Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept, and Ryan Grim, the DC Bureau Chief of The Intercept, both had thoughts over the weekend over the recent Giuliani and Bannon pushed misinformation and agitprop campaign against VP Biden.
Democrats knew the entire time that this would be Trump’s final move, and that this would roughly be how it rolls out. If there does turn out to be a ton more that is legit and credible, they can blame Russia all they want, but they’ll have themselves to blame for walking into it
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 18, 2020
Right but the primary turned on electability, and Democrats calculated that Trump’s plan to weaponize Hunter — which he telegraphed so thoroughly he got impeached — wouldn’t be effective. We’re about to see if that was a good bet.
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 18, 2020
Spare me the bullshit of how Biden (and the EU) wanted the prosecutor fired because he wasn’t vigilant enough about fighting corruption. The US & EU don’t care if their puppet regimes tolerate domestic corruption. Why is the US VP dictating who the Ukrainian prosecutor should be?
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 18, 2020
From Robert Mackey’s reporting in The Intercept from May 10, 2019 (emphasis mine):
VIRAL RUMORS THAT Joe Biden abused his power as vice president to protect his son’s business interests in Ukraine in 2016, which spread last week from the pro-Trump media ecosystem to the New York Times, are “absolute nonsense,” according to Ukraine’s leading anti-corruption activist. That evaluation is backed by foreign correspondents in Kiev and a former official with knowledge of Biden’s outreach to Ukraine after President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed in a popular uprising in 2014.
The accusation is that Biden blackmailed Ukraine’s new leaders into firing the country’s chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to derail an investigation he was leading into a Ukrainian gas company that the vice president’s son, Hunter, was paid to advise.
The truth, Kaleniuk said, is that Shokin was forced from office at Biden’s urging because he had failed to conduct thorough investigations of corruption, and had stifled efforts to investigate embezzlement and misconduct by public officials following the 2014 uprising.
Properly debunking this particular conspiracy theory is easier said than done, though, since it is set in Ukraine, a country with byzantine political intrigue at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. The rivalries between political factions in Kyiv are so intense that even the country’s new anti-corruption agencies are at each other’s throats.
There is no question that Biden did, during a visit to Kyiv in late 2015, threaten to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless Shokin was dismissed. But the vice president, who was leading the Obama administration’s effort to fight corruption in Ukraine, did the country a favor by hastening Shokin’s departure, Kaleniuk said, since he had failed to properly investigate corrupt officials.
“Shokin was fired because he attacked the reformers within the prosecutor general’s office,” Kaleniuk said, “reformers who tried to investigate corrupt prosecutors.”
Before it reached the Times, the frenzied speculation about Biden, and the supposed meddling in the 2016 election by anti-corruption prosecutors in Ukraine, was regularly featured on a network of far-right websites that work to boost Trump and undermine Democrats. Among the first outlets to promote the idea of the Ukrainians as the real meddlers was Sputnik, a Russian state-owned news agency. That theme, and related conspiracy theories about Ukraine and Democrats, were then featured in a series of opinion columns by John Solomon, a columnist for The Hill in Washington. Solomon’s stories, based on interviews with disgruntled, far-right Ukrainian officials who had previously been featured in Sputnik, have been enthusiastically embraced by the conspiracy theorist-in-chief.
Much more at the link, as well as at this subsequent reporting by Mackey in The Intercept.
We know that all of the Hunter Biden was doing illegal things in Ukraine, and elsewhere by leveraging his father the Vice President misinformation and agitprop was first seeded in RIA Novosti in May 2014. It was an early attempt to dirty up VP Biden, as well as Secretary Kerry and VP Cheney by suggesting their children were engaged in illegal activities in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states in case any or all three of them ran for president in 2016. Once again, here’s the screen grab with the link to where I found it.
It was also an attempt to throw as much garbage out there to make it difficult for anyone who was not a Ukraine and Russia expert to cover what had been going on with the Maidan Movement, the backlash against Russian interference in Ukraine, and Russia’s response of both scarfing up Crimea through a manipulated and unreliable plebiscite and invading eastern Ukraine as part of an unconventional warfare campaign that leverages Russian special operations, Russian backed private military companies (Wagner Group), and Russian speaking/ethnic Russian Ukrainians living in Donbass and other eastern Ukrainians. I was involved with working on this problem set from January through May 2014 when I was assigned, under temporary assigned control, as the Cultural Advisor to the Commanding General of US Army Europe. This included doing an assessment and report for the Commanding General of US Army Europe on the Maidan Movement, Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs and the effects of their activities on the politics and economy of Ukraine, and Putin’s intentions for Ukraine.
Perhaps Mr. Greenwald and Mr. Grim should read the reporting in a publication called The Intercept.
Open thread!
Belafon
African American voters decided that Biden was the one most likely to address their concerns. I decided, after that, that I was going with what they thought.
Adam L Silverman
I’m going to go do a quick workout. You all have fun.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the fact that Grim learned no humility from the Tara Reade episode…. then again, neither did Chris Hayes or Rebecca Traister, who was for some reason slagging Biden, on the Hayes show, the night RBG died.
This is like trump talking about Bruce and Nellie Ohr at his rallies. Grim thinks regular Dem voters sat around weighing Hunter Biden vs Bernie’s getting kicked out of the commune, and which would play how in Paducah.
