms in news has broken the gatekeeping aspects of the news. It allowed righteous marginalized voices to be amplified, but it also removed those same gate keepers that previously kept out marginalized authoritarian voices.
Centrism, with all of its ills, is dead in the broader media landscape. The consensus of centrism did keep a lid on a lot of controversial things for a long time. We like to make fun of hot takes and contrarian views, but that seems to be winning dollars in the war for clicks. The fight (which draws lots of eyeballs, because of tribalism) is on between the authoritarian right and what they view as the extreme left. Unfortunately for us, the “extreme left” is everyone to their left.
In the case of Barr, it seems to me that this is being reported by the old centrist reporters that take things at face value when people in positions of power speak, reporting it as factual. The less sophisticated reporters will never learn that their “objectivism” is being used to put a velvet cover on authoritarians. The more sophisticated reporters know, but know they need clicks to keep working in the business.
Until we obtain a new societal consensus, we are going to experience a fight to redefine the center. The authoritarians won the first round, and it doesn’t look pretty. I have hope for the next election to set things straight, but there is a lot to set straight for the next administration.
/media critic
BR
@James E Powell:
Maybe this is the one small thing the Berners will be good at if Bernie gets the nomination: calling and shouting at NYT, NPR, and other outlets that publish this sort of nonsense.
Chip Daniels
@Chris Johnson:
For Trump the reality show star, power isn’t his goal. Being seen as having power is the real goal. Being rich isn’t important, but being seen as rich is.
So it isn’t enough to have the AG act as your capo. The world must see, and be told openly, that the AG is your capo.
O. Felix Culpa
schrodingers_cat captured this game perfectly in Cheryl Rofer’s post about this yesterday:
You pretend to hit me and I pretend to cry.
Chip Daniels
@PenAndKey:
I think the NT and NPR editors and writers fail to see any difference between the “noble statesman” and their own economic interests.
I think they really envision a Good World as one where they are comfortable and secure and led by noble statesmen, and the rest of the world just sort of grins and continues shining their shoes.
Chris Johnson
@Chip Daniels: …and when the important thing is that you have a team of hoodlums who are going to wreck your opponents and the American political system if only you will SHUT UP and let them do it without drawing too much attention…
He was always their big problem and lucked out thus far, but now he’s their biggest problem. It’s like a death-wish. The guy WILL destroy everything he touched, apparently including his own Russian conspirators.
Just Chuck
@David Fud: The new paradigm of news: “Truth is whatever gets the most clicks.”
Chyron HR
@BR:
When the “left” jerks off to pictures of guillotines they’re not fantasizing about beheading Republicans or anyone aligned with Republicans.
James E Powell
@BR:
How come he’s not doing it now? How come he hasn’t been doing it for years? I’m going to make the inference that he doesn’t want to.
You know who could have real impact? The liberals who continue to subscribe to the NYT and support NPR.
The Moar You Know
@bbleh: oooooh nice. You nailed it in one sentence. That’s exactly what’s going on here.
Just Chuck
@Chris Johnson:
If not now, then during the counterintelligence investigations that will most certainly happen post-trump. Your lips to FSM’s orecchiette, let’s hope.
Chip Daniels
@Chyron HR:
Check with me after November.
Hildebrand
@Mathguy: Yep, I know, and it absolutely grinds my gears. *sigh
kindness
Our MSM is what has driven us here and is a big part of why Trump sits in the White House. I pay for NY Times when I’m visiting family in NY. Otherwise I refuse to give them any credence. And NPR? Stopped donating to them during the Clinton impeachment. They’ve been Nice Polite Republicans since then.
Barr is a crook and when we win in November the next president better not sweep all this criminality under the rug like Obama did. I can look forward and backward at the same time.
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: Snooze Hour is the same. That’s why I watch it sparingly. I used to watch BBC world news but now its too early in the evening for me to catch. They have reporters in many places not just pontificating punditubbies in DC. Also Katty Kay sucks but the other anchors are not so bad.
