Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, man.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

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

T R E 4 5 O N

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Traitor-in-Chief Open Thread: Another NYTimes Reporter Has A Book to Sell

Traitor-in-Chief Open Thread: Another NYTimes Reporter Has A Book to Sell

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And the NYTimes is only too happy to cross-promote the ‘savvy’ of both their reporter and his employer:

… Schmidt, a New York Times correspondent in Washington who was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018, including one for coverage of Trump’s Russian-inflected scandals, portrays an administration in which all aides may as well always have a resignation letter ready as a safeguard against an angry, flailing president detached from commonly accepted reality. This is a meticulously reported volume that clearly benefits from the author’s extraordinary access to many of the relevant characters, but also from his subjects’ tendency to record, in detail, their time around Trump…

The narrative is sometimes cinematic. It opens with Schmidt chasing down McGahn outside the White House’s front gates and eventually getting him to concede, “I damaged the office of the president; I damaged the office.” It’s a breathtakingly revealing admission from the White House’s chief lawyer and the architect of Trump’s effort to appoint as many conservative judges as possible. (Schmidt says, “I thought he was still understating the gravity of what he had done.”)

McGahn, a staunch libertarian, was frequently in over his head with the lawless president he nicknamed “King Kong,” and he struggled with his highly unusual extended contact with Mueller’s team. Still, despite getting close to resigning, McGahn stuck around far longer than his apparent misery and frequent attempts at principled stands would suggest, largely because of his judicial project’s success. It was only after Trump granted a woman clemency at Kim Kardashian’s request that McGahn knew he truly had to leave the White House. He could no longer abide the accumulation of Trump’s actions…

Lawlessness, meh. But Kim Kardashian?!? — ewwww!

… Comey was always deeply interested in maintaining his and his agency’s public credibility — especially after his wildly controversial intrusions into the 2016 campaign over Hillary Clinton’s emails. After he was fired by Trump, he text-messaged a friend: “I’m with my peeps (former peeps). They are broken up and I’m sitting with them like a wake. Trying to figure out how to get back home. May hitchhike.” It’s just one example of the clearly extensive access Schmidt had to Comey and his wife.

“Donald Trump v. the United States” is full of gritty details about what it’s like for a plugged-in journalist to report on Trump’s intrigue, ranging from the time Schmidt shepherded a valued source to and from the airport, to his learning, secondhand, about a Justice Department official soliciting dirt on Comey at a Cinco de Mayo party. At one point, Schmidt writes, he shattered his cellphone and didn’t fix it for a week because there was too much news; he ended up with pieces of glass in his hands.

More interesting, however, is the constant flow of shocking anecdotes: Schmidt writes that Mitch McConnell fell asleep during a classified briefing on Russia, for example…

But the journalistic stigmata! Such a cinematic detail!


Reader Interactions

90Comments

  1. 1.

    Keith P.

    It amazes me that no one in the media really picked up on the timing between the surprised Walter Reid visit and Trump’s revelation last month that he “recently” took another dementia exam.

  2. 2.

    Chetan Murthy

    Anyone who reads this book has an affirmative duty to do so by pirating a copy.  The fucker.  The greedy, unpatriotic fucker.  Schmidt, not Shitlord.  Schmidt.

  3. 3.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Keith P.: Oh hah.  That seemed so damn obvious.  I mean, who gives their boss a dementia exam, unless something acute makes it necessary?

    ETA: but still doesn’t excuse the media for not making it crystal-clear the connection.

  4. 4.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Be careful of that Lise Horton tweet. Schmidt does not say it was a stroke.
    Considering transferring responsibilities to Pence could have been for many medical reasons.

    For a bit, I was seeing the stroke idea amplified on Twitter, but right now it looks to me like people have caught it.

  5. 5.

    Edmund Dantes

    All that access to make money.

    grifters helping grifters. Helping them to polish their image after supporting and enabling trump.

  7. 7.

    mrmoshpotato

    Fuck all these motherfuckers who went along with this shit so they could write a fucking book.

    All of them should have a fucking printing press dropped on them.

    ETA – oh, and as always, FUCK RICK WILSON!

  11. 11.

    Redshift

    The thing I don’t understand is what the NYT gets out of these deals. Like, any software I develop is “work done for hire” for my employer, and if I wanted to have a commercial side project, I’d have to arrange it with them even if it wasn’t during work hours. So the NYT is losing valuable news work that is some using contacts developed as part of regular reporting. They’re not getting a cut of the book. So how does this work for the company financially?