Kent
Greenwald is not any sort of reporter.
He is an activist who is actively engaged in undermining the Democratic Party and Democratic objectives. He’s frankly worse than Hannity and Tucker Carlson because he is deceptive as to his intentions. At least with them you know what you get. He’s like the Susan Collins of of the media. Pretending to express “concern” to disguise his actual agenda.
Adam L Silverman
@Belafon: Pretty much my approach too.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Polemicists have to eat too. Hell Newt Gingrich turned being a polemicist into being Speaker of the House.
Ohio Mom
This is somewhat off-topic but My, How smart and strategic it was for Pelosi to proactively address the Hunter Biden story by making it the center of the impeachment.
At the time I thought, There are gazillions of things you could build an impeachment case around, starting with all the money Trump is making off his office. In retrospect, this is why I am not a high-powered politician.
bluefish
@Belafon: Me too. Exactly my thought process.
lofgren
Greenwald’s argument is that the Obama administration could not have cared about corruption in Ukraine (a partner being threatened militarily by an enemy) because they dropped bombs on Afghanistan, an active war zone partially controlled militarily by an enemy. This is internally inconsistent even by Greenwald’s anti-imperialist standards.
Kent
@Ohio Mom: Pelosi is the most astute and strategic Democratic politician of our generation. I never thought about it that way, but it makes perfect sense in a 3-dimensional chess sort of way when you know going in that impeachment is going to fail but you have to do it anyway. In which case you might as well be strategic about it.
Immanentize
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Grim is Butthurt that The One got his ass handed to him by Biden. He needs Biden to lose so he can publish all the “Sanders would have won!” screeds he wrote back in May.
ETA. ALSO all the “why won’t people pay attention to meeee!” Grim posts re: Tara R and her magical history tour.
Kent
I still think the best tactic for Biden at this point, assuming there is another debate, is to turn to Trump and say something to the effect of:
“Mr. President. This election isn’t about our kids. It’s about you and me and the future of this country. What do you say, right here and now, MAN TO MAN we agree to keep our kids out of this and focus on the real issues that concern this country. All of our kids have made mistakes. They are human. I’ll get my people to lay off Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric. And you get your people to lay off my kids. Can we do that? MAN TO MAN? Right here and now?”
I think that sort of big debate moment would play incredibly well in middle America. It’s a real macho boss sort of play. It is what he should have done in the first debate when Trump was attacking Hunter for his struggle with cocaine addiction. And if you lay out that marker, then it makes all the subsequent bullshit like this Rudy thing look all the more petty and vile.
Obviously Trump won’t go for it. Hunter Biden 24/7 and ANTIFA is all they have at this point. But it pins him into a corner and makes him look more petty and vile when he keeps up with the Hunter Biden stuff.
Poptartacus
Lol fuck GG and all who sail with him
Let the twitteritti go picnicking on each other
The cakes baked
waspuppet
I honest to God don’t know what this is even supposed to mean. “I’m wrong, but if I’m right, it means I’m right” is the best I can come up with.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a polemicist. There’s a problem with being a polemicist and disguising your polemics as straight news reporting.
cain
@Immanentize:
Didn’t a Republican “That one” back in the 2008 / 2012 ? I keep thinking it was McCain who said it.
Twitter is all ablaze with the right coming out and calling Schiff a liar. The whole thing smells of desperation. This stupid thing is not even going to reach the common folks – it is too complex to follow, and just leaves people confused. Worse, it’s not even about Joe Biden, it’s about his son.
PPCLI
Yes, Glenn, why can’t it be the Russian president dictating that instead?
MattF
Greenwald engages in a polemical narrative that no one actually understands. I don’t know if it’s deliberate, but the result is that he’s taken sorta-seriously, which is more than you can say for other over-the-top ranters.
cain
@Roger Moore:
and being a dick about it. He’s always been that though – I remember him coming into this forum with a polemic jammed attached to his spine.
Kay
@Kent:
I disagree about that. I think Biden’s gut reaction to that was perfect. It made Trump look small and mean-spirited and contributed, I think, to Trump having a disastrous debate.
There are a LOT of addicts in this country and they all have families. I think it’s a real measure of how fucking clueless the Trump people are that they thought that was an effective attack. Maybe in 1972. Not now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
is there anyone at the Intercept who isn’t a useless crank? I’m trying to think of the the name of the once-credible foreign policy writer who went on an apparently utterly sincere rage-jag about Nancy Pelosi’s ice cream
Quaker in a Basement
Well done, Adam! You’re an asset to our little community here and this jackal salutes you.
Wyatt Salamanca
Greenwald and Grim are nothing more than useful idiots for the Rethuglican party
h/t https://www.mediaite.com/tv/exclusive-fox-news-passed-on-hunter-biden-laptop-story-over-credibility-concerns/
terry chay
A Bernie-or-buster and a Russian asset on twitter?
WHO
CARES
Gin & Tonic
Thank you for this post, Adam. Well-presented and fairly concise. You know this, but as someone who knows a bit about Ukraine I really appreciate your attention to detail and the fact that you keep posting on this.
