Posted on 06/30/2022 11:58:39 AM PDT by Signalman
Something is very wrong with the supposedly right-of-center media outlets and commentators treating the Jan. 6 committee like something other than the appalling Stalinesque show-trial that it is. In particular, the Washington Examiner and National Review both ran embarrassing, delusional op-eds about the hearings this week. The Examiner even ran an editorial declaring, “Trump proven unfit for power again.”
Why is Trump “unfit for power”? Because of former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on Tuesday. It was hailed by the corporate press as “explosive” and “damning,” featured on the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, and replayed ad nauseum on all the cable news shows.
Before we get to the Examiner and National Review, we need to talk about the Hutchinson testimony. Hutchinson, who was billed as a star witness for the committee, did indeed make a number of explosive claims on Tuesday. The problem is that she didn’t actually witness anything. Her hearsay claims were blown to pieces almost as soon as they appeared, in some cases because people with firsthand knowledge immediately came forward to dispute them, and in other cases because the claims themselves were ridiculous on their face.
Perhaps the most outrageous accusation from Hutchinson was that on Jan. 6 an enraged President Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle and lunged at his security detail when he was told he could not join the protesters marching from the White House to the U.S. Capitol after his rally.
Hutchinson admitted she had no firsthand knowledge of this alleged physical altercation between Trump and his security detail, and said she was relaying a conversation she had with Tony Ornato, White House deputy chief of staff for operations, and Bobby Engel, head of Trump’s security detail.
Not long after Hutchinson testified, NBC News’s Peter Alexander reported that Engel and the Secret Service agents inside the vehicle with Trump that day say the president didn’t try to grab the steering wheel and didn’t assault any agents. Later, a Secret Service spokesman told Alexander that all the agents who were in the president’s SUV on Jan. 6 are “available to testify under oath, responding to [Hutchinson’s] new allegations.” \
Politico later reported that the Jan. 6 committee didn’t even reach out to the Secret Service before airing Hutchinson’s testimony: “Anthony Guglielmi, the service’s chief of communications, told Politico that select committee investigators did not ask Secret Service personnel to reappear or answer questions in writing in the 10 days before asking Hutchinson about the matter at the hearing.”
But that wasn’t the only problem with Hutchinson’s testimony. She also claimed to have written a note about a potential Trump statement meant to quell the rioting at the U.S. Capitol. In fact, the note was written by Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann.
“The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” said a spokesperson for Herschmann. “All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann.”
All of this was known and reported, at least in part, the same day Hutchinson testified before the committee. That didn’t stop the Examiner’s editors from going along with the rest of corporate media and simply regurgitating Hutchinson’s outrageous and disputed claims before concluding, “Hutchinson’s testimony confirmed a damning portrayal of Trump as unstable, unmoored, and absolutely heedless of his sworn duty to effectuate a peaceful transition of presidential power.”
Hutchinson’s testimony did no such thing, and the ridiculous moral preening of the Examiner’s editors doesn’t make her account any more credible. If anything, Hutchinson unwittingly confirmed that the Jan. 6 committee is a farcical show-trial, the purpose of which is to criminalize political opposition to Democrat Party rule and advance the false narrative that President Trump is not just responsible for the Jan. 6 riot, but that he’s guilty of treason.
You have to wonder what’s wrong with these editors that they would publish such garbage. Do they not realize that one of the propaganda goals of the Jan. 6 committee is to elicit these kind of editorials? Mission accomplished, Liz Cheney!
Even worse in some ways was the take from Tim Carney, a columnist for the Examiner and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (who, to be fair, has had a hard time thinking clearly about Trump lately). On Wednesday, long after the problems with Hutchinson’s testimony were widely known, Carney penned an unintentionally hilarious column headlined, “Ignore Democrats’ distractions: Here’s how Trump proved his unfitness on Jan. 6.”
Ah, yes, because the thing we need to focus on here isn’t the phony hearsay testimony from a patently unreliable witness in a Soviet-style show trial being conducted by House Democrats, but how we can spin this episode to scold the right about how Trump wasn’t a “good shepherd.” It’s like Carney sits around thinking up ways to help the left, even when their deceptive schemes are exploding in real time.
