This morning, the @washingtonpost published an exhaustive investigation of the Biden classified docs story by some of its best reporters showing that Biden’s lawyers and aides did everything right, and nobody noticed. https://t.co/KGpCHdRNXc
— Peter Sagal (@petersagal) January 20, 2023
Our Failed Major Media may’ve spent four years badly underestimating the damage TFG was doing to national security, but by gawd they’re gonna make up for it by chewing on President Biden’s ankles now. Both sides!, the signature call of the Media Village Idiots as they flock up…
They alerted the Archives. They alerted the DOJ. Nobody without clearances handled the documents. They made no statements for fear of being accused of interfering with the inquiry. Etc.
— Peter Sagal (@petersagal) January 20, 2023
No one would be this transparent & correct unless they had something even darker & more horrifying to hide /s https://t.co/3OX803eGpX
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) January 20, 2023
That’s because today’s White House reporters would rather have you focus on their whiny shit instead…https://t.co/3If9I5NJiD
Today’s White House reporters don’t want the boring truth. They want juicy, gossipy click-bait headlines. They all miss the Trump circus atmosphere!— post.news/donnayoungdc @[email protected] (@DonnaYoungDC) January 20, 2023
At its best the NYT is the best newspaper in the country. But it’s often far from its best, & puts out a fuckton of craptacular garbage. The Washington Post, however, seldom is as bad as the NYT
But when the WaPo is horrible it’s usually Michael Scherer, Annie Linsky, or Viser https://t.co/F4MKwjtI81
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 20, 2023
FTFNYTimes, of course, cannot allow this challenge to go unanswered:
I apologize for being crude, but I honestly can’t think of another way to summarize my reaction, so I’m just gonna go with it:
What the fuck did I just read? pic.twitter.com/dibGXgpe1f
— Magdi Jacobs (@magi_jay) January 20, 2023
68 Days of Silence: Why the White House Stayed Mum on Classified Documents
the white house not making a public announcement about an investigation that they have been participating in entirely in good faith because they didn’t think there would end up being anything to announce is not an especially juicy story
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) January 20, 2023
My gut says they're pissed they didn't get any leaks or scoops. What they want is normalcy, & to them "normalcy" means both a competent, earnest government, & ample opportunities for reporters to take potshots at & stoke drama around that government. They want Bill Clinton back.
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) January 21, 2023
Omnes Omnibus
This is a triple-decker nothingburger, but the MSM is going to push it as hard as they can and panicky people on our side are going to decide that this is Biden’s Katrina.
bbleh
Young is right: they want a circus, and they want it because (1) it’s easy for them and (2) it keeps their readers/watchers entertained, and by now it should be abundantly clear that the MSM are more about entertainment than information.
bbleh
@Omnes Omnibus: wait what? Panicky Democrats? Say it ain’t so!
JPL
So now they found classified documents from his time in the Senate. Oh no, let’s not share them with Gorbachev.. Really are they still classified?
Mike in NC
@bbleh: Infotainment is everything the Village Idiots crave. They honestly miss the chaos and corruption that Fat Bastard fed them daily.
Jackie
I think the FBI needs to do some additional searching of ALL OF Trump’s properties – including overseas.
Just sayin’…
JPL
A few days ago, Cooks Political report said the documents could hurt Biden’s chance to negotiate with the republicans over the debt limit.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: They are classified until they are declassified.
ETA: Per Another Scott below, this is not necessarily true.
gene108
@bbleh:
MSM is mostly part of larger for-profit entities, and their performance is judged on their profitability.
Everything else seems secondary these days.
Bill Arnold
For those who might enjoy a (NYTimes) story about a young (in her 20s) woman who allegedly defrauded JPMorgan:
How Charlie Javice Got JPMorgan to Pay $175 Million for … What Exactly? – A young founder promised to simplify the college financial aid process. It was a compelling pitch. Especially, as now seems likely, to those with little firsthand knowledge of financial aid. (Ron Lieber, Jan. 21, 2023)
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL:
It will make absolutely no difference. It isn’t a real scandal, so let’s not treat it as one.
