It has started: Nasty, irrelevant, media smear campaign against Stephen Moore
By Monica Showalter
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The opposition research creeps have been on the job.
Now that Herman Cain has exited from President Trump’s consideration for a Federal Reserve board seat, the long knives are now out for free market economist Stephen Moore.
One media hit job after another is now rolling out against him in the press today, and none of it has to do with economics. The left has made a big deal about Moore’s presence on the Fed board a matter of ‘politicizing’ it, but this is what ‘politicizing’ really looks like.
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Each graf is designed to make you reply, ‘Is that so!’ or ‘Well, I never!’ to each dreaded decades-old transgression.
Oh, and guess what: It’s political as heck. This is what we call a political hit job, politics at its vilest, the very politics the Times denounced in its hiring of Sarah Jeong. It’s the sort of dirt-digging until paydirt is found that Media Matters pioneered. The game they started was all about digging up some damning quote from some earlier era to generate public outrage, all to keep someone out of public life on an irrelevant matter, because their real issue is something else - in this case, free market economics. What on earth do Moore’s women issues have to do with his capacity to make wise monetary decisions on the Fed board? The answer is absolutely nothing.
Plenty of Moore’s remarks cited weren’t up to the political correctness standards of today and some come off as wrong-headed or even stupid, but in this context-challenged age, it’s clear they were meant in jest, little more than vaudeville-style flippancies, some ill advised. Boys clubhouse stuff, expressed badly, and most men can relate on some level, even with exaggerations. What’s more, they’re things he would never think today, but they want to pin them to him to keep him off the fed.
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have personal knowledge about this, because I worked with Moore. He was a colleague of mine when I was at Investor’s Business Daily as recently as 2016, and I was the only woman on the IBD editorial board. I interacted with him every day, and often saw him in the office. I can say firsthand that Moore never made any sexist remarks, or treated anyone with anything less than respect when he was there. He was always pleasant and professional, with an iron-solid understanding of economics and how the economy works, traveling frequently through flyover states to study and learn their issues.
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Bad tweets are fine for the Times, but aren’t applicable when a conservative is involved. What a bunch of hypocrites.
Mueller report: Donald Trump collusion conspiracy theories are now exposed. Will they end?
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
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For over two years, the line among mainstream media, from The New York Times to Rachel Maddow, has been that President Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin’s stooge. It was suggested that the Russians “hacked” the election by penetrating voting machines. When that was exploded, we were told that they “hacked” the election by arranging for Wikileaks to release (truthful) emails about how the Democratic Party rigged its primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton to ensure that Bernie Sanders wouldn’t get the nomination. At some point, the narrative shifted to vaguer references to “collusion.”
It was all bogus. As Greenwald notes, Mueller’s report didn’t just reject the Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, it obliterated them. Not only was no one in Trump’s campaign charged with conspiring with the Russians, no American anywhere was so charged, nor did Mueller find evidence along those lines to support criminal charges.
Mueller report takeaways: Trump didn’t collude but Obama blew it bigtime on Russia
Mueller report warning: Russia won in 2016 by making Americans question our democracy
Mueller report: Findings prove Donald Trump never colluded with Russia, obstructed justice
That should put the whole collusion narrative to bed, but of course it hasn’t. After two years of what can fairly be described as mass hysteria afflicting a huge portion of our political class, the cognitive dissonance is painful. It would be amusing to watch, if the “broken brains” weren’t so widespread among the people who are supposed to be the sober managers and reporters of our society. It’s like a doomsday cult whose predicted apocalypse fails to appear on schedule: They just announce that they made a mathematical mistake, and doomsday will actually come next year. Then they ask for more donations. The trouble is, this time it’s a cult that’s running a significant part of our nation.
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That Trump is planning to do precisely the opposite of these things may or may not be good policy for the United States, but anybody who thinks this is a Russia appeasement policy has been drinking way too much joy juice.
Obama actually did all of these things, and none of the liberal media now up in arms about Trump ever called Obama a Russian puppet; instead, they preferred to see a brave, farsighted and courageous statesman.
Back when Mitt Romney warned of Russian influence in 2012, Democrats — including the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman — were quick to mock him. She’s suddenly repented of her Romney mocking, now that Romney, instead of being a Republican candidate for president, is a Trump critic. Broken brain, indeed.
One of the great legacies of the Trump Administration is the extent to which it has revealed that huge swathes of our national establishment, in government, the media, and elsewhere, are both hopelessly partisan and frighteningly incompetent. Buckle up, because all the evidence is that the establishment hasn’t learned its lesson yet.