Howard Kurtz: Parties, pundits square off in predictable, high-stakes ritual
'MediaBuzz' host Howard Kurtz weighs in on the predictable outcome of the House vote on the impeachment inquiry resolution.
Impeachment is the media’s way of setting back the clock – all the way to 2016. Journalists have wanted revenge against Donald Trump for being elected president for three years and now they can count the hours.
Or at least they can write about getting a second chance against Trump.
Last week New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent Carl Hulse moved the clock into a future in which the liberal dream of impeachment finally comes true. His story was headlined: “Could Trump Serve a Second Term if Ousted? It’s Up to the Senate.”
DEMOCRATS' IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY IS COLORED BY LACK OF TRANSPARENCY, SAYS REP. ANDY BIGGS
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Hulse points out that even if Trump is impeached by the House it is highly unlikely he would be convicted in a Senate trial and removed from office. That because Democrats and independents allied with them hold only 47 of the 100 seats in the Senate – and it would take 67 votes to kick Trump out of the White House.
Even if every Democrat and independent voted to convict Trump, the odds of 20 Republican senators joining to remove Trump are slim to none. (Fall-back plan: Clone Mitt Romney!)
But should the Senate vote to remove Trump from office, Hulse’s story points out that with just a majority vote the Senate could then bar him from holding federal office in the future. This means he couldn’t run for president again.
This is how Times journalists amuse themselves when they aren’t writing pieces praising Hillary Clinton – or just doing their part to boost their new favorite presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren D-Mass.
National Review’s Jack Crowe and Tobias Hoonhout revealed how Times staffers don’t just cover politics – they cover it up.
Times reporter Reid Epstein got copies of records from Warren’s time teaching. She claims she was dismissed because she was pregnant. That’s horrible – if true. Only the records appear to indicate otherwise. The Washington Free Beacon obtained those records and wrote about the discrepancies. Suddenly The Times had its own version, complete with content from Epstein.
Epstein explained to the National Review that the “records were inconclusive,” but he didn’t bother to dig further. Warren maintains she was pushed out of her job due to her pregnancy, though the records show she got a new contract.
Maybe we can’t know for sure nearly 50 years later, but journalists must ask those questions
Doggone Good News
The good news of the past week was that courageous U.S. special operations forces attacked the hideout of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leading the terrorist murderer and rapist to commit suicide rather than be captured. The attack occurred with the help of a Belgian Malinois dog named Conan.
Not only had a top terrorist been killed, but man’s best friend had lent a helping … paw. Journalists freaked out. The Washington Post ran a much-mocked obituary that called Baghdadi an “austere religious scholar.” Even President Trump made fun of that celebration of an American enemy.
Journalists weren’t done with their post-victory letdown. When Trump ridiculed Baghdadi he caused more overreaction. CNN Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza found 41 “shocking lines” in Trump’s speech to complain about, objecting to Trump saying the terrorist died “as a coward, running and crying."
Washington Post “conservative” columnist Max Boot wrote how Baghdadi wasn’t actually a “coward” because he blew himself up. Boot blew up that comment, deleting the tweet and correcting the story.
One of the leftists on “The View” went further. A lot further. Host Whoopi Goldberg inquired about the dead terrorist, “So can we at least agree that the world is a better place without this guy in it?”
Co-host Joy Behar oozed hate in reply: “Who, Trump or Baghdadi? Which one?” The audience cheered, of course.
Trump didn’t let up either. He likes goading his opponents and he first posted a photo of the hero dog. Then he retweeted an obviously altered photo of him giving the dog a medal. That made the media howl in anger.
Journalists from CNN's Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta to Voice of America’s White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman shockingly took the photo seriously. Herman tweeted: “There was no such canine event on today's @POTUS schedule.”
Thanks, Steve. We know. As did anyone in the world who looked at the photo … which clearly didn’t include The Times. The Gray Lady devoted two staffers to writing “Trump Tweets Faked Photo of Hero Dog Getting a Medal.”
Journalists even reached out to the original Medal of Honor recipient who was edited out, Vietnam veteran James McCloughan. He wasn’t bothered by the altered photo and the media lost another narrative.
This is another reason why no one can take the media seriously. Because they take themselves too seriously.
#Metoo? No, never mind
The #MeToo era is tough to figure out. Powerful people like former NBC “Today” host Matt Lauer or Hollywood power broker Harvey Weinstein are always depicted as wrong to use their power to engage in sexual misconduct.
But when the person in the power position is a young, liberal Democrat, the story changes. That’s the situation with the tawdry case of Rep. Katie Hill of California – who resigned after creepy photos came out amidst allegations she had affairs with staffers.
Rather than criticize the potential abuse of power or sexual misconduct, the media defended her. MSNBC host Chris Hayes called Hill “a very promising young member of Congress” and declared that “the bad guys won here” with her resignation.
The news media flipped the story and called it a case of “revenge porn.” That was the narrative for much of the openly leftist press from Vox to The Atlantic to more traditional outlets like NBC.
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The media even turned on the news organizations that broke the story – RedState and The Daily Mail. Comedian Samantha Bee called them “two of the vilest, nastiest things to exist on the Internet.”
Facebook face-off
It’s hard being a famous Hollywood writer like Aaron Sorkin. He’s known for everything from “A Few Good Men” to “Molly’s Game.” But everyone wants him to channel his “West Wing” days, a show many called “Left Wing.”
Sorkin does his best to keep up that lefty narrative. He recently wrote an op-ed for The New York Times bashing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for “assaulting truth” because the company won’t determine what it considers true and false in political ads. Liberals really want the social media giant to ban politically conservative speech.
Sorkin’s claim to fame to write about Facebook is that he wrote the movie about its founder called “The Social Network.” Sorkin wrote that Facebook now won’t restrict “lies that have a very real and incredibly dangerous effect on our elections and our lives and our children’s lives.”
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Sorkin expects a website like Facebook to decide truth, but he couldn’t even get the date of his own movie right – or Zuckerberg’s age, the nature of a lawsuit or even how many Americans get their news from Facebook. The correction was more than 100 words long.
He tried to mock Facebook over fact-checking and instead proved how even The New York Times can’t handle fact-checking for an op-ed.