  12. 12.

    joel hanes

    Reminder that James Risen gave the NYT a reported story of W’s illegal extra-FISA communication surveillance of Americans, and the NYT spiked that story until well after the 2004 elections.

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    Rod Rosenstein is proven to have protected Trump from evidence he was a Russian agent.

    ROFLMAO!  Like Dump doesn’t know he’s a traitorous shitstain who’s been the Kremlin’s bitch since at least 1987!

  14. 14.

    joel hanes

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    I admire your professional caution.

    In the days since whatever the event was, we’ve seen Trump

    • drag his right leg, as if unable to lift it
    • require two hands to take a fumbling drink of water
    • mince down a gently inclined ramp
    • slur his words during a speech
  15. 15.

    Redshift

    @Edmund Dantes:

    well. I go under anesthesia for routine physicals All the time. 

    I mean, if he was going to his original doctor, I’d believe a routine physical might involve drugs that could render him unconscious, but Walter Reed? No way.

  19. 19.

    West of the Rockies

    OT, but I am astounded that Piggy Pompeo actually thinks he could be President.  He is so manifestly arrogant and condescending, in addition to being homely and without charm.

  21. 21.

    kindness

    Strokes??  My pool pick was on clogged cardiac arteries.  Damn.

    We’ll watch Trump go down in the election and completely lose it.  That is when he’s going to be the most dangerous.

  22. 22.

    tokyokie

    @Another Scott:

    It seems most likely to me that it was a TIA – not technically a stroke – so they can deny it all they want without saying what it really was.

    A transient ischemic attack is essentially a mini-stroke, but like a stroke, it’s a cerebral event, so that’s my guess as to what this is as well. But although they’re not as serious as strokes, people who have one frequently have several, which compounds the damage. I doubt he’ll live four more years, whether he’s re-elected or not.

  24. 24.

    Noncarborundum

    @Cheryl Rofer: Were the quoted words “cerebral event” in that tweet an actual quote from a source? If so, that would certainly narrow things down a bit. Concussion, stroke, aneurysm, subdural hematoma (my son had one of those once that landed him in the hospital) – maybe other things but I can’t think what.

  25. 25.

    Nettoyeur

    @West of the Rockies: Pompeo is our Hermann Göring.  Prone to excess in food, drink and luxury spending (see Pompy’s wifey) and nurses the delusion of succeeding his master. Göring actually tried to take over when Hitler was going terminal in the bunker, so Hitler ordered him arrested; not much happened in the chaos. After the Americans caught him, they broke him of his morphine addiction and put him on a strict diet to get his weight down enough to allow him to be hanged without decapitation. Looked pretty good at Nuremberg trials. He got one of the guards to smuggle in his personal effects, including a poison capsule he used to kill himself.

  26. 26.

    FlyingToaster

    @Another Scott: Until I saw the problems with balance, I thought it was a TIA.

    Imbalance is a sign of permanent debilitation, and a precursor of things to come.

    My dad had a TIA, a ministroke, and then a full-on stroke.  The effects of the TIA were gone within 10 days.  The ministroke left him with a slumping shoulder and weakness in his grip.  The stroke left him with aphasia and multiple problems including balance, which required months of physical, occupational and speech therapy plus permanent revocation of his drivers license.

    In my opinion, Trump had a ministroke.  No permanent blockage to any brain arteries, but permanent damage nevertheless.

  28. 28.

    joel hanes

    Watergirl, you around?

    Juanita uncharacteristically buries the lede, but the second half of this posting on her blog explains how to do the most political damage possible to the GOP for the least amount of money, by flipping the Texas statehouse.

    A few dollars can make a big difference in a state legislative campaign, in a way that’s just not possible for non-millionaires in national politics.   In two of these districts, the Dem challenger lost by less than 1% of the vote in 2018.

    And Texas is the big enchilada.   If it flips blue, that’s it for the GOP’s presidential fortunes for a while.

    Your mission, should you decide to accept it:

    • Click through to the district maps.
    • Adopt one Dem candidate
    • Use google to find that candidate’s donation page
    • Donate at least ten dollars

    As usual, should you or any of your people be apprehended in the course of this mission, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your activities.

    https://juanitajean.com/just-five/

    ETA:  here’s the link to the maps

    https://flipthetxhouse.com/static-map

  29. 29.