The Thin Black Duke
I think Glen is starting to see the slow but gradual erosion of his relevance, and he’s getting hysterical about it. Good.
Kent
I think that he believes there are points to be had for being the lone wolf who sees connections and issues that no one else does. The voice in the wilderness so to speak. So he stakes out fringe positions specifically because they are fringe positions, not because they are where logic and evidence actually lead you.
I’ve known people like that in every walk of like. They are insufferably annoying everywhere you encounter them. Whether in the staff meeting at work, or in politics. Mostly you just have to learn to work around them. Greenwald is that asshole in your office who leads every staff meeting down rabbit holes that annoy everyone. And who forces everyone to develop elaborate means of working around him because you can’t work with him.
Aleta
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I bet the Reade story will be back in fireworks before this is over.
germy
Is Greenwald Steve Bannon’s contact at The Intercept?
Kent
Exactly. There are no ‘undecided’ voters anywhere who are following this sort of shit on twitter. I can promise you that.
germy
Kay
To me, the fundamental incoherence of Greenwald is exposed when he talks about interference in other countries. When he’s talking about US interference in other countries he talks about the people in those countries (distinct from their government) but when he’s talking about other countries interfering in the US he ignores the people in the US, and speaks exclusively about their political leaders.
The US public can object to the Russian government interfering in their elections, just like the Russian public can object to the US government interfering in their elections.
He erases the US public. That to me is the “tell” it’s bad faith. He conflate the US public with the US government but he doesn’t do that with any other country. It has to be consistent. If his position is that foreign governments interfering with the will of the people in other countries is bad, that would be true of foreign governments interfering with the will of the US people too.
Ivan X
@terry chay: Concur wholeheartedly.
germy
Fear?
Aleta
@germy: Some signs point to yes.
lowtechcyclist
Didn’t we all write Greenwald off years ago? Seems like he jumped the shark shortly after Shrub left office, if not before.
Hadn’t realized Ryan Grim had been one of the people pushing the Tara Reade story, and it was the sort of story that you’d only have bought into if you were hoping a bit too strongly for a story like that to be true. Plenty of other reporters saw through it.
I’d had some respect for him, but between the Reade story and this one, it’s clear that he’s turned into one of those guys who evaluates a story on whether or not it helps his side, whatever that may be. So screw him too.
laura
I’d like Ryan Grim and Glenn Greenwald to eat a bottomless bag of salted dicks. In the meantime, I’ll join the crowd standing around watching Emptywheel drag GG’s ass up one side of the boulevard and down the other and whoever is on shift to remind us that Ryan Grim’s whole ass remains out on the street peddling the shiftiest trifling scrapings of rumor-n-inuendo that no one with a lick of sense could see as anything other than 7-11 parking lot meth. Not that there’s not a market for that.
Kay
@germy:
Does this all the time. Glenn Greenwald wants you to believe his opinions are “clear and obvious facts”
The statement is all conjecture. Yet he presents it as fact. This isn’t complicated. That’s a weasel move and it’s fucking 90% of his output. I have no idea how he gets away with this and has for so long, but that is a textbook weasel statement. He has announced that his opinion is not just right, but “clear and obvious fact”
It’s not a fact.
opiejeanne
@cain: I’m not seeing anyone attacking Schiff, and I assume you mean Adam Schiff.
Chyron HR
@germy:
“Even if this story was true the liberal media still wouldn’t cover it,” is perhaps not the slam dunk argument GG imagines it to be.
BruceFromOhio
Oh, Adam, you are so cute when you are earnest.
lowtechcyclist
Bingo. Any remaining undecided voters are low-information voters who are the least likely people in America to be paying any attention at all to political Twitter.
Benw
Good lord with the Hunter crap again.
It’s the virus, stupid. Trump didn’t fix it and Biden says he will. That’s the election right there. (Plus or minus R vote thievery)
Kay
@germy:
“Emerging facts”. Guffaw. What that MEANS is he doesn’t HAVE any yet!
I give him credit. He’s the absolute master of this bullshit. I cannot believe he makes half a million dollars a year for this, but he does. It’s a real niche all right.
Wyatt Salamanca
@opiejeanne:
RedState had a post a few days back attacking Adam Schiff.
Kay
@germy:
Glenn Greenwald wants to convict Hunter Biden on “emerging facts”. He’ll have those to you next Tuesday. In the meantime, lock him up.
The thing about these people is they’re all frustrated prosecutors. They all want to convict people. There is nothing they would like better than police power, but people were too smart to give them any, so they had to style themselves as “journalists”. There’s a REAL taste for punishment. It’s gross.
BruceFromOhio
@Benw: I forget where I read it, it came down to “If you’re better off four years on, you’re voting for [preznit shitwhistle]. If you’re not, you’re voting for Biden.”
Losing a job or a loved one to COVID is a tough argument.
Dan B
Adam; Is there actually a huge struggle between the Maidan reformers and the old guard? Is it a bigger effort to deal with Russian aggression? (Could be both at once, of course.
Well written piece. Thanks!