Another Scott
@JPL:
Some stuff is automatically declassified after 25 years. Some isn’t.
Without knowing the details, we can’t know what bin the stuff from Biden’s office is in.
Cheers,
Scott.
gene108
@Mike in NC:
TFG was great for ratings and subscription sales. Unfortunately, the MSM interpreted this to mean people wanted the drama of TFG, not realizing a bunch of moderate and liberal Americans were scared by the freak show and wanted honest information about the horror they witnessed.
oldgold
Biden did make a mistake. It was appointing Merrick Garland Attorney General.
JPL
@Omnes Omnibus: I understand that but it seems odd to search records going that far back. It’s nice to see the FBI spending twelve hours at Biden’s house though. Now the trump folks won’t complain.
I’m joking
bbleh
@gene108: waddaya mean “seems” secondary? Do you not subscribe the to Profit Motive™? Are you not aligned with Corporate Goals?!?
This is very disturbing and likely will be brought up in your performance review.
OzarkHillbilly
Maybe I have a dirty mind, but there is an awful lot of sexual innuendo going on there.
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly: Dirty Mind?
Cameron
It’s not just Our Liberal Media. A big chunk of voters equate entertainment with government. I don’t know if this is a modern phenomenon or not, but I’m sceptical about FDR D’s electoral chances if he had said we have nothing to fear but Jewish space lasers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cameron:
FED?
Steeplejack
I saw the @magi_jay tweet with the “‘coöperate fully’ as a ‘strategy’” thing earlier today and almost choked. That is some serious bullshit right there.
Cameron
@Omnes Omnibus: typo – fat fingers, slow brain
different-church-lady
Biden did everything right and nobody noticed? They completely fuckin’ noticed! They just didn’t give a shit, because they have an agenda.
different-church-lady
@Steeplejack: “This total honesty thing has got to be covering up for something!”
Dorothy A. Winsor
I have faith in Biden and believe the document stuff will come to nothing. But I still can’t stand hearing the drip, drip of this day after day. Reporters and Rs get so breathless about it
Jerzy Russian
@Steeplejack: Yes, my chin dropped and almost hit the cat sitting on my lap when I read that. I understand we have a First Amendment and all that, but saying/writing shit as stupid as that needs to have physical painful consequences if we are to move forward and survive as a nation.
Bobby Thomson
OT: Fitzpatrick (PA-01) introduced three election bills – one good but possibly not constitutional, two wolves in sheep’s clothing.
H.R. 157 requires that all redistricting be done by nonpartisan commissions.
H.R. 154 requires photo ID for all voting. Combined with states putting all the DMVs in white areas, this one is pretty self-explanatory.
H.R. 156 prohibits anyone but an immediate family member or caregiver from returning a mail-in ballot, and that person is limited to two at a time. This effectively disenfranchises people on reservations.
Cameron
So, that freedom of the press thingie is important because?
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s nothing. I think it’s time to search through the homes of all our elected officials. Let’s start with Kevin and Mitch.
James E Powell
@Bill Arnold:
As with Elizabeth Holmes & SBF, it’s fun to jump back a year or so to read the glowing articles like this one or to youtube to watch the sponge bath interviews like this one.
I’m sure this is the only investment that JP Morgan didn’t properly research & investigate. After all, it was only $175 million of other people’s money.
Faithful Lurker
@Jackie: I want to know what’s in that coffin that 10 men had trouble carrying that was supposed to be the ashes of a cremated Ivanka Trump.
bbleh
@Dorothy A. Winsor: my read on it is, the Biden people are scouring ruthlessly, going public immediately, and banking on the storm passing. And I’d say they’re probably right. The MSM Shows will have plenty of things to obsess about in the near future — long before there are any significant large-scale political contests (and no, the debt ceiling is very important, but it’s entirely an inside-the-Beltway thing) — and I think they figure, correctly, that any attempts to resurrect the issue will come to naught precisely because they truly have let it all hang out.