PenAndKey
I’m a student of history, and if there’s one thing history has taught me it’s that political and economic imbalances like we are seeing can only last so long before they turn bloody. That never ends well for anyone, so while I’ll never cheer it on I can’t honestly say I don’t see it coming if things don’t change. Once critical mass is reached it doesn’t even matter what the architects of any particular response want, it ends badly. Robespierre, after all, likely never expected he’d get the chop when he fomented the French Revolution. Yet here we are, witnessing history repeating.
Duane
@MattF: It’s often said and often true. Don’t listen to what they say, look at what they do.
Ghost of Joe Lieblings Dog
@bbleh:
My local NPR affiliate is having their fund drive.
They do decent local reporting, as it happens … I’ve called their ‘pledge’ number a couple of times now to tell them that it breaks my heart to hear their on-air pitch highlighting “honest news” and “NPR’s Morning Edition” in the same breath — that I think their own reporting is honest but NPR’s absolutely is not, so I can’t donate to them unless they can keep the money for just their own work and not use it to pay off NPR.
The volunteers I spoke with said they’d pass that on. I doubt it will make any difference (if they do), but who knows? My dad always used to say that water boils at 212° but until it hits 210 or so it doesn’t look like anything is happening at all.
low-tech cyclist
I used to listen to NPR’s Morning Edition frequently while driving in to work. I gave up on them in 2016, because they were really really bad.
They’d had a serious run of “I can’t believe they’re saying this” moments during the spring and summer of 2016, but the clincher was the morning after the convention. They had just one guy giving commentary on the night before, and on the convention in general. When asked for his three big takeaways, he mentioned (1) how great a job Manafort was doing, (2) how impressive his kids were, and (3) something else that was equally anodyne at the time. [Needless to say, (1) and (2) have aged terribly.]
Given that my list would have started off with (1) “I alone can fix it” and (2) “Lock her up!”, this seemed like reporting from a parallel universe.
I have not listened to NPR since, nor do I understand why any intelligent person would bother with them at this point.
The Moar You Know
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve been listening to World Service ever since my first trip to London back in 2016. I had high hopes.
Their Brexit/UK elections coverage killed any hope I’d had of them being a decent British news source and then, just to pile on, their coverage of American politics is just…appallingly bad, with a slant towards the conservative that would embarrass Fox. The only Americans I’ve ever heard interviewed are Republicans or people from right-wing think tanks. Every morning, almost four years now. Never one US liberal. That’s not an accident.
The BBC is a great source of news about places that the British don’t give a shit about. Africa, for example. Nobody covers Africa. The BBC does and does it well. They do a great job covering Mexico; I live right next door as it were, and the BBC does a better job of covering Mexico than any of their own media does, and far better than our media ever has.
But if the UK has interests, their coverage will be as one-sided as it’s possible to get.
schrodingers_cat
@The Moar You Know: Agreed they are not good for UK coverage but they do a good job here and in India too. They have good on the ground reporters but yes their commentary is hopelessly conservative.
low-tech cyclist
@bbleh:
Their business strategy is out of date, then, because the college-educated upper middle classes are mostly voting Democratic these days, probably on account of how hard it is to square an educated outlook with anything that comes from the mouth of Trump.
The white working class is increasingly Republican, but they’re going to listen to right-wing talk radio, not NPR.
Anomalous Cowherd
NPR = Nice Polite Republicans
Sad.
Warblewarble
Barr in a fig leaf is not a pretty sight. Now I need brain bleach.
Just Chuck
Mainstream news orgs used to be about distilling and reporting the truth of matters, making the powerful accountable. Now their central ethos is to make sure they never upset anybody. Not the fragile emotional viewers, not the advertisers, and certainly not the powerful.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@James E Powell: I stopped giving to NPR years ago. Just yesterday was yelling at the radio while they were spouting Barr’s nonsense. My daughter asked me what was wrong so I explained that they were simply parroting the AG’s statements as if they were truth and weren’t doing their jobs as journalists. Then she asked me why I still listened to NPR. I said because we live in AZ and this is as liberal as it gets here. So I continue to listen to them and just keep yelling at the radio like a nutcase.