For its part, National Review posted a long-winded column Tuesday night by Andrew McCarthy declaring Hutchinson’s testimony to be “devastating,” even though key parts of it had already been called into question by people with firsthand knowledge. Since then, McCarthy has penned two additional posts about how the Jan. 6 committee has undercut this “devastating” testimony from Hutchinson, and how the fact that its hearsay is “part irrelevant and part inaccurate.” (McCarthy, for those who don’t know, is a former federal prosecutor who over the course of his punditry threw cold water on the mere suggestion that former FBI director James Comey was dishonest, that Robert Mueller was out to lunch, or that the FBI would ever try to obtain a FISA warrant on abject nonsense, despite later writing a book refuting himself.)
I recount this depressing spate of commentary not because it’s compelling but because it’s representative of a weird tic on the right to run interference for the left while scolding and betraying the people whose side you’re ostensibly on. I don’t know if it stems from a burning desire to be liked by their leftist peers and cultural tastemakers at The New York Times and The Atlantic, or if they really just want to write for those outlets and be on the Sunday shows.
Or maybe they secretly despise the right and need to feel like they’re sticking to their principles and speaking the truth to their own side. Maybe it makes them feel righteous and noble.
I don’t know. But I do know that the testimony we heard on Tuesday was a farce, that the Jan. 6 committee is an abysmal spectacle and an abuse of government power, and that anyone on the right who can’t see that should either hang up his commentator hat or go ask The Atlantic to host his newsletter. I hear it’s nice work, if you can get it.
Oh they lost their minds long before January 6!
Trump broke them.
For the love of God, stop calling this anything other than an inquisition.
“It really amazes me how many people out there have such a resentment against Trump that it causes them to lose their mind. We’ve known for a long time that liberals have a mental illness, but I really expected more of these so-called conservatives to have some integrity. The allure of DC popularity must be very strong.”
Back during the primaries I supported Ted Cruz. I didnt hate Trump whatsoever, but I didnt take Trumps candidacy very seriously. For all I knew, he was running for president for his ego and personal publicity purposes.
I was also a member of a Ted Cruz supporters Facebook group. The level of hatred of Trump amongst Republicans and my fellow conservatives was just incredible, off the charts.
Any article that was Anti-Trump was posted and automatically believed. It didn’t matter the source of the article. Liberal sources they would have normally dismissed on any other issue. CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, Washington Post, NY Daily News, Los Angeles Times, CBS, ABC, NBC, etc, etc. One guy even posted an anti-trump article whose source was literally the official propaganda arm of the government of North Korea!!!
Even though I wasn’t a Trump supporter (yet), I did my best in defending Trump, pointing out the lies, and chastising my fellow conservatives for falling for such lies and using sources of the usual suspects in the liberal media. I pointed out that they were opposed to Trump as the republican candidate, fine. You want to criticize Trump? Ok. Just please attack Trump with the truth and using more reliable sources than the liberal media.
I was eventually kicked out of the Ted Cruz group. Not for attacking Cruz. Not for pushing for Trump as a candidate. But only for coming to the defense of Trump against all the lies.
I gave up on the National Review when Bill Buckley died.
Who reads it still?
Some years ago National Review began trashing Christians and mocking biblical creation doctrine. I became a Christian and then a conservative precisely because of creation apologetics. Books by conservative authors explained to me how creation doctrine is foundational to conservatism. Without it there is fundamentally nothing left for conservatism to “conserve;” while individual conservatives may not accept creation doctrine, it means they are without a foundation and that puts them in a constant position of sliding down the slippery slope of liberalism. And sure enough, National Review has been sliding ever since I noticed them turn on our foundations.
Completely untrue.
Those minds were lost long ago, long before the committee was even formed..
You beat me to it!!!
Ping
“The allure of DC popularity must be very strong.”
I’m sure the same thing was occurring to lots of us.
Losing their minds?
You can’t lose what you never had.
If they had minds they would be MAGA people.
It’s all theater fiction. They have a script and they follow it like the bad actors they are.
So Liz Chaney says she believes Cassie. Apparently this proves Trump is guilty.
Pointless interview. Jonathan Karl couldn't be bothered interviewing the Secret Service agents who were with Trump.
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