Obama Attorney Leads Secret Meetings of TV Legal Commentators to Spin Trump Trials

PJ Media ^ | 04/24/2024 | Victoria Taft

[SeekAndFind]

I'm old enough to remember the hubbub over JournoList, a listserv of leftist reporters from different news outlets who convened regularly in a chatroom to strategize how to spin stories and set narratives, such as how to torpedo Gov.Sarah Palin to get Barack Obama elected president.

From 2007 to 2010, JournoList was its own echo chamber, as Politico put it at the time. Now the same thing's happening again, with TV lawyers acting as rhetorical wetwork teams covering the trials of their political nemesis, Donald Trump.

JournoList was started by Ezra Klein, who now works for the New York Times, with his other JList pal, Matt Yglesias.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes was writing for The Nation when he joined JournoList. Politico reported at the time that the list was a who's who of leftism. The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin, Paul Krugman of the New York Times, and "staffers from Newsweek, POLITICO, Huffington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, and The New Yorker; policy wonks, academics and bloggers such as Klein and Matthew Yglesias" were all on the listserv, setting the narrative for the rest of the news media, academia, and think tanks. 

No conservatives needed apply.

And you thought NPR was bad.

In 2010, when JournoList was allegedly disbanded, PJ Media's Ed Driscoll summed up the purpose and power of the listserv by positing a question for Republicans:

So who’s going to be first GOP candidate who understands and articulates to his or her supporters what the new rules are: the media he or she will be doing interviews with on the campaign trail define themselves not as “objective” journalists, but part of the opposition’s “non-official campaign?”

[SeekAndFind]

You can't stop people from meeting together — that's un-American — but you can remind them that this is not journalism or a public service; it's a conspiracy.

[SeekAndFind]

SOURCE:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/23/anti-trump-legal-pundits-calls-00153300

[EXCERPT]

...Every Friday, they meet on Zoom to hash out the latest twists and turns in the Trump legal saga — and intellectually stress-test the arguments facing Trump on his journey through the American legal system.

The meetings are off the record — a chance for the group’s members, many of whom are formally or loosely affiliated with different media outlets, to grapple with a seemingly endless array of novel legal issues before they hit the airwaves or take to print or digital outlets to weigh in with their thoughts. About a dozen or more people join any given call, though no one takes attendance. Some group members wouldn’t describe themselves with any partisan or ideological lean, but most are united by their dislike of Trump.

[...]

“It feels almost like a seminar in law school,” said a participant in the group. Most calls comprise “deliberation, debate and discussion,” albeit “with a distinct anti-Trump tilt to it.”

Leading the legal group is Obama Administration lawyer and former Trump impeachment attorney, Democrat Norm Eisen. He works as one of CNN’s legal analysts now. Among the people who have joined this weekly Zoom meeting are Laurence Tribe, the once sane law professor; George Conway, the Lincoln Project OG; and John Dean, the man who set up Richard Nixon and is widely believed by investigative reporters to have green-lighted one of the Watergate break-ins.

[FlyingEagle]

This is what I have no TV. I do not let these lowlifes in my house nor in my brain.

[Fungi]

Does that include FR? THEY’RE in your brain now.

[LastDayz]

Well.... the kangaroo court and circus need their monkeys so no disappointment in that regard.

[21twelve]

Do they realize how ironic this is?

Covering a trial in which Trump asked the National Enquirer to buy up the bad stories (most; all?) of which were not verifiable (like hotel doorman claims Trump has illegitimate child!) and not publish them.

[LeoWindhorse]

Spin Obama

Straight to Hell

[TigersEye]

Mockingbird Media. They’re controlled and fed a script.

[Bookshelf]

JournoList: 157 Names Confirmed (With Organizations)
Source List Included | 08/18/2010 | BuckeyeTexan
Posted on 08/18/2010 12:07:31 PM PDT by BuckeyeTexan

Edited on 04/27/2015 9:18:17 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect
Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal
Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO
Mike Allen - POLITICO
Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America
Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic
Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation
Ryan Avent - Economist
Dean Baker - The American Prospect
Nick Baumann - Mother Jones
Josh Bearman - LA Weekly
Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report
Ari Berman - The Nation etc., etc., etc.

[maddog55]

Kind of irrelevant in reality, the left spins it’s lies and misinformation as always on their media news sites. The right doesn’t watch left news media, they may monitor and occasionally say, yep same lies and propaganda.

The left watches it, believes every bit of it because they are incapable of self thought and need to be told what to think.

So nothing changes until the educational systems are eradicated of leftist scum and rebuilt to teach not indoctrinate.

[paddles]

I wonder what Toobin is doing while the others are crafting spin?