    Ian

    Every time I read about the NYT they stoop to a new low.   In my google news feed there is a opinion piece “Joe Biden had better watch it” from them.  Can’t/won’t click through to read, but with headlines like that you know its filled with Serious Journalism.

  33. 33.

    piratedan

    really adore the concept that WE as citizens have to watch what we retweet and link to on our facebook pages for fear of spreading disinformation regarding the leaked output that national reporters are sitting on, that if published, as reporters are supposed to do, could actually have an impact on the daily discussion of what takes place nationally as it exposes all manner of lawbreaking from lying to the public or actual outright treason.

  34. 34.

    prostratedragon

    Sedation and general anesthesia are different levels of being knocked out. As others have said, there are routine reasons for sedation, like a colonoscopy (outpatient). It might also be done for an unplanned intervention that could be urgent, if not a true emergency, like a cardioversion (electric shock to correct an abnormal heart rhythm, also generally outpatient). With sedation, one is out for a couple of hours, counselled not to try to sign NATO treaties and the like for the rest of the day, and be accompanied home by a companion. While you’re out, you might be able to respond to questions or direction from the doctors or nurses. This isn’t true of general anesthesia, which would be needed for surgery.

    So if the terminology being used is correct, he was evaluated for something surgical like maybe a stroke or heart attack, or maybe just his appendix or something. But even if they just meant sedation, having a standby for several hours would be prudent.

    From what we’ve heard about the medical readiness of the White House, outpatient sedation type procedures could probably be done there, even the cardioversion.

  35. 35.

    West of the Rockies

    @Alison Rose:

    Point taken, but Trump (at least in ’16) had a certain amount of TV sense.  Pompeo seems to be pure thirst for power with zero charisma.  Of course, the same could be said for Cruz, Cotton, et al.

  37. 37.

    clay

    @Cheryl Rofer: On the one hand, I respect your caution. On the other, they’ve been the opposite of forthcoming about this so fuck ‘em. Let them deny it was a stroke.

  38. 38.

    tokyokie

    @piratedan: Back when I was a newspaper copy editor on the news side, I once got in trouble for writing a piece, gratis, about a couple of Sam Fuller movies that’d been newly released on home video for an obscure online site that a friend of mine had started up. I guess I should have been at the NYT if I wanted to do serious double-dipping.

  41. 41.

    LeftCoastYankee

    The NY Times has always been a Republican paper in a Democratic city.

    Their credibility comes from once having the most expansive and serious coverage national and international issues, and deciding what was “culture” approved for the elites.

    It didn’t hurt that NY Republicans before D’Amato weren’t bug-fuck crazy.

    The “liberal NYT” meme was started by national Republicans (aka already soaking deep in the crazy juice).

    Who do you think convinced the national media that Giuliani and Bloomberg were serious people when people living in NYC referred to him as “the fascist Giuliani” in the early 90’s.

    When the tide goes out and the rock is on the beach, being sad the rock doesn’t ride the tides is a bit too wishful.

  44. 44.

    piratedan

    @tokyokie: I hear ya… just the motherfucking hubris of it all… it’s like did you become a journalist to write the stories that needed to be seen by the public or is it just a way to make a buck and fuck any and all other considerations

    the shit that you’ve sat on could lead to the shaming of the goddamn GOP to maybe impeach the sonofabitch, not led to all of the ratcheting up of race issues as people continue to get emboldened by this asshole and here you are waiting to tell your story for the sake of getting paid above and beyond the fucking country burning down around you.

  46. 46.

    senyordave

    Special place in hell for these people.  You can bet none of them have to worry about having health insurance for a sick child, or where they are going to get money to feed their family because both parents lost their jobs.

  47. 47.

    lgerard

    This reminds me.  The Anonymous guy promised in his book to come out publicly before the election.

    Still waiting

  48. 48.

    Martin

    @joel hanes: Yes, I agree with this. Simply ungerrymandering Texas would pretty much give the Dems the House for quite a while.

    Would need to flip 4 senate seats and 9 house seats. Not impossible, but not easy either.

  51. 51.

