The DC news loops twirled into so many tangled knots this past week, that Tuesday’s bombshell firing of Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, by today feels like ancient news. The era of Trump increased the speed of the 24/7 news cycle dramatically, with the news media spinning out of control, often reporting hours of poorly vetted and unvetted information via tweets and retweets on Twitter, which the cable and print media then circulate. It leaves many Americans consuming incomplete or false information sold as “news”, but even more than that it creates such a large volume of information piled up, that it becomes a daunting task to even sift for facts.
A very disturbing effort at character assassination took place this week too. With the announcement of Mike Pompeo as President Trump’s choice to replace Rex Tillerson, came the announcement that Gina Haspel, a Deputy Director of the CIA was nominated to become the CIA Director. Haspel became the target of a concerted media effort to destroy her reputation and tar her as a war criminal, who oversaw torture of prisoners at a CIA black site.
Once Haspel’s good name and reputation were completely sullied, ProPublica, which ran the damning report, which sent the mainstream media into its full-throated smear effort, issued a correction. They admitted they got the story wrong and Haspel wasn’t in charge of that CIA black site during the alleged interrogations (the ones the media dubs torture). Then in the most amazing feat of hypocrisy and self-delusion, these very same “journalists” began tweeting praise for ProPublica’s transparency and how wonderful it was that they corrected the story. There seemed to be no awareness that they and ProPublica deliberately spent days destroying the good name and reputation of Gina Haspel and NONE of these other journalists bothered to get off their butts and independently investigate the FACTS in ProPublica’s story. They all ran with ProPublica’s story.
Once Tillerson was fired many big name reporters also began a high-pitched, non-stop whispering campaign, about which other cabinet officials President Trump was going to fire next, citing unnamed sources naturally. Reporting like this, from ace Trump whisperer, NY Times journalist, Maggie Haberman highlights this type of reporting:
And, again, another change – McMaster, who struggled to find equilibrium with a disdainful Trump last year, no longer really cares and is fine if he is dismissed, per ppl close to him.
McMaster was said by many ppl in the White House to be gone as soon as tomorrow – again, timing accelerated by Kelly. But, as Trump often does, a media story can push him away from where he was leaning in the first place and all around him end up tarred.
Your head will literally be spinning with some of her breathless innuendo, always presented as “facts” and always cited as having numerous WH sources close to the matter. When her innuendo doesn’t pan out, she excuses it as Trump changed course, because of their reporting… It’s really risky to report as “fact” things people have NOT done yet. It’s also risky to report on the “thinking of one person” based on second and third hand sources, but this SPIN effort to deliberately paint the White House in chaos was a full-court mainstream media effort from Tuesday to Friday. The mainstream media was determined to present the White House as crumbling.
Within the White House, this type of mainstream media SPIN effort fuels distrust and anxiety among the President’s staff, which is what the mainstream media SPIN effort was intended to do. It is part of the Left’s effort to take down Trump.
President Trump plays into a lot of this chaos and he also seems to feed on the power trip of having his staff walking on eggshells, wondering if they might be next to be fired or perhaps in Trump’s reality TV presidency production, cliffhangers like this staff chaos are good for viewers. He doesn’t seem to be able to view the presidency as a serious position of trust, which demands he behave befitting the Office of the President. With him, the presidency plods along as a reality TV production, to the detriment of the American people, but even more to the detriment of himself, because he has done nothing to bridge any of the divides in America or win acceptance among of over half of the country. He also has not managed to defeat the Left’s #Resist effort, so he is stuck in this endless, death-match SPIN battle.
Friday almost passed with no big bombshell Trump news, but then late last night news broke of Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, firing Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s #2 top guy.
Today has the mainstream media railing about how badly McCabe has been treated, quoting Eric Holder and John Brennan as moral guideposts and pretty much in a state of hysterics. So much for any objectivity. And of course, within hours, there was President Trump throwing more fuel on the fire, tweeting:
Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!
The Left, which includes most of the mainstream media and Trump are still locked in this scorched earth information war and it’s still a war where neither side seems to be able to win.
The clear loser, as usual, is the American people. We are held hostage to their SPIN and trying to sort through the mountains of distortions, disinformation, misinformation and downright fabrications spewed by both sides is an almost impossible task, unless you have plenty of spare time to devote to fact-checking and research.
No end in sight anytime soon… The 2016 scorched earth information war flickers on and on and on…
libertybelle diaries 
Not figuring LB myself to be “as the kids” say so LOL but this one, I figured gets it pretty close:
https://havechanged.blogspot.com/2018/03/another-fine-mess_17.html
That about sums it up JK.
I highly recommend a book for you LB:
Although only into about the middle I expect the remainder to be as wonderful as the portrait Mr. McCullough “painted” of Harriet (Elizabeth!) Beecher Stowe.
Thanks JK, I’ll have to read this.