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President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

We’re not going back!

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Let there be snark.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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Hot air and ill-informed banter

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Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / Our Media Is Not Learning, In Fact They Seem Incapable of Doing So: This Is Why You Don’t Give Putin An Unearned Meeting

Our Media Is Not Learning, In Fact They Seem Incapable of Doing So: This Is Why You Don’t Give Putin An Unearned Meeting

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Six years! Six years and these idiots have learned nothing!

The stupid, it burns!!!!

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian of authoritarianism and fascism, has the right take:

You don’t give Putin an unearned meeting, especially when he’s going out of his way to rub Biden’s nose in the reality that he is not going to change his behavior unless he is made to do so, because doing so normalizes him. It allows him to set the information narrative, to shape it, to use America’s own explicit enumerated right to a freedom of the press, a right he doesn’t believe in and does not recognize within Russia, to push his own misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop. The only real question at this point is how many more bad acts is Putin or his surrogates going to undertake in as public a manner possible between now and his meeting with President Biden to demonstrate that he really could care less what President Biden or the US wants.

The meeting between President Biden and Putin is news. The events leading up to it, what happens at it, what occurs as a result of it, are news. Because all of that is news, it creates an opportunity for Putin to manipulate American news, American journalists, and through them, the American people. And the price of this is normalization of Putin. Of allowing him to present himself as a legitimate leader of a world power, rather than a thuggish former apparatchik who has impoverished and immiserated his people by turning Russia into an organized criminal enterprise running behind the facade of an illiberal, managed democracy.

This is the hard hitting “journalism” that we’re going to be getting as a result of NBC’s inability to learn anything from the past six years.

And before someone starts with the news that the Biden administration announced a huge weapons shipment to Ukraine, I’m aware. It’s been clear for several weeks to a couple of months that this was coming and it doesn’t take a genius to have estimated it would be announced before the meeting. It is a long overdue good thing that needed to happen. It isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference to Putin or change anything in his behavior. You want to change his behavior, send an armor brigade combat team to train with the Ukrainians. Announce we’re sending several Operational Detachments Alpha from 10th Special Forces Group on a Foreign Internal Defense (FIDs) mission with Ukrainian Special Operations Forces. Announce we’re sending several Civil Affairs Teams-Alpha (CAT-As) on a military support to government (MSG) mission with Ukrainian Special Operations Forces. Announce a training exercise and rotation with our Baltic allies and partners pairing the newly reconstituted V Corps and a US Army Division with our partnered forces. None of that is kinetic.

None of that is anything out of the norm for the US military. But it would get Putin’s attention because it would be a significant change in our behavior. Since Putin decided in late 2011/early 2012 that Secretary Clinton’s criticisms of Russia’s 2011 elections was actually both a personal attack on him, a political attack on him, and an act of war by the US against Russia, we have tried to 1) ignore him because he wasn’t worth the energy and we didn’t want to elevate his status, 2) tell him to knock his behavior of through channels, 3) not deter him because Mitch McConnell threatened to politicize the deterrence, 4) pander to him, as well as reward him for his low intensity war against us from JAN 2017 through JAN 2021, and 5) now give him a meeting he hasn’t earned, thereby elevating him again. And by doing so, this created the opening for him to once again exploit American news media, as well as American social media, to his own advantage.

This did not have to happen. We are at war with Russia, albeit a low intensity and largely non-kinetic war, not because we want to be, not because we actually did anything to actually attack Russia, but because Putin decided that Secretary Clinton’s mundane criticisms of problems with Russia’s 2011 elections were both personally directed at him and, therefore, an act of war by the US against Russia. After ten years it remains to be seen if the US is finally capable of recognizing this simple reality and responding appropriately. Bilateral state to state meetings with the President of the United States are for allies and partners, for heads of state we actually have a reasonable chance of influencing through the application of diplomatic power, or they are rewards for heads of state of hostile, recalcitrant, and/or bad state actors after they have changed their behavior in a positive manner. They are not business as usual.