Just One More Canuck
@Kent: He’s one step away from being the guy on the corner screaming “Don’t be a subhuman asshole – the Revenue Canada death squads are out to get you!!!” *
* Based on a true story
Jim, Foolish Literalist
LA area
Shalimar
@Aleta: Just as likely we get stories about who Trump has been fucking the last 4 years. Because you know it isn’t Melania, or any of the dozens of others like Hope Hicks who might be willing. He likes the conquest more than the sex, so it is hard to believe he has stopped harassing women who aren’t interested.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Kay:
No one plays the sanctimonious, holier than thou role better than Glenn Greenwald.
Scuffletuffle
Is anyone else getting top of the page ads in Russian?
rp
@Kay: One of the first things I was taught in law school was never use the terms “clearly” and “obviously.” They’re huge red flags that your argument is weak.
Gin & Tonic
@Dan B: Both are major issues.
opiejeanne
@Wyatt Salamanca: Thanks. I don’t read Red State, but I didn’t see anything on Twitter. Then again, I don’t follow people likely to attack Schiff as a liar so I’m sure it’s there and was curious about what had them riled up.
Gin & Tonic
@Shalimar: I’d bet real money he can’t get it up, and hasn’t actually fucked anyone in some time.
Zzyzx
This is a 2016 tactic in 2020. A random scandal like this works when the media is bored and has nothing else to cover. It works less well when there’s the constant Corona beat taking away the space for something like this.
Kay
Jesus. Just incredible. They take these accusations down like stenography so Trump gets exactly the smear he wanted, without a shred of evidence. Played. Again.
This is why he did the call. Has to have worked better than he ever imagined because even I can’t believe it.
BruceFromOhio
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, shit, that’ll go viral in a hurry.
rp
@Kay: That’s a good point. There’s also a “two wrongs make a right” element to his argument: US interfering politically or using military force = bad. Russia doing the same = ok, because the US has done it too. It’s almost a step beyond whataboutism — it’s ok if another country does something bad if the US has also done it. Of course, logically, if it’s bad that the US did it, he should also be upset that another country did it. But he doesn’t actually care about the behavior or the people affected; he only cares about attacking the US and the Democratic party.
Kay
If Donald Trump never produces the evidence he promised on that call will all the media companies who promoted the smear correct it? No, of course not.
Mission accomplished.
germy
@rp:
And he doesn’t practice law anymore. He really wasn’t a good lawyer, or a successful one.
Roger Moore
@Shalimar:
I’m going to go with “nobody, even Melania, because he can’t get it up”.
Matt McIrvin
@Aleta: I’ve been expecting that for months. Some kind of supposedly explosive, supposedly new information about the Reade situation, popping right about the end of October, too late for any detailed checking of the story to occur before the election, or before people have pounced on it with a million meta-stories about how it upends the dynamics of the race.
I don’t think it’ll work that well, though. Many of the people it would be designed to demoralize will have already voted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay:
what smear? evidence of what? what story does he think he’s promoting?
Dan B
@Kay: Excellent observation about the imbalance between Greenwald’s arguments. It’s as though imperialism can only be accomplished by the strongest and there are no skirmishes that matter. Also are American citizens powerless?
Another Scott
@Wyatt Salamanca: I was just coming here to post that. Saw it in a tweet:
There’s also this tasty tidbit: NYMag:
Murdock’s minions are losing their touch – thankfully.
Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@Roger Moore: From Stormy’s description I’m not sure there’s much there to work with. She was describing it as a little button mushroom when it was erect.
Now I need the bleach for my brain because I just typed that.
Kay
@rp:
It’s impossible to parse because his writing is so (deliberately) weasely, but first you have to define terms. If “Russia” means the Russian government then “US” means the US government, and the Russian people and the US people are not the same as their government.
The Russian government can produce an offense against the US public, and also benefit Donald Trump because you and I are not Donald Trump. The US public are then the harmed party. Russia can intend to harm the US government and harm the US public! Conversely, it is possible the US government could harm the Russian government and benefit the Russian people.
But to pretend that there is no US public? There’s “the people” in Russia and Chile but no “public” in the US? That’s just bad faith nonsense.
piratedan
in a more vindictive Dem government, I could see the smug satisfaction in de-platforming asshats like Grimm and Greenwald, but all that would do is amplify their voices and justify their ranting… There are times where if the US was as bad as we’re purported to be, by these esteemed journos, that each of them would have met with a serious balcony or bathtub accident by now.
To me, it seems like one of the long-term healing measures that have to be implemented is some kind of journalism code of ethics/conduct from people purporting to be the media… what I hate more than anything else is the lack of what I perceive to be good faith on behalf of the press, I want more information, less speculation and infotainment. I want less horse race an more elevated discussion of policy. Policy does NOT have to be boring… policy is our national continuing education. We try solve problems, not all problems have elegant solutions, we understand that… and sometimes we have to try multiple solutions to get it solved.
matt
oh yeah, fuck the Intercept and fuck Pierre Omidyar.
different-church-lady
Glenn Greenwald is a professional troll.
The Intercept is a publication founded by a professional troll.
Glenn doesn’t care if he says things that are contrary to his own publication. As a troll, he knows it just makes the whole thing even more infuriating, and that’s all trolls want to accomplish in the end..