    RaflW

    Speaking of a cerebral event, has Trump had a TIA or a drug mis-dosing? It sounds like the Black Helicopters were inside his thoroughly addled noggin tonight on Laura Ingraham.

    @Acyn
    The President claims people in the dark shadows who control the streets are really controlling Biden. He goes on to talk about a plane full of people wearing black uniforms but then says he can’t reveal anymore because it’s under investigation.

    @joshtpm
    Trump compares killing an unarmed black civilian to missing a three foot putt in a golf tournament, Ingraham jumps in to make him stop.

  54. 54.

    joel hanes

    @Martin:

    Because early money has much greater leverage than money contributed at this late stage of the cycle, I wish Juanita had done this quite a bit earlier.  (She was busy doing GOTV in all the other counties of Texas.  Some of us helped with that.)

    But there’s no time like the present.

  59. 59.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein concluded the FBI had not cleared the threshold needed to conduct a counterintel investigation into the president’s ties to Russia. Rosenstein believed the FBI had acted far to hastily to open investigation as it grieved firing of director Comey.

    I keep reading that, and re-reading that, trying to get it to make sense.
    “The President of the United States of America has business ties to Russia. Lemme think here, do we *really* need to know about this? Could it *really* have any effect on our national security?”

    I’m not the crazy one here, right? I mean, not crazy *over this* (since you’re going to be *mean* about it!).

  60. 60.

    prostratedragon

    @LongHairedWeirdo:
    No, I think you’ve got it. Just like < snap > that we were supposed to think that ties to Russia that would have brought to a crashing end any other Presidency since about 1920 were just routine, humdrum business.

  66. 66.

    Jay

    “More than a dozen deputies have matching tattoos and belong to a violent clique called the Executioners at the station, according to Deputy Art Gonzalez, who filed a whistleblower complaint”It’s not the apples IT’S THE FUCKING ORCHARD https://t.co/YWxHe5Npsi— Jordan Crucchiola (@JorCru) September 1, 2020

  67. 67.

    Jay

    In the last 24 hours:
    Trump defended Kyle Rittenhouse.
    Trump defended other far-right vigilantes.
    Trump refused to return donations from a neo-Nazi leader.Trump posted two manipulated videos of Biden.
    Rep. Scalise doctored video of a progressive activist.It's only Monday.— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) September 1, 2020

  71. 71.

    joel hanes

    @mrmoshpotato: 

    I was at the Strawberry Music Festival at Camp Mather just outside Yosemite one year when, during a break between groups in a late-night set, the full moon rose over the Sierra crest to the east.
    Maybe 2500 middle-aged hippies howled at the moon, full throated, for a couple minutes.

  73. 73.

    Marcopolo

    @joel hanes:  Or you could just give a donation to the Texas Democratic Party.  They have been pursuing a Red to Blue state house strategy since the beginning of the year:
    Texas Democrats Announce 22 Targeted State House Districts Ahead of 2020
    There is a list of the 22 targeted districts in this article from January, though I am pretty sure they have whittled the list down to 18-20 races now.  I saw a tweet last week where the head of the state Democratic party had announced their internal polling showed Democrats held the lead in a supermajority of these districts.

    Texas also has its own state version of Cook Political Reports called Texas Election Source.  Here is their Texas state house ratings as of July 19 (its a subscription service so I don’t know if they’ve put out anything more recent).

    Last but not least, the Texas Dems kicked off a hugely ambitious voter registration drive yesterday (in coordination with the Biden & MJ Hegar campaigns) targeting 1 million unregistered TX residents who are Dem leaning. 

    Anyways, I think most folks (who are not from TX) will find it a lot easier to make a one stop donation to the state party rather than taking the time to research individual state house races.  And I say this as someone who lives in MO but has given to Akilah Bacy in TX HD-138 as well as Christian Menefee who is running for Harris County Attorney.

  74. 74.

    DMcK

    @Redshift:

    The Times, like any ol’ print rag, makes its money from advertising revenue. Specifically, big-time New York real estate clients. Some of whom I had to service in my former life at an agency. They are all criminals of varying degrees of severity.

  75. 75.