Nothing good will come from this. Not a damn thing!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

68Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike G

    turning Russia into an organized criminal enterprise running behind the facade of an illiberal, managed democracy.

    So basically the Trumpublican vision for America. Why they’re such suckup fanboys of his.

  2. 2.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Ah, Adam, two posts before I’ve done one!

    I will suggest that you will be frustrated as long as your goal is to change Putin’s behavior. He is the head of a sovereign country and answers to no one. Starting a war with Russia to express frustration at that fact seems a poor idea.

  4. 4.

    Mike in NC

    I hope somebody tries to calculate how much money was wasted with the Fat Orange Clown’s several summits with Kim Jong-Un.

  5. 5.

    opiejeanne

    You probably already saw this, but it’s a good question:

    Michael McKay· 35m

    Why doesn’t NBC give an interview with Oleg Sentsov, the Ukrainian film director and Sakharov Prize laureate who was held captive by the Putin regime? Why don’t they interview Mustafa Dzhemilev, leader of the Crimean Tatar people who was driven from his home by Russian invaders?

  7. 7.

    Soprano2

    @Mike G: I believe Republicans are jealous of Putin, and wish they could rule the U.S. the way Putin rules Russia. They’d love to declare BLM a terrorist organization and ban it, for instance.

  8. 8.

    Morzer

    @Mike in NC: 

    One of the most pathetic spectacles in South Korea is the sight of the Moon Jae-in faction of the ruling party claiming that some sort of progress was made in the meetings with Kim Jong-un and telling Biden to build on it. I get that they’ve screwed up quite badly domestically, but they aren’t fooling anyone with this nonsense about getting somewhere with the NoKos.

  9. 9.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @opiejeanne: KJU has been active in his government, and a few weeks ago there were some statements denouncing the United States, but they were relatively perfunctory. The biggest news is that in photos released this week he looks like he has lost 60-80 pounds.

  11. 11.

    Subsole

    Don’t kid yourself, Adam.
    The mediots have absolutely learned something from the last several years.

    As far as I care, they -or their assignment editors at any rate – have pledged their allegiance.

    I have to say, as a civilian, this type of warfare is just…surreal.

    I’m sure China is just thrilled with Putin, though. He’s done a bangup job checking their only real competitor and refusing to replace it with anything substantial.
    The fucking idiot.

  12. 12.

    Emma

    Since it’s all “me me me” with Putin, when he dies, how likely is it that the poor schmuck after him de-escalates? Or has the Kremlin well and truly been taken over RWNJs?

  14. 14.

    Subsole

     

     

    @Cheryl Rofer: Sooooo….what happens when he croaks? Is there an heir apparent? Is NK gonna fracture, or implode, or just stream south accross the DMZ in a mass prison-break/refugee wave?

  15. 15.

    Emma

    @Subsole: you’re looking at it the wrong way, there was an inside-job by Lelush XD (edit: referring to your comment at 11, not 14)

    “Lelush’s frustration about having to work hard on the show mirrored many young people’s ‘sense of defeatism’ about China’s notorious gruelling “996” work culture – so-called for people who work from nine in the morning to nine in the evening, six days a week.” (FYI a friend told me there’s even 997 now.)

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    Devil’s advocate:

    NBCNews (April 25, 2005):

    Russian President Vladimir Putin told the nation Monday that the collapse of the Soviet empire “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and had fostered separatist movements inside Russia.

    In his annual state of the nation address to parliament and the country’s top political leaders, Putin said the Soviet collapse also was a tragedy for Russians.

    “First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Putin said. “As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.

    He has been acting on those beliefs since that time. (He used “protecting the Russians in Ukraine” as justification for the invasion.)