Johannes
@Wyatt Salamanca: He’s basically devolved to Dark Shadows’ Reverend Trask without the talent or the cool cape.
northlander
Remember that time Glenn went to Moscow to take part in a panel moderated by the head of Putin’s state media organ, RT, and used the opportunity to claim that the Russia investigations were a scam?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
It’s like Глубокий Горло warned us:
Follow the rubles.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/07/glenn-greenwald-tells-russia-liberals-are-scapegoating-them.html
Baud
@piratedan:
Baud! 2036!
MC
Gloomy, drizzly day here in central Ohio, and gloomy mood to boot. I’m going to go vote tomorrow or Wednesday, in person.
I wish I had enough money that I could hunker down inside for a year and avoid the virus-ridden public.
different-church-lady
@waspuppet:
It means he’s just as gullible as the marks on the right — equally willing and eager to believe the ratfucking, if not more
BruceFromOhio
@Matt McIrvin:
Many of the people it would be designed to demoralize will not care.
zhena gogolia
@Johannes:
Jerry Lacy FTW!
BruceFromOhio
@Baud: Fundraising not going so well?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Since went does anyone who hides out in another country get an opinion on US internal politics like Greenwald? This one of those “the right kind of white bois” only situations? Not to mention reporting is mostly a matter of interviewing various people and putting those comments together into a whole, how does one do that remotely?
Yutsano
It. Wasn’t. Just. Biden’s Urging. Jeebus even when they’re trying to sell straight reporting they can’t stop selling American unilateralism. The EU was hell bent on removing Shokin as well.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
Fixed that for you.
Baud
@BruceFromOhio:
Turns out Act Blue has “standards.”
Wyatt Salamanca
@northlander:
Pepperidge Farms remembers that Glenn Greenwald is an insufferable douchebag.
Roger Moore
@Zzyzx:
There’s more to it than that. The media has also learned at least a few lessons about spotting a setup, and this whole thing has “SETUP” written across it in gigantic glowing letters. It says something that this story came out on NY Post rather than a more reputable news source, and it isn’t because they didn’t try shopping it to the reputable news. Just like the Tara Reade crap, the reputable media saw the story and refused to run it because it didn’t pass basic journalistic standards.
I think it may have been a tactical mistake to have shopped it to them in the first place. The prestige media has good journalistic standards, but can be tricked into ignoring them if there’s a media frenzy around a story. It’s as if they assume they can skip doing their diligence on the story because the other people reporting it have already vetted it. Someone trying to plant a fake story can take advantage of that by getting it to run first in lower quality media and counting on a media frenzy to get it past normal journalistic standards. That doesn’t work if the prestige media have already had a chance to investigate it and know how dodgy it is.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: At this point I think it’s more about keeping the base energized than depressing Biden’s voters. They’re down to the hail mary pass, and they know it won’t work unless they get every single one on their team into the end zone.
Kay
Donald Trump put all political media on a call today and did this:
Again
Later he goes on to explain that is says “Muslim” on the birth certificate. This is literally how the sleazy Trump Family launched their political career. Same play.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Johannes:
I look forward to the day that Greenwald becomes irrelevant.
NotMax
Brazilian proverb:
O olho do dono engorda o porco. (The owner’s eyes fatten the pig.)
G & G are hawking sickly, anorexic swine in the (media) marketplace.
different-church-lady
@Kay: He’s like a band that’s still touring but hasn’t put out an album of original material in 20 years.
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: Can it really be called “prestige media” if it employs shiteating dog-fuckers like Ken Vogel?
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: I think it comes down to this. In 2016, Trump was largely a phantom in terms of policy, with many people discounting the potential that the worst things about him were true or would come to pass. He received the benefit of the doubt — not simply from his own voters, but from people who declined to vote for Clinton and either voted third party to prove a point or sat out altogether. He gets no benefit of the doubt this time around. That makes it harder to win with poo flinging innuendo and dirty tricks.
BruceFromOhio
@Baud: Consider WinRed as an alternative. They have no standards.
Kent
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The problem they have is the boy who cried wolf syndrome. The right wing media and Fox have been spreading Biden smears 24/7 for the past year at a fever pitch. It’s more or less impossible for some new smear to break through the background noise anymore.
BruceFromOhio
@Kay: If he wants to run against Hillary’s emails and Obama’s birth certificate, I say, “Please proceed”
Kent
@Kay: For real? He’s going Obama birther TODAY? With 2 weeks left until the 2020 election? Seriously?
So Obamagate as the biggest scandal in American history fizzled out and he’s back to birtherism?
different-church-lady
@Kent: The Boy Who Cried Wolf During the Black Plague syndrome, more like.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Another Scott:
The only value of the print edition of the NY Post is to serve as lining for a bird cage or a cat litter box.
Dennis Potter got it right, when after being diagnosed with cancer he named it Rupert. After all, what is Rupert Murdoch other than a malignant carcinogen?
Aleta
@germy: If your ego, ambition and slime love have contributed to your being used or tricked, you reject all arguments and evidence that require admitting your stupidity to yourself. If you knowingly joined Bannon, etc. out of your pure lust for attacking power, or to recapture the past high of worldwide acclaim, your dependence on enablers only increases over time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: the story I’m seeing out of that call this morning is trump went on an incoherent rant and attacked St Fauci
WaterGirl
@Kent: Why would Biden want to say that? Biden’s kids have nothing to do with running the government.
