Shill wrote:dice wrote:if mainstream liberals felt they were being served, MSNBC would be redundant or unpopular!
MSNBC is mainstream liberal programming. the far left hates it
In a sense, they are redundant because they are one of several liberal networks.
they were NOT redundant when they decided to take a turn to the left. did other NON-mainstream cable networks follow them? yes. beyond the mainstream left, even. yet more evidence that there was an appetite for liberal opinion that wasn't already being served. if CNN, as far and away the biggest cable news outlet at the time, was liberal, MSNBC never makes the calculated decision to in that direction shortly after fox arrives on the scene
donna brazile is another political strategist! another example of CNN employing a political analyst that is not a "newsperson." with an obvious ideology. all networks do this
the objective of media matters is to combat right wing misinformation in the media. it is run by...a democratic party political activist and strong clinton supporter
How does Media Matters being cozy with Clinton disprove coordination?
the discussion was about mainstream media. CNN and MSNBC. and whether they as organizations are working for the democratic party like fox is for the GOP. media matters is not a news network
Side note: David Brock is an interesting guy because he was a Republican who was constantly a thorn in the Clintons' side, then they recruited him to work for them and he switched sides.
i believe that he became disillusioned with all the falsehoods that the GOP marketing machine was pumping into the media, created media matters in response, and then became close to the clintons. or maybe it happened around the same time
I never said Colbert was in the business of massaging Trump. I said he had him on the program and was talking about how much he liked him, which I think is interesting in the context of the Clinton/Podesta email links.
As for Morning Joe and Mika being friendly, I said it was during the primary, and he was on the program multiple times.
every single show on every news network wants trump on their program. as does every late night show. the more ridiculous he got, the more pushback he got, the more jokes he was the butt of, and he stopped going on those shows
here was his last appearance on letterman (when he was still trying to appeal to everyone). pretending to care about the debt, joking about dealing with the mafia:
trump: "people are being very badly hurt [by obamacare]. and it doesn't really kick in until 2016. and it's going to have a devastating effect on the economy"
letterman: "i don't know enough about it to say that's not true, but i'd say that's not true"
of course, it wasn't true
trump then praises free scottish health care with their great doctors and criticizes the fraud and abuse in the american health care system, including our...overpaid doctors
robert mueller, a lifelong conservative appointed BY THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION to handle the investigation, determined that trump obstructed justice (wonder why) but could not be charged as president. it resulted in many indictments of trump campaign officials. it established multiple links between the trump campaign and the russian government. and, of course, it showed that russia interfered in our election to benefit donald trump. big time ****
donald trump has suggested AFTER "russiagate" that he would CONTINUE to accept russian help and perhaps not inform the fbi about russian outreach. he has catered to russian interests since day 1 in office, including abandoning US allies to slaughter on the battlefield, benefiting russia. including refusing to implement sanctions voted on UNANIMOUSLY by congress. including meeting w/ putin w/o state department officials on hand. it's quite obvious that he has financial interests in russia. if you don't think that all of this is a major, major problem, there's something dreadfully wrong with your perspective
now, if you want to criticize media talking heads for ASSUMING that criminal collusion between trump and putin would be determined, have at it
I'm not sure what Mueller being a Republican has to do with anything.
it means he's not the biased anti-trump stooge that trump opponents have tried to paint him as. it means that his investigation was not a "witch hunt." even so, they sure did uncover a lot of witches
Plenty within the GOP establishment hate Trump, plus Mueller's team was comprised of 17 Democrats, many of whom donated to Hillary's campaign.
a bit of an exaggeration. and mueller stated during the hearings that everyone on his team was hired based on their abilities:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/21/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trumps-claims-about-Mueller/I'm not even suggesting bias. I'm just saying Mueller being a Republican was immaterial beyond optics.
agreed
I think the obstruction of justice question is murky (although libertarians like Judge Napolitano and Justin Amash disagree), especially considering there was no evidence of an underlying crime.