Jeffro
It’s amazing to me that anyone at all, on any/either/whatever side could fall for this. Barr has been running cover for trumpov since before he even came aboard the administration, and the first thing he did was write the Barr Cover(Up) Memo to the Mueller Report.
I’m looking forward to the day we find out what Mueller-related investigations he buried right after that. He can grab a cell right next to his orange leash-holder.
Aardvark Cheeselog
Maybe five years ago, the local NPR affiliate (for which I once worked, and to which I used to donate regularly) was circling the toilet and desperately trying to raise money to keep its spectrum from getting sold to a Christianist station that was outbidding them.
When they said “send money or we’re doomed!” I said “well, you’re doomed then.” Because shit like this didn’t start yesterday. NPR has long outlived its usefulness, and if worthwhile public radio is ever rebuilt it will be done after everybody now involved has been fired.
bbleh
@low-tech cyclist: … the college-educated upper middle classes are mostly voting Democratic these days …
True these days, but only trending that way because the Republicans have gone full blood-and-soil and because Trump is obviously incompetent and declining. And most of them are as scared of Sanders and Warren as they are of Trump.
They vote their wallets and they vote stability. The median Trump voter was considerably wealthier than the median Clinton voter. There are a lot of small-town and exurban upper-middle and upper-class Trump supporters — professionals, business owners, senior managers and executives, and of course, retirees. They may not be stone racists, but they’re okay with being in a coalition with the racists as long as their wallets are happy.
Give them a smarter, smoother Republican, one who can get the racist yahoos simmering with dog whistles instead of his outside voice, who promises the usual land of milk and honey as soon as taxes are cut yet again on the wealthy and corporations, and they’ll flock back to him.
terry chay
@BR: Thise “Berners” are the same as the Trumpers from a different political team. I’ve seen them spout fake news as facts and turn red in the face if you question it.
Before you defend them as not being on the Democratic team, I agree. but if the radicals on the right hadn’t co-opted the Republicans the same would be true there. The fear of losing that small percentage of the electorate causing a tidal wave of an electoral wipeout at this point is why the Republicans are co-opted.
I am not saying Bernie is this way personally but his campaign, just like the Republicans of over a decade ago (was W this way or was he pandering? McCain? Romney?), think they can sow that wind to win.
We will all reap the whirlwind if they do. The Democratic Party is only insulated against this because all the intellectuals have had to shelter here after what happens on the other side, but education, while it does strengthen, does not make one immune to this trend.
The center cannot hold.
Villago Delenda Est
I don’t call New York’s principle fishwrap the “Vichy Times” for nothing. Filled with collaborators who will be duly dealt with once the Truth and Retribution Commission is convened after Donald is removed from office with a front loader.
Uncle Cosmo
@Crashman06: In the case of No Progressives Required it’s part Stockholm Syndrome, part Silence of the Lamebrains:
Or more succinctly – given how dependent public broadcasting has become on big donors’ ca$h –
SFAW
Whilst driving Mrs. SFAW to work yesterday AM, I heard the Terwilliger abomination on NPR. After a few “fuck you”s directed at the radio, I shut it off. Because I’m compulsive, I turned it back on, hoping it would get better; it didn’t. But NPR did its Shitgibbon/Barr-apologist/fig leaf routine extremely well: the interviewer mentioned that Terwilliger had been in the Justice Department for NN years, which caused me to pause and say “maybe he’s not a shill.” Of course, NPR neglected to mention (at least when I was listening) that Terwilliger was on Shill Barr’s staff. That MIGHT have been relevant, so I can see why the omitted it.
trnc
Bill Arnold
Interesting review of current press coverage of DJT’s assault on the law. (It’ll age out quickly, but good today.)
Press Watch: Finally, political journalists are sounding the alarm. They must not stop – A lawless president is undermining our justice system. Reporters at major papers are finally telling it like it is. (Dan Froomkin, February 14, 2020)
This sharp language by Dan Froomkin caught my eye:
But read (or skim) it.
Just Chuck
@terry chay: Honestly, I think if Bernie weren’t around, half of the Berners would be backing Lyndon LaRouche.