And yeah, the rightwing echo chamber will never let it go, and the false equivalence with Trump will never end, but I think that’s going to be limited to the Swamp of the Crazy, along with Pizzagate and Vince Foster and dog knows what else, and ain’t no point in trying to deal with that.
Suzanne
I am having interior design angst. It’s so hard, y’all.
My Spawn’s toys are driving me up a goddamn tree. They are fucking with my living room goals.
I am planning a trip to Brimfield this summer. This house has walls and ergo needs art to hang on them. I went to the picture frame shop today. One of the items I got when my grandparents died was a small papyrus from Giza. My grandfather had worked for PanAm for years and had been many places, but I don’t think he had ever been to Egypt. I am guessing that it was a gift. Anyway, they had had it in a frame that had broken, so I am getting it a beautiful new frame.
Brachiator
It has been frustrating to watch elements of the media insist that Biden’s “mishandling” of classified documents was a massive violation of… something….
“It was political! Both sides! It was a betrayal of transparency! As VP, Biden lacked Trump’s magical power to de-classsify documents with his mind! Biden should have self-impeached before the mid-terms!”
And of course, the focus on Biden allowed the media to let Trump off the hook.
I mentioned before that I listened to a talk radio host interview a security expert with over 40 years experience lay out what might be important to an investigation, without blaming or condemning Biden. The next day the host was back to bleating about how Biden was in big trouble for keeping “hundreds” of classified documents.
It’s all a waste of time.
jackmac
The breathless headline on the NYT web story tells how investigators SEIZE more classified documents from Biden’s home.
NYT is really working that thesaurus to describe the new haul — a half-dozen documents.
JPL
@jackmac: omg even from when he was in the Senate. If I were paying more than $4.00 a month for everything including puzzles and cooking, I’d cancel my membership.
Starfish
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Has anything new come out on the documents?
I think one was top secret. There were maybe a dozen documents in three locations. And that was about it, right?
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Not necessarily.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Starfish: I haven’t followed the details, and I don’t think they’ve released what’s been found in any detail. It sounds like mostly rumor to me.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@jackmac:
Kind of a leap from “seized” to “at the invitation of his lawyers”, but what do I know?
Grumpy Old Railroader
The thing that both the FNYT, WaPo, White House Press and MSM in general forget is that for all their breathless reporting, nobody on the left, right or center will change their mind based on said reporting because everybody believes in their own facts and nobody believes click bait reporting -except- when that reporting supports their own version of facts
Starfish
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh. I guess they found six more today. Basically, what everyone was recommending was go do a THOROUGH search, so things do not continue to trickle out, and it looks like with the search of his home, that is what they did?
cain
@bbleh: and they don’t care about the ramifications or if people get hurt. In fact, that just means they can write more shit about what’s going on. It’s like we’re all Princess Diana. They would be happy to see Democracy almost die so that they can report it, have a bunch of shows – and of course blame the Democratic party – the only party that plays by the rules.
mrmoshpotato
These fuckers should be juicied in the face.
UncleEbeneezer
@James E Powell: Ever notice how all these scammers and cult leaders supposedly have charm/charisma (according to media and their followers), yet to my eyes they are always robotic, awkward and weird. I’ve never once seen one that I thought “oh yeah, I can see how people would get really into them.”
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s what I was talking about the other day. The use of evocative language in lieu of facts is a red flag.
Ella in New Mexico
They found six more “possibly classified” items in Wilmington after Biden and his lawyers let them in without a warrant.
We’ve yet to hear what level of classification any of the documents were, but for some reason I’m betting he didn’t have a hit list of clandestine HUMINT he handed to MBS, Putin and other murderous despots around the world.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yesterday’s search turned up six more documents so I think we are up to 24 or so. It’s only drip, drip, drip because MSM and especially the NYT make it so.
JPL
@Ella in New Mexico: I assume there is nothing to indicate that he sold secrets to Saudi Arabia.
Omnes Omnibus
You want a big deal? Here’s one.