Trump’s “kids” are running a good part of the government and are running this country into the ground.
Apples and oranges. Plus, Trump would never keep his word but you can damn well bet that Biden would be held accountable by the media for not keeping his, even if Trump never agreed to the bargain!
Johannes
@zhena gogolia: Huzzah! (Should Barnabas wall GG up Cask of Amontillado style? Hey, just askin’ questions!!)
Baud
@Kay: I hear the inability to detect the passage of time is a sign of cognitive decline. Maybe Trump should take another test.
Barbara
@Kay: Did anyone ask him whether he knew that he was running against Biden not Obama?
MisterForkbeard
@Yutsano: This bugs me enormously. There was a huge international effort to get this guy out, because he was hugely corrupt and it was harming other nations. Hell, the UK wanted him out because he refused to investigate Burisma.
Biden was the point man for the US prong of the international effort. In which there were good, publicly stated reasons for the public policy of putting pressure on Ukraine to clean itself up, a policy that was widely agreed upon even by Republicans.
Nothing about the rest of this makes any sense at all because the initial accusation is (pardon my language) hilariously and incredibly stupid.
@Kent: Kay is saying that Trump is duplicating the exact tactic used then, not going after the birth certificate now. But that Trump makes risible, wrong, and loud accusations all the time and gets the media to chase after it while they never cover the inevitable “It was a huge lie and Trump lied to everyone” phase of it.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@PPCLI:
I’m not sure I even follow his argument. What’s he even saying? That it’s so hard to believe that the US and the EU would care about internal corruption in a potential ally being attacked by an enemy?
Also, “Why does the US want to control everyone?” This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever read. Welcome to Great Power politics Glenn. If it wasn’t the US, it would just be somebody else. China certainly doesn’t care about the internal corruption of it’s puppets
trollhattan
@Kay:
Donnie’s got the whitey tape. At long last.
Mag
This is all I need to know about Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept. From The Washington Post, The Intercept failed to shield its confidential source:
Some say Greenwald and The Intercept are on Team Putin.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes. The prestige may be largely a legacy of better days, but NY Times is clearly prestigious.
MisterForkbeard
@Kent: It’s interesting because the Democrats have been crying wolves at actual fucking wolves for 5 years now, and the response is just “More wolves eating the flock? Lol that’s normal now and everyone already knows”.
Kent
Because Biden’s campaign strategy has nothing to do with Trump’s kids. Hunter Biden and ANTIFA is all that Trump has at this point. I don’t think Biden has ever once mentioned Trumps kids. And that certainly isn’t going to be his closing argument in the next two weeks.
Its not about rational argument. It’s about making Trump look like a tool. And giving the media a new line of questioning for the Trump campaign.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jim, Foolish Literalist
boffo
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He did not write that. English is too normal.
Kent
@Mag: One could even say “The clear and obvious fact is that Greenwald is a Russian Asset”
That’s how Greenwald would do it.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think I need a browser add-on that replaces all of Trump’s tweets with “I’m a huge, leaking asshole! Look at me assholing!”.
Actually, check that. I think Twitter needs that as a feature and you should have to affirmative click in to see the ‘real’ tweets.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Being 10 points down nationally is the best possible position for us to be in. Our plan was always to lose early and have massive Democratic turnout. Also, I am a liar.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: the Bob Hope and the first pitch sound like him though. I’m 53 and the mention of Bob Hope made me say WTF? I think most of trump’s tweeters are on sunny side of 50
also… “BOFFO”? I’m sure trump read Variety back in the day
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: I know John lets us say almost anything on this blog, but that is a bridge too far! Why do you hate us so?
I cannot un-see that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: GG is a polemicist who cloaks himself in what reads like legal writing to outsiders. He, however, does not make complete and explicit factual statements and his conclusions, both factual and legal, far too often rely on things that may be clear and obvious to him but are not really so to the rest of the world. It isn’t how reputable lawyers advance their arguments.
WaterGirl
@BruceFromOhio: Maybe he’s pulling out that old bullshit now because Obama is getting out on the campaign trail ?
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Scahill? He used to be pretty good.
@Kay: Excellent point!
geg6
@Kay:
Are you fucking kidding me? Birtherism 2.0? Seriously?
He’s lost his mind completely. I can only guess that this is because Obama is rolling out rallies for Biden this week. Socially distanced and masked, of course.
Roger Moore
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
That’s exactly what he’s saying. He starts from the belief that US foreign policy is basically selfish and the only reason we would ever get involved in another country’s internal politics is because it benefits someone here. If you start there, you’ll always be able to find some kind of evidence to justify continuing to believe it.
Omnes Omnibus
@rp: Well, clearly that is obvious.
Zzyzx
I’m assuming that that birtherism comment is a joke. It is, right?
I can’t believe I have to verify that… Blerping Trump.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I see I’m not the only one who thought of Variety:
he should’ve left out “News”
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s how lucrative lawyers advance their arguments.
germy
The parody account really captures Glenn’s tone, style, logic and vileness:
germy
This reporter left The Intercept:
trollhattan
@Mag:
They burned her but good. Glem still gets to appear on Tucker’s White Power Hour so it’s all good.
MattF
@Zzyzx: Birtherism worked last time. And emails!