there doesn't have to be evidence of an underlying crime to obstruct justice. clearly trump at minimum SUSPECTED that illegal activity had occurred amongst his campaign staff, whether directly authorized by him or not
"this is the end of my presidency. i'm f***ed" - trump's response to news of mueller's appointment, according to notes taken by trump AG jeff sessions's chief of staff
Also, the tactics employed by Muller and the DOJ investigation into the Trump campaign were suspect as hell, as evidenced by the IG report.
with regard to FISA applications of low level campaign members, yes (carter page, specifically). there was, however, no illegal wiretapping. there were no plants in the trump campaign. there was no illegitimate objective in opening the investigation. all of which trump alleged
and this is another destructive force of donald trump as president - he throws out so many wild conspiracy theories that his legitimate beefs are. he is the boy who cried wolf. the waters are constantly muddy...which is obviously the intent. it exhausts people, causing them to throw up their arms and say "i don't know what's the truth anymore." which gives him more space to behave badly
Also, if Trump is beholden to Russia, he has a funny way of showing it by killing Russians in Syria, arming Ukraine, etc...
CONGRESS armed ukraine, which trump famously illegally tried to withhold such aid from in exchange for non-existent dirt on biden, leading to impeachment. again benefiting russia, who ukraine, our ally, is at war with. congress also, as i mentioned, unanimously voted for sanctions on russia, which trump ALSO dragged his heels on
and trump's abandoning of the kurds in syria (again in opposition to the wishes of both sides of the aisle) was exactly what putin wanted
If you look hard enough, you can find "ties" to a foreign country, e.g. John Podesta's links to a Russian energy company or oligarchs giving hundreds of millions to the Clinton Foundation.
trump's behavior toward russia as an american president tasked with serving american interests is unprecedented and blatant. and it's in combination with his refusal to divest from his financial interests AS president. as for the clinton foundation:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/nov/15/facebook-posts/no-russia-did-not-donate-145-million-clinton-found/that's right. the intercept is so far left that they rebuke anything that the mainstream media or MSNBC does. and they are connected to wikileaks, which received all the hacked documents you have referenced FROM RUSSIA. so russian interference in our elections provides the basis for much of the intercept's reporting! 'the nation' uses similar rhetoric in their reporting, including the 'russiagate' term that suggests a pre-determined bias. and suggesting, like right wing media does, that there's some "deep state" agenda that should be investigated
I don't disagree, but it seems as though you're implying there's an impartial honest broker vis-à-vis Russiagate, but everyone has bias.
Of course, MSNBC, CNN et al are going to hype it up.
there is an incentive for any news network to extensively cover any major story that a lot of people are invested in. there is additional incentive for a liberal network (MSNBC) to do so when the story involves scandalous activity on the part of a republican president
no idea what you're referencing here, but it doesn't suggest that those networks are soliciting people to lie. and a lot of this comes down to the definition of collusion. mueller concluded that it could not be proven that what help the trump campaign did accept went beyond craven stupidity. i.e. it didn't rise to the level of criminal collusion because there was no evidence of an over-arching pre-conceived plan in play
Brennan, Clapper, and Susan Rice signed affidavits saying they saw no evidence of collusion, but they were saying the opposite on television during the whole imbroglio
again, this comes down to the definition of collusion. what brennan has described and referred to as collusion apparently did not meet the definition of criminal collusion according to mueller. i would imagine that the affidavits were very specific about terminology
mortality rates are being downgraded while mortality counts have been found to be almost certainly too low. so far as i can tell, all of this has been accurately reported based on available information at the time. agree with most of what you say here, but none of it comes close to the suggestion that the virus is a political hoax. or the hostility to science that is also standard practice for fox news
There's too much uncertainty for me to make any declarative statements here.
I've seen a lot of conflicting data from legitimate sources.
For example, a county supervisor in San Diego said he went through the records and found that only 6 of 194 deaths were actually pure coronavirus deaths.
another thing trump is trying to have done: not report as COVID deaths those which involve other mitigating factors. which, of course, is largely how COVID-19 kills - by attacking those w/ conditions which make them more susceptible to major adverse reactions. it would not surprise me at all if there are a low percentage of "pure" COVID-19 deaths