HumboldtBlue
FLY EAGLES FLY!!!!
bbleh
@JPL: Some of those “documents” were single pages, if I’m reading correctly, so the volume is still way below what they were given, or eventually had to seize, at Mar-a-Lardo. And I think the drip-drip is a conscious decision on the part of the Biden people not to delay at all, despite a “bulk release” perhaps generating fewer headlines, just to be squeaky-clean about it.
And in the end, quite apart from the literal order of magnitude difference in number of documents (not to mention pages), the story is still about cooperation vs. obstruction. One TRUSTS the Biden people will be hammering that hard when the time comes.
mrmoshpotato
@Faithful Lurker:
The orange shitstain’s massive ego. And, no, it wasn’t buried (Dump’s ego).
Geminid
Git ’em, Magdi!
Baud
@Geminid:
I agree. That sentence is atrocious. The NYT is garbage.
Mallard Filmore
@Bobby Thomson:
Is getting a photo ID free?
Are applicants guaranteed to not get fired for taking time off to get the ID?
Self, get real.
James E Powell
@bbleh:
While this is true, the political press, especially the NYT & the cable shows, react with undisguised glee when they’ve got something to attack any leading Democrat. They amplify & exaggerate whatever they can.
This defined all eight years of Bill Clinton. The press practically bragged about how much they were harming Al Gore in 2000. They hated Hillary Clinton from the first moment they met her.
More recently, look how they reacted when President Biden ended the pointless Afghanistan adventure.
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
But it’s already a nothing. The press mentions classified documents and some people immediately jump to the idea of danger or risks to national security and some act of failure by Biden.
But no one knows what information was in the documents. And it has not been disclosed whether the documents were locked away or who had access to them or whether anyone who did not have sufficient clearance had access to them.
What we know is that when the documents were discovered, authorities were notified. This appears to be proper procedure.
mrmoshpotato
Dibs!
Geminid
@Baud: If I were King of the World, the first thing I’d do would be to make Magdi Jacobs Editor in Chief of the New York Times, with authority to hire and fire. Mangy Jay would straighten out that rag.
bbleh
@James E Powell: I attribute that to the Bothsides Reflex, for which there is AMPLE motivation, including both reader/viewership and thus profit for the organizations, and personal beat-sweetening and career advancement for individual journalists.
That is, there’s FAR less to beat up Dems about than Republicans, so they jump at every chance.
Mai Naem mobile
Most of the country doesn’t care. I guarantee if Jimmy Kimmel did one of his man on the street interviews and asks a dozen people about Biden’s document ‘scandal’ 9 of the 12 would have no idea what he was talking about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mallard Filmore: There’s more than that to it. What about people whose birth certificates were in the court house that burned down? Or people who, for example, need to go from MIlwaukee or Buffalo to Asscrack, AR, to get their documents and can’t afford to travel? The list just goes on and on.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think the most disturbing part of this is the issuing agencies didn’t ask for these documents back when Biden was out of office.
I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the procedure is the next admin has to order anyclassified documents issued to the previous admin returned and Trump was too busy tweeting to be bothered to listen to the little people were trying to brief him on.
Steeplejack
@different-church-lady:
😹 Exactly!
Ohio Mom
@Omnes Omnibus: The Ohio legislature is enacting a photo ID requirement and saying that state IDs will be free.
But they skip over the parts about birth certificates not being free, and about the hassles of acquiring your birth certificate, not to mention what other roadblocks might exist for the other documentation they are going to require for the free photo ID.
Some time after 9/11, my then 70-something aunt in the Bronx realized that since she had given up driving years earlier (and had never had a passport), she wasn’t going to be able to fly to Seattle to visit her daughters ever again without digging up all kinds of paperwork and getting a state ID. Which she did. I only tell this story to show that all sorts of people don’t have photo IDs, even old Jewish ladies in NYC.
bbleh
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: the not-so-secret fact of the matter is, documents with classified markings — and copies of them — go missing ALL THE TIME, especially in places like the WH where they’re flying around like cards in a deck. Documents are transported and used by individuals (with clearance and need-to-know), so when a document is in someone’s custody it’s up to him/her to safeguard it, rather than up to the issuing agency, and not every individual in every situation — especially in high-volume, high-pressure, fast-paced environments like the WH — is 100% reliable. Manifold thousands of individuals and millions of documents — things slip. It’s simply unrealistic to expect there to be some sort of infallible cosmic log or something.