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: All cynicism aside, it’s not what you can do in a court. If you try that kind of thing, the lawyers on the other side should be able to blow your argument apart.
debbie
I’m trying to picture Biden as a blackmailer. What would he do, torture you with long, rambling yarns about his childhood days until you cried uncle? 🤦🏻♀️
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Does he make the same complaint when Mitch McConnell wears a Washington Nationals mask? I’m asking because it’s one of the things about McConnell that I dislike way out of proportion to how bad it is. Really, who cares if he wears a Nationals mask? I care way more than I ought to. If he wants to wear a MLB mask, it should be for the Reds, who are the closest thing Kentucky has to a MLB team. He could also wear masks for either of Kentucky’s big college basketball teams, or for something else related to the state he’s supposed to be representing. Or he could go with something simple and dignified like Joe Biden’s masks. But wearing a Nationals mask is a way of showing he’s a creature of DC and doesn’t care who back in Kentucky knows about it.
Bill Arnold
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Giuliani and Bannon have become close to the opposite of credible to journalists. (Not entirely accidentally.) The media has been primed for a year+ to be on the lookout for concocted October Surprises, and Pelosi did some defanging (pointed out above) by tying the impeachment to Trump-directed malfeasance involving Ukraine and HB.
I don’t see how this HB story breaks out into something that the mainstream media decides is credible enough to upend the election in the next two weeks.
germy
Cameron
@Baud: Whoever wrote it doesn’t seem to know the difference between ‘exposing’ and ‘espousing.’
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: You’re quite welcome.
Elizabelle
@Kay:
Every accusation a confession. Trump is a wholly illegitimate prez, with a fake EC win which was legitimized by the Electoral College. And may they be damned.
Kay
@Zzyzx:
He didn’t say it! I was comparing his Biden smear to the birther smear because it’s the same hinting…oh, forget it :)
He didn’t say the birther smear today. 2011.
Kay
@geg6:
Trump didn’t say the birther thing today. I was making a comparison but I’m an idiot so no one understood it.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: I’m sorry. I can’t unthink it now.
lofgren
@Roger Moore: Being cynical about US foreign policy is usually a safe move. But that’s why his argument about us not caring about corruption in Ukraine while failing to overthrow the Saudi government falls apart. It’s beneficial to us to stop corruption in Ukraine! Especially when we can undermine Putin’s imperial goals at the same time. It might be beneficial for us to stop corruption in Saudi Arabia too, but overthrowing a royal family in an extremely wealthy, well-armed country is a lot more difficult than putting financial pressure on a smaller, allied country to fire a prosecutor. Failure to do the former is not evidence that the latter is some kind of conspiracy.
Bill Arnold
@germy:
Projection by GG?
He does seem to have a lot invested in this particular October Surprise.
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Arnold: I saw the betting markets are going crazy, Trump’s odds of winning shooting up to 35 or 40 percent. The Hunter story is exactly the sort of thing that the kind of people who bet in those markets think can’t miss.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
We need to be focused on making sure it and the similar late nonsense all miss. Any new Trump scandals in the pipeline, or older ones with new freshness?
debbie
@Kay:
See, Kay? You were wrong, very wrong. It turns out the low-quality hires are in the Kremlin, not the White House.
randy khan
So, yes, we knew that Trump was going to try to weaponize allegations about Hunter Biden. We also knew that he tried to do the same thing during the impeachment and essentially nobody believed any of it. So the latest kayfabe is neither surprising nor particularly likely to have any impact.
The big problem for Trump is that Biden has a well-deserved, and universally accepted reputation as the kind of guy who wouldn’t do this sort of thing. You have a really high bar to pass to convince people he’s corrupt because that is entirely inconsistent with everything they know about him. (The dementia idea, though easily refuted, at least played into his weaknesses, rather than trying to convince people that he was fundamentally different than he actually is, and so was at least marginally a smarter play.)
KithKanan
@Just One More Canuck: I have no doubt of that. A homeless man started ranting to me the other day about drones with flamethrowers that were going to come after people for tax evasion. I somehow managed to resist saying “That sounds like a great idea to me, especially if they start with the President*”
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
That’s how I read GG the last year or two.
Kay
@debbie:
I’m sitting here thinking if there is a single person I know in this state who doesn’t know an addict, personally. I can’t come up with one. Maybe like, infants. They wouldn’t know one. Yet.
I know two in my immediate family of origin. I hear Hunter’s an addict I think “him too?”
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: He’s not even a polemicist. He’s just a fuckin’ troll.
Adam L Silverman
@BruceFromOhio: I’m also delicately dainty…//
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
He’s one of the variations of “a stupid person’s idea of a smart person” that are so common on the right wing. He’s also one of those people who are already famous by the first time I hear of them and I wonder how they got to be famous. See also, Andrew Sullivan.
Adam L Silverman
@Dan B: I can’t speak to what is going on now as I’m not following it as closely as when I had a professional responsibility to do so. Gin & Tonic is the person you should ask. He’ll have a better idea.
debbie
@Kay:
One of my brothers is an addiction counselor. He got into it about 15 years ago after one of his kids became addicted to heroin. Going to group meetings back then, he was shocked how many families were affected. Now, he says that was hardly anything compared to today.
geg6
@Kay:
This is how insane the world we live in now is. I found it totally credible as something he would say today. After all, he’s still bitching about her emails.