Uncle Cosmo
@trnc: It’s not kabuki, goddamnit, it’s a Noh play: Noh ethics, Noh morals, Noh scruples, Noh logic. (Noh shit!)
Warblewarble
Barr in a fig leaf is not a pretty sight. Now I need brain bleach. Ignore the man behind the curtain, Barr and Moscow Mitch care about power.Roger is only a stepping Stone. Their message to tRUMP ,is”shut up let Russia do it’s work. All the crooks can be pardoned when our power is locked down and tRUMP will have all the time he could ask for to take revenge on all his enemies.
Warblewarble
. Ignore the man behind the curtain, Barr and Moscow Mitch care about power.Roger is only a stepping Stone. Their message to tRUMP ,is”shut up let Russia do it’s work. All the crooks can be pardoned when our power is locked down and tRUMP will have all the time he could ask for to take revenge on all his enemies.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
To me, BBC is The Tories Broadcasting Service, formerly know as the Monarch’s (read, King’s or Queen’s) Broadcasting Service. Can be counted on to support whatever angle on today’s news that best supports the Monarchy and the Lords of Business. And Old Money!
Uncle Cosmo
@Just Chuck: In the amoral words of Ben Jabituya: Bangalore! Simplistic solutions to complex issues is eternally attractive to the young & the feckless, the Lost Bros in l’ans quatriesmes (ou cinquiesmes) de ses eages who never found their way home from NeverGonnaHappenland, & the septua(or more)genarian ministroked-&-frontal-lobe-shrunk soshulist-usetabes regressed to those-thrilling-daze-of-yestermillenium-puerility.
(…only half???)
debbie
Too many people here are giving NPR too much credit. They have tossed any shred of integrity aside to suck up to the conservatives in a desperate attempt to keep their funding. Nothing more, nothing less.
lumpkin
Contribute to NPR or pay for a NYT subscription and you might just as well make a contribution directly to the trump reelection campaign.
Soprano2
At least one of the female journalists on 1A this morning was suitably skeptical about the Barr interview. I posted on their FB page about it and got several people saying I was engaging in a conspiracy theory! I said “When a cabinet members criticizes Trump publicly, he always goes after them on Twitter, except for this time. What’s your explanation for that? No one had any, of course.
Art
I think that NPR did a good job in that interview. If you read between the lines and have knowlege of what is going on it is a very incisive piece. They ask the central question directly:
[Attorney General Barr said, quote, “the role of the attorney general is to keep the enforcement process sacrosanct from political influence.” Do you think he has lived up to that?]
They then poke at it and let his very lame answers echo. They bring up the reality in the opposing view and get nothing.
Ending with:
[I hope very much that when the attorney general gets an opportunity in front of the House Judiciary Committee… Or otherwise to explain what he’s doing, that the public will be reassured.]
This isn’t a denial or reassurance. It is something like ‘meta-reassurance’ . This would be like the executive officer on the Titanic answering questions about icebergs and sinking by announcing that he captain will “explain what he’s doing, that the public will be reassured”. He is offering the possibility that this superior will provide palliative care to a dying lie. It doesn’t often get much weaker than this.
IMHO the man thoroughly embarrassed himself and isn’t really smart enough to know it because it was done quietly and politely with no direct contradiction. NPR doesn’t do smashmouth. NPR does facts and consequences without a lot of emotional valence. Fascists and liar are allowed to speak but their lack of emotional content and the focus on facts makes it difficult to win. Of course, when reviewed next to most of the other MSM NPR isn’t providing the same obvious emotional clues and the satisfaction of seeing a conservative squirm as he is forced to face the contradictions.
West of the Cascades
@download my app in the app store mistermix: sigh – all the good things from the Buffalo News move to DC (Sullivan, Tom Toles), and we’re left with Vic Carucci and the rest of the lame sports coverage. I vastly prefer reading the D&C (online, since I’m in Oregon but grew up in suburban Buffalo).
As far as NPR goes, I can’t listen any more and dropped my membership in Oregon Public Broadcasting this year – OPB does the same sort of “both sides/balanced/stenographically repeat right-wing talking points” and I just don’t want to support that any more.