    Putin’s Munich speech of February 10, 2007:

    Putin criticized what he called the United States’ monopolistic dominance in global relations, and its “almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations”. The speech came to be known, especially in Russia, as the Munich speech. He said the result of such dominance was that,

    […] no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.[1]

    Putin also distorted a quote from 1990 speech by Manfred Wörner to create an impression that US made a binding promise not to expand NATO into new countries in Eastern Europe.[2]

    Recognizing that W and Cheney made such criticisms easy, he was continuing to push the idea that former Soviet countries had not self-determination about joining NATO or not, in 2007.

    tl;dr – Saying Putin’s actions are a reaction to Clinton calling him out could be argued to be too simplistic. Putin has wanted to reconstitute something like the Soviet empire for a very long time (he’s gotta protect the babooshkas in Brooklyn, you see), and the western democracies are the ones standing in his way.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (“Who still thinks ‘war’ is the wrong term for this.” ;-)

  19. 19.

    Morzer

    @Subsole: North Korea isn’t going to implode, much less stream en masse across the DMZ. Even if the Kim clan died in a fire tomorrow, the ruling elite would find some way to replace them and preserve the “glorious legacy” of the Dear Leaders. I wouldn’t put it past them to find a chubby baby floating downstream in a cradle and declare that this was the reincarnation of Kim Il-Sung.

  20. 20.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Speaking of our failed media — if I hadn’t previously ? written off Andrea Mitchell as a cheap hack, I have now. She was the pool reporter covering Dr. Jill Biden’s visit yesterday to a school and subsequent education roundtable in the company of the Duchess of Cambridge. Great opportunity for Mrs. Greenspan to ask about educational policy or something substantive. But no — Andrea’s very first question was to the Duchess asking what she thought about Harry and Meghan’s new baby, gratuitously noting that the name was “controversial” (it isn’t), and wondering (in a very accusatory kind of way) whether Catherine had Zoomed yet with her infant niece. I was simply furious. Maybe there’s a time and place for those questions, but an education seminar with the First Lady of the United States ain’t it.

  21. 21.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Subsole: This is a serious consideration in monitoring his weight. There have been rumors that KJU is unhealthy, and of course he smokes too. The fact he has lost so much weight but looks healthy suggests that he and his advisors recognize this too.

    His sister has been quite active in government and may be the heir apparent. So far, North Korea has kept rulership hereditary without bloodshed.

  22. 22.

    Another Scott

    @Cheryl Rofer: Well, except for that thing with the VX and his half-brother, of course.

    :-(

    But, yes, the Kim family has had a lock on the country for a long time.

    [/pedant]

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  25. 25.

    Cheryl Rofer

    The “Are you a killer?” question is so blindingly stupid that it negates whatever good Putin may get out of these interviews, at least in my view. Of course nobody will admit to being a killer, except TFG. And the network folk always leave Putin an out.

    Perhaps we get points in people’s minds for being open in contrast to Russia?

  29. 29.

    Mike G

    @Morzer:

    Kim Jong-un has just denounced K-pop as a vicious cancer that deserves work camp execution

    Good, I take that as a sign the infiltration of South Korean pop culture over the border is starting to worry and piss him off.

  30. 30.

    Doug R

    @Morzer:

     

    Kim Jong-un has just denounced K-pop as a vicious cancer that deserves work camp execution, so, there’s that…

    I thank BTS and BlackPink for their service.

  31. 31.

    Subsole

    @SiubhanDuinne: These are the same people who spent 2016 asking Trump about Harambe…

    One twitter wag actually made a good point, that I think goes to the heart of the issue:

    “When you aren’t allowed to point out that one party is objectively better at running the country, this is the kind of stupid shit you’re left to discuss.”

  33. 33.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    The biggest news is that in photos released this week he looks like he has lost 60-80 pounds.

    Hasn’t changed his hair style, though.

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Subsole:

    “When you aren’t allowed to point out that one party is objectively better at running the country, this is the kind of stupid shit you’re left to discuss.”

    Exactly. Very well put.

    (I had, sadly, forgotten the gorilla’s name, although not the incident, and had to Google “Harambe.”)

  36. 36.

    Adam L Silverman

    I’m done for the night before I write something someone else will regret. I’m in no mood for arguing this stuff tonight and that has nothing to do with anyone here and I don’t want to aim that at anyone here either.

    Everyone have a good night.

  37. 37.