Kattails
Just doing a quick email/current events peek. I had been wishing you would do a bit about this brouhaha and here it is, like fairy dust or something. (thanks!)
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold:
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: Even for addictions that are for things that are legal. My dad had a food addiction, which contributed to shortening his life. I’ve also known people with gambling issues. And we all know someone with an alcohol problem. One of the women I dated in Scotland had was on the edge between how the NHS defines alcohol abuse and alcoholism, which is, because Britain, a lot higher than the US categorization.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
Yeah, and it doesn’t fit D. Scavino’s style very well, though he’s pretty good at chameleoning.
It’s a pretty ugly tweet series though. Trump “The Man” can’t descend ramps without panicking!
Zzyzx
@Kay:
No, I got it. I was saying that YOU were joking but I wrote it poorly.
J R in WV
@Kay:
Such an acute observation, thanks for sharing this insight with us. So glad you’re commenting more on here, we need your experience with fraudulent witnesses right now.
Also, Greenwald is a lying clot of scum! Along with Rudy and his Russian handlers.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: BOFFO, hmmm?
J R in WV
@Yutsano:
But the EU has no agency, they are operated by drones working out of CIA HQ, aren’t they? Why else would Great Britain be divorcing the EU? //s
Of course the EU wanted to fix the corruption in Ukraine, in order to do legitimate business with them. But GG doesn’t want to admit that, it doesn’t align with his view of US imperialism. Which is the only thing the US does that Glenn can see.
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic:
Ooh, G&T, don’t keep how you feel a secret! Tell us how you really feel about Ken Vogel. I agree with you totally.
He should have been fired when his big Biden story out of Ukraine turned out to be a hoax fomented by the Trump people, and the Russians, again. Big ol’ gob of lying scum!
Unless I’m the FNYT, then you can fool me every election cycle!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Ohio Mom: Yeah, she seems to know what’s she’s doing!
Adam L Silverman
@Kattails: Our 24/7 surveillance of you is paying off…//
trnc
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize: It’s amazing to me how all these white guy “champion of The People!!11!!” types get their asses *so* chapped by the fact that the white working class – along with the working class of all *other* races, creeds, and colors – went for Biden over Bernie.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Thanks for clarifying. I thought he reverted back to birther-ism today.
Aleta
Even though it didn’t happen today, it’s good to remember the time in November- December 2017 when Trump brought up both birtherism and the Access Hollywood tape. Haeberman and Martin wrote a story about it for NYT and major outlets (MSNBC, CNN and many others like Vox, Daily Beast) picked it up.
At the time, the Russia investigation and related revelations were peaking in the news, along with the damage the Republican tax package would cause the middle class. The administration was lobbying heavily to pass the tax cut, which happened at the end of December.
Distraction pieces (includes Hunter, Reade, various smears as well as all the outrageous things T purposely says and does) are one piece of Trump campaign effort. They not only crowd out negative T— stories, but consume media space needed to rebut more solid claims that are persuasive to voters.
A Biden attack that’s happening now (W. Examiner, IBT, etc.) is another piece of the Republican effort: Trump’s promise to lower the corporate tax rate to 20% and Republican claims that a Biden increase in the corporate rate to 28% will decrease after-tax earnings for the middle class and make 82% of taxpayers pay more taxes.
Don’t let the outrageous stuff get more views than the work of solid journalists to counter Republican appeals that electing Democrats will cost more money.
Medicine Man
Greenwald never disappoints. He’s been “stack committed” to a particular worldview for most of his adult life, I suspect.
L85NJGT
He’s just a useful puke funnel. There will always be holier-than-thou sorts who insist statecraft and power systems can be wished away to a cornfield. I just chalk it up to the personal becomes political; a reaction to authoritarian parental units.
Dan B
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. I recall Ukraine being one of the most corrupt nations in the world and wondered how much lingered and how powerful.
MomSense
I’ve taken a lot of grief over the years, including on this top 10,000 blog for never falling for the Greenwald scam. I’ll never forget the way he treated former FP’er Imani Gandy (nym Angry Black Lady). Glenn is a loathsome person and I will not be the least bit surprised when the extent of his traitorous behavior is revealed. You only need to research his W support and his legal defense (including unlawful recording of phone communications) of a neo nazi who incited violence to know what a POS he is.
leeleeFL
@Ohio Mom: Madame Speaker is a brilliant tactician, and she looks fabulous while being one! That photo coming out of the WH with the sunglasses! Almost orgasmic! Like Our future Vice-President taking off her earrings to kick Kavanaugh in the nuts! Hold my hoops, for reelz!
bluefish
The epic fail and fall of GG is amazing to me still. He’s become the eternal ingenue while living in Rio, far as I know, and I just don’t get it cuz I grew up there as the daughter of a Braz-Amer from 65 to 71. Just don’t get how he got so stupid because Rio for all its problemas is not a stupid city. Get that boy some Chico Buarque, Veloso from back in the day and ditto on the vintage Milton Nascimento. I truly find it very very odd. Coisa estranha, cara. SAD! Another shot of vodka might help me comprehend. Or a caiperinha and a good old fashioned Winston.