The issue here is, what happens when there’s a mistake. The Biden people have done things right so far (and of course it needs to be found out how the slip occurred and how it can be prevented in the future). The Trump people did things very very wrong, including not responding correctly or completely when the Archives DID ask for documents back that they knew about, and then stonewalling and apparently obstructing (eg moving boxes around), to the point that a Federal Magistrate issued a search warrant for the property of a former President of the United States.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ohio Mom: My examples were only slightly fictionalized ones that occurred when WI started requiring voter ID. The ID here is free. Getting the paperwork to get one is not. Middle class and above people have little idea how hard it can be.
Omnes Omnibus
@bbleh:
This is exactly correct.
Kelly
Seems like a comprehensive single catalog of all classified documents would also be a single point for a massive security failure.
SuzieC
@Bobby Thomson:
No. 1 is fantastic.
Nos. 2 and 3 could possibly be negotiated until better.
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
How the hell you in Philly news feeds?
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: ????
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
I saw your reply to John Clark on Twitter about Peyton’s kid wearing a Hurts jersey.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Better yet, Jay Rosen. He’s been accurately diagnosing and calling out the problems with the media for over a decade.
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: I saw it off of a Twitter Nixon retweet. Am I wrong though?
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hell no.
Chris T.
@different-church-lady:
Today, the Biden administration did everything right and nothing wrong, which we find deeply disturbing.
The White House and Senate did what they were supposed to do, which gets us no clicks or headlines. Meanwhile House Republicans encouraged citizens to hunt Democrats with AR-15s—a type of gun that doesn’t exist, so this is all fine—and used the Jewish Space Lasers to set fire to the Capitol building, which made for a lovely marshmallow roast.
Brett Kavanaugh drank an entire keg by himself, and totally didn’t reveal to us the SCOTUS plan to replace “one man one vote” with “one dollar one vote”, which you didn’t hear from us.
p.a.
Political reporting reminds me of the saying “the big secret adults don’t tell you when you’re growing up is that adult life is just like junior high”😱
Can’t remember the source, but too true.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: Yes, are better and more experienced prospects for the running the NYT than Magdi Jacobs. She’s fairly new on the scene, and her longer pieces have only made onto sites like Dame Magazine John Stoehr’s The Editorial Board in the last couple of years. A piece for Foreign Affairs sbout her experience with the public health system caught a lot of attention because of the ongoing debate over the response by public officials to the pandemic.
But Jacobs is objective and very honest in her arguments, and she sees right through the tricks that elite journalists engage in. She also has an outsider’s point of view that elevates her work above that of elite journalists whose identification with economic and social elites is a defect. Another one of Jacobs’ assets is a good backgound in social science method which she takes seriously.
So I if the Empress of the Universe gave me plenary powers to reform American journalism, I’d put someone with more experience in charge of the Times and funnel money to John Stoehr’s Editorial Board so he could hire Jacobs full time. Outfits like Stoehr’s and Josh Marshall’s fill a valuable role.
Then, I would indulge my mean streak by making those jerks at Jacobin Magazine publish under the title Jerkobin. And require them to display under their masthead this line from Magdi Jacobs’ review of one of their articles :
AM in NC
@Suzanne: When we had small spawn and our living room looked like a bomb went off from all of the tiny toys, I got a couple of African market baskets to gather up the mess in every night. Worked pretty well – took no time to pitch the crap into the baskets, and the baskets themselves were very pretty.
Plus, they are handmade, fair-trade items (usually) that support women artisans in Africa, and ours have lasted over 15 years (so far).
MissBarbie
@Faithful Lurker: Yeah. You and me both! I do not believe she died in an accidental fall.