    Mike G

    @Subsole:

    Why the corporate media love Trump, he dumbs everything down to their level and provides endless antics to get attention. They don’t have to pretend to be heirs of Edward R. Murrow and can let their shallow, venal, stupid flag fly.

  39. 39.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: Not entirely.

    What is it that you want to change about Putin’s behavior? Specific issues need to be addressed specifically. One national leader can’t just say to another “I don’t like the cut of your jib – stop or I’ll bomb you!”

    Or they can if they are Leonid Brezhnev speaking to Alexander Dubček in 1968, and one might argue that that didn’t turn out so well.

    What, specifically, do you want Putin to stop, and what targeted intervention might stop his doing it

    ETA: I see Adam has signed off for the night, so I’ll save commentary for my own post.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: First, I’m sorry if that came across as overly harsh.

    Substantively in response: I agree that we aren’t going to change his behavior. What that means is we change ours and how we relate to him. But that means we change ours. We don’t reward him with meetings. We freeze him out. He wants our attention and needs are engagement otherwise he’s just running a crime cartel masquerading as a state, not a great or even significant power. We also change our behavior. We show the flag as they say. Training rotations as I described in the post. Cut him off from the banking and trading exchanges. If we can find and claw back the bitcoin ransom Colonial paid, then we find and seize his ill gotten assets and those of the oligarchs he protects and who, in return for that protection, support him. We freeze him out.

  44. 44.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: Before Trump was even President, Putin was carrying out a propaganda campaign in the US to curry favor with right-wingers, particularly evangelicals, and contrast him favorably with Obama. A popular line on the right was “Putin is a strong leader who loves his country” (implying that Obama was neither).

  48. 48.

    Citizen Alan

    @Adam L Silverman: 

    Honestly, I fail to see what Biden can do to influence Putin’s behavior when as a practical matter he can’t even do anything to influence Mitch McConnell’s behavior and damned little to influence Joe Manchin’s.

  49. 49.

    JoyceH

    @Adam L Silverman: 

    My take. I don’t think Biden is “rewarding” Putin with a meeting, I think there are some things he wants to say to him in person. Classified stuff that Putin knows but doesn’t yet know that we know. (Or the intel community knows.) I think he’s going to deliver a message something along the lines of “we can respond to these actions and just because Trump didn’t doesn’t mean that we won’t.”

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    @opiejeanne

    !) Because Putin is a (for lack of a more succinct term) celebrity name which without delving beneath the surface draws eyeballs and clicks and creates buzz among the chatterati.

    2) Because if NBC gave it a pass another outfit would step in before you could say Yuri Gagarin.

    Q.E.D.

  51. 51.

    Librarian

    I’m one who thinks this summit is a very bad idea. We are giving Putin something he wants for free without him  doing anything in return. At a time when he is practically waging war on us. We have not tried to get any concessions from him, not on human rights, not on nothing. We are giving him the legitimacy he craves and he perceives all we’re doing as a sign of weakness. I don’t know what Biden is thinking.

  52. 52.

    Another Scott

    @Librarian: On the other hand, making it crystal clear to the leader of our principal adversary (and it still is Russia, not China, IMHO) what we expected from the relationship, etc., is a good thing.

    Misunderstandings can lead to very bad outcomes.

    I don’t think that clearing the air after TFG is a “reward”, myself.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  53. 53.

    piratedan

    this cycles back to something that has always bothered me… namely who are the people who are developing the framing used by our media.  The faceless producers and managers who decide the type of questions asked and the context in which they are framed.

    In my opinion, these are the people who are the invisible hands guiding our demise because they are either complicit with fascism or sociopaths who simply don’t give a narcissistic fuck.

  54. 54.

    Gravenstone

    @Subsole: The sister probably assumes control of the state. Assuming she isn’t responsible for his death in the first place…

  55. 55.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: I know, it’s so disguising. I’m old enough that the shirts some of them were wearing saying they’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat were shocking to me. That’s when I knew for sure it wasn’t the party of Reagan anymore.

  56. 56.

