It’s a tried and true maxim that if you have news unfavorable to you or your favored narrative, and you have no choice but to get ahead of it by making it public, you do so on the eve of a holiday, or, in the absence of a holiday, a Friday night, when people are done with serious things for the week and want to par-tay.
The New York Times, which won Pulitzers for its fabulism on all things “Russia, Russia, Russia,” and finds itself in a tough spot having to report out the inarguable news Tulsi Gabbard has been making, decided this past Friday evening was a good time to finally, at long last, have one of its people do a lengthy “rebuttal.”
It was notable that there was only one name on the byline: Charlie Savage. Prior to these Gabbard events, they’ve had endless articles with more — sometimes many more — than one name on the byline for Russiagate stories, when they were proud of their work. Seems...not so much now.
There is another maxim: If you’re explaining, you’re losing. The Times spent 1,823 words — or if you chose to have it read to you, 12 solid minutes — explaining. On the “fact” vs. “spin” scale, it was heavy on the spin, but we take what we can. It was as if the entire piece were a stack of triple-stuffed Oreo cookies — each cookie one aspect of “Russia, Russia, Russia” and each cookie stuffed with lots of fatty, sugary spin, attached to some flat, crunchy facts. Too bad for them, the crunchy facts were pretty loud.
Let’s see what few facts they conceded, even though it surely killed them to do so.
Even if the administration’s use of the reports is wildly overstated, some of the information has not been made public before.
Charlie throws in the “wildly overstated,” but it’s pro forma. He did the deed. He acknowledged there was actual news — information “not made public before” — in Gabbard’s documents. Very good! That’s better than the initial reaction among the Democrat Media Complex, which was “Old news. Move along. Nothing to see here.” Baby steps.
Charlie goes on:
It provides some messy details about how the intelligence community assessment was hurriedly produced during Mr. Obama’s final months in office.
Ah. “Messy.” You can now definitely see where this is going. It’s “messy,” not what it clearly was: the (arguably criminal) beginning of the worst, most malign betrayal ever perpetrated by one president on another.
The dossier, a compendium of later-discredited claims about Trump-Russia ties compiled by a former British spy, was part of a Democratic-funded political opposition research effort.
Excellent. We now have this “wildly” understated concession: that the dossier has been “discredited.” Of course, it hasn’t merely been “discredited.” It’s been eviscerated. A proven fiction. What he doesn’t say is that it was not some faceless “Democrat” who funded it; it was Hillary Clinton. (He’ll protect her later in the piece, too. We’ll get to it shortly.) I guess Charlie values breathing. In any event, it’s yet another data point, like the use of the word “messy,” which tells you this is a butt-covering piece, not actual journalism worthy of “the paper of record.”
Mr. Brennan has publicly said the Steele dossier material was not incorporated or used in the assessment itself because of the C.I.A.’s concerns. In 2017, he told Congress that the dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence community assessment [I.C.A.] that was done.”
The newly disclosed material complicates that narrative.
Oh, it “complicates” it, all right. The newly disclosed material proves conclusively the fictional dossier was used in the ICA, making Brennan’s testimony perjurious (and, sadly, past the statute of limitations). Again, Mr. Savage “wildly” understates things when the facts hurt a Democrat.
Aaaaaand that’s about it. The rest of the piece, which amounts to roughly the second half of it, is almost all Oreo-stuffing filler. He talks about the newly revealed derogatory information the Russians had on Hillary (that she was on tranquilizers and psychologically unstable) but never publishes what it was, and further, he never points out the obvious: The Russians never used it!
Thinking for just a moment makes it all very clear: Had the Russians genuinely wanted a Trump win, one would think Mrs. Clinton being such a mess might be something they’d want to make public. But they didn’t. One might also presume they’d prefer to keep it quiet because they anticipated a Hillary victory and might want to blackmail a President Hillary Clinton later with it. None of this — none of it — is addressed by Mr. Savage in this piece. Why? Because he can’t. It defies logic. And not doing so keeps him breathing. He’s protected Mrs. Clinton again.
Charlie uses the word “logic” to describe the following claim:
Most analysts judged that denigrating Clinton equaled supporting Trump; they reasoned that in a two-person race the trade-off was zero-sum.
He seems to be saying that the mere existence of derogatory information about Mrs. Clinton means the Russians preferred Trump, which, sorry Charlie, as we outlined, isn’t “logic” unless it’s taken in such isolation that there’s no light or oxygen. That’s a nice two-man straw man, though!
The New York Times published this because it had to. ODNI Tulsi Gabbard is making too much news to ignore — and promises to make yet more — and those Pulitzers are looking awfully fragile.
One can only hope subsequent ODNI releases knock them right off the shelf.