    Jinchi

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I know somebody who would know if it’s SOP for the Veep to be told to be on stand-by during the POTUS’ routine physical

    Pence clearly dreams that his path to the presidency is divine intervention. He’s probably got a better chance at that as Trump’s VP than Kamala Harris would as Biden’s.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    In this context, 10 is an interesting figure because it is also the number of front-page stories the Times ran on the Hillary Clinton email scandal in just six days, from October 29 (the day after FBI Director James Comey announced his decision to reopen his investigation of possible wrongdoing by Clinton) through November 3, just five days before the election. When compared with the Times’s overall coverage of the campaign, the intensity of focus on this one issue is extraordinary. To reiterate, in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election (and that does not include the three additional articles on October 18, and November 6 and 7, or the two articles on the emails taken from John Podesta). This intense focus on the email scandal cannot be written off as inconsequential: The Comey incident and its subsequent impact on Clinton’s approval rating among undecided voters could very well have tipped the election.

    The “consequences” of this is the NYTimes is more profitable than ever and the reporter who covered Clinton signed a multi-million dollar book deal and tv series contract:

    EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation, Warner Bros. TV has acquired the rights to Amy Chozick’s bestselling memoir Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns and One Intact Glass Ceiling, to develop as a television series.
    For a decade, award-winning New York Times journalist Amy Chozick chronicled Hillary Clinton’s pursuit of the presidency, starting with her imploding 2008 campaign against then-rising Democratic challenger Barack Obama. Chozick was assigned to “The Hillary Beat” ahead of the 2016 Presidential election. The book provides a candid and rollicking first-hand account of the Clinton campaign’s unraveling and her surprising loss to Donald Trump. It was an instant best-seller when it was released by HarperCollins on April 24. International editions have since been released worldwide.

  79. 79.

    Princess

    FWIW I always thought it was a stroke, or maybe a series of small strokes. They have a fully equipt trauma center at the WH. He had to be going to Reed for something they don’t have there and that suggested a great big MRI machine or something like that.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    I have to say though, given what’s transpired I wonder how many people are going to want to watch a “rollicking account of Clinton’s pursuit of the presidency”.
    It was all still fun and games when Trump was first elected, back when he was an exciting, norm-busting maverick who would “shake things up”. As he said himself, “what do you have to lose?”
    It’s much, much more dark now. Not so rollicking anymore. Turns out we had a lot to lose.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    Acyn Torabi
    @Acyn
    · 8h
    The President claims people in the dark shadows who control the streets are really controlling Biden. He goes on to talk about a plane full of people wearing black uniforms but then says he can’t reveal anymore because it’s under investigation

    The President is delusional and a paranoid nut job, but the thugs he hires are real so someone should look into who and what they are “investigating” regarding BLM, which he mentions specifically as political enemies they are targeting.

  83. 83.

    SFAW

    I’m amazed that this thread has been up for almost eight hours, and there’s no “FTFTFNYT” or equivalent. Times-fatigue?

  84. 84.

    RAM

    Drezner says: “It sure seems as though the White House has been less than transparent about this episode…”

    “Less than transparent?” They flat-out lied about it, like they do about everything else. The only thing transparent about the Trump crime cartel is their criminality.

  85. 85.

    StringOnAStick

    @Princess:  You need a CT scan with contrast material circulating in your veins and arteries to determine if a stroke is from a burst vessel bleeding inside the brain, or a blood clot restricting blood flow to a region of the brain. The drugs given to treat a stroke are determined by the results of the CT scan; giving the truly remarkable clot busters that save from so much damage now to someone has is having a bleeding stroke is very, very bad, so I suspect tRump got a CT scan at Walter Reed and some clot busting treatment. They wouldn’t have been able to hide the treatment required for a bleeding stroke.

    I’m just amazed tRump has yet to talk about what a bizarre experience getting a CT scan is but it probably scared him enough and we know he thinks of any medical issue as a sign of weakness so maybe that’s why he hasn’t blurted out something about it.

  88. 88.

    joel hanes

    @Marcopolo:

    Thanks.  I hit the TDC for a little.  Wish all currently-red states had state Dem parties as vigorous as the TX Dems seem to be.

    I still like the Juanita stuff because grassroots.

  89. 89.

    SW

    Every other HILLARY”S E-MAILS story in 2016 was written by this shit-heal.  Who was pulling his chain back then.  It has never been explained.  Who is pulling his chain now.  Who the fuck knows?  I wouldn’t trust that weasel as far as I can throw him.  Just because he is saying things that make Trump look bad.  Hell, everything makes Trump look bad.  This guy is poison.

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