    TriassicSands

    @Gravenstone:

    Assuming she isn’t responsible for his death in the first place…

    I’m not sure why that would be disqualifying. If she could pull off an assassination of Dear Leader,” it would seem likely that she might have some consequential backing.

    Who knows? It’s North Koreatown, Jake.

  57. 57.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    On the surface I fail to see the purpose of the meeting. At the same time, most of the world views Putin as monster and that’s not going to change.

  59. 59.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @piratedan: … who are the people who are developing the framing used by our media. The faceless producers and managers who decide the type of questions asked and the context in which they are framed.​

    IMO you’re just one step shy of the real question: Who are the people who are setting the agenda for the media and paying “the faceless producers and managers” to develop and elaborate the framing (all the way down to the misleading headlines and chyrons that misrepresent the content of reporting to those of minuscule attention span)?

    Answer: The wannabe Global Oligarchs. Who want to own everything, pay for nothing, go wherever they want and do whatever they want without any consequences whatsoever. They treat Putin as an associate member of the Global Oligarchy Project since he’s furthering their cause by undermining liberal democracy and popular rule wherever it still exists.

  61. 61.

    Geminid

    It is a big day in Israel. At 4pm local time, less than four hours from now, the Knesset will meet. A new Speaker will be voted upon, party leaders will speak, and then MKs will vote on the new 8 party “Change Coalition.” Barring any last minute surprise, a new government will be intalled by a 61-59 majority.

  63. 63.

    Chris Johnson

    @Librarian: I wonder whether there’s an element of

    ‘give him enough rope and he’ll hang himself’.

    We are certainly not looking to set up an authoritarian strongman vs. authoritarian strongman fight and say that ours is better. Biden is a public servant. Big difference, that is to our credit.

    I really wonder if it is possible to ‘gotcha’ Putin in some way through acting civilized with him. The whole problem is that he is NOT really a civilized, decent person but makes an effort to pretend that he is.

    I also know that right wing nut jobs and monsters often go looking for abuse so they can cry foul. I can see that, tactically, Putin would like to blandly smile and look innocent while the USA goes into a frenzy of abuse and hatred (because Putin controls a bunch of Americans who would like to cry foul about stuff like that, for political advantage)

  64. 64.

    Graham

    Not sure if this is off topic, but I read all the time about the computer whizzes in Russia and China attacking us in various ways…..well, are their nerds better than ours? We have to be just as active and at least as good at cyber strategies as those 2. We of course would not broadcast what we are doing in this sphere, but if Adam and or Cheryl have any insight on this, I’d like to hear those insights.

  65. 65.

    J R in WV

    @Graham:

    The problem with loosing our nerds on Russia is that we (at least in theory) are a nation of law, and cyber-attack on any economic entity is illegal. Russia is not a nation under law, which is why people who oppose Putin appear to die from nerve gas attacks so often.

    On the other hand, we have and do use cyber-attacks on some enemies, such as the Iranian nuclear projects, which led to many of their expensive centrifuges spinning up to destruction in the STUX-net attack some years ago, prior to the Joint Agreement Trump rejected, and which Biden’s State Dept is attempting to restart.

    IIRC STUX-net was loaded onto then-expensive thumb-drives which were dropped in sensitive areas where nerds were likely to pick them up and try them to see if they worked. They did work, just not in a positive manner for the Iranian nerds.

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @J R in WV: There are probably lots of tools in the toolbox, but the west probably doesn’t want to overtly use some/many/most of them.  E.g. a Great(er) Firewall.  The western world could try to block all IP traffic from Russia.  Yeah, there are ways around it, but it would cause them lots of headaches (and make it harder for western companies operating in Russia).

    Hypothetical Biden – “As long as Russia is home to and protector of black hats that are attacking us, our friends, and allies, we will take these actions to protect our interests…”

    I’m sure they’ve considered such thing, and others.  And considered potential responses.  We’ll see what happens.

    Cheers,
    Scott

  67. 67.

    Thymezone

    The media is not about doing good things. It’s about about competing for attention. Putin is a big Get. That’s all they care about.

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