DESPERATION?

Last week, the Narrative from the establishment press was that candidate Donald Trump looked ... tired.  All weekend, it looked like he was having fun. and that has been taking its toll on his opponent.

You gotta lay off the sauce, lady. pic.twitter.com/L01gWRwJL9

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) October 20, 2024

This week, his opponent took Monday off to sober up prepare for some friendly interviews, but first she had to react to more spin from serial fabulist Jeffrey Goldberg, currently of The Atlantic, formerly of Salon.  "Consider the source" is often good advice.

VP Harris: "In a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against [Trump's] propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there to rein him in." pic.twitter.com/7rBzc9OZCr

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) October 23, 2024

Nor will there be anyone to look askance at the #MAGA armband the county Gauleiter issued me in 2017.  Oh, sorry, that's as true as Kamala Harris's story about making fries in Oakland.

We have to be joyful, now more than ever.  "We're not sure which part made us spit up our drink harder: the idea that criticizing Harris is 'ableist,' or the three phases of being a wine mom: happy and cackling, trying to sound sober at work, and being angry and stern so everyone won't realize how drunk you are."

But of course she did.  "It seems that Harris wasn't satisfied that almost every legacy media outlet (and CNN and MSNBC, of course) ran with the debunked Jeffrey Goldberg hit piece in The Atlantic which alleged that Donald Trump once told some White House staffers, 'I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,' among other allegations."

It's hard not to refer to establishment journalists as Lugenpresse when they traffic in lies.

In what may be the most despicable piece of journalism in a year filled with unacceptable bad examples of the craft, The Atlantic delivered what it hoped to be a vicious October surprise to bring down the fortunes of Donald Trump. Instead, this becomes an almost instantly refuted piece of media guano, and it is affecting the broader swath of news outlets.

I try not to traffic in hyperbole, so to call this not just a repugnant example of yellow journalism but one that further impacts the already-foundering reputation of our media is not said lightly. This manages to infect numerous supposedly reputable news sites, and it goes on to broaden the reality that most major news outlets are toxically partisan these days.

That every Republican nominee all the way back to Thomas Dewey, possibly with the exception of Dwight Eisenhower, because the coastal cosmopolitans had Richard Nixon to kick around, has been subjected to the same sort of calumny probably takes some of the sting out of the latest Democrat nominee having another bite at the apple.  She could have done something useful, like pledge not to have the alphabet people in charge of personnel, and say something favorable about the First and Tenth Amendments, and that might persuade some reluctant Trump voters to abstain.

She won't.

None of this anti-Trump desperation comes as a surprise, seeing that it derives from The Atlantic. As we covered here back in August, one of the closest allies to Kamala Harris going back to her days working in San Francisco is the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Family ties are one thing. Giving Militant Normals one more reason to distrust regime media is another.

But the remaining news organizations that have signed on to this coordinated hit job are going to experience more turmoil. There was every reason in the world to regard this report by Goldberg as radioactive and to steer clear of it. Instead, they are choosing to ignore those going on the record to refute it, supporting the corrupt practice of using nameless sourcing to deliver a poisonous libel piece and, in the process, completely abusing the emotions of a Gold Star family.

All of this is done in the name of undiluted partisanship and bias. This is the state of our contemporary journalism complex. Their reputations as journalists are something fungible to them, an afterthought item that is shadowed by their blind need to bring down one man. We thought things couldn't get any worse in the news business, but the outlets are effectively telling us, “Oh yeah, hold my Kiwi-Strawberry White Claw!” in their quest to prove us naive.

Be grateful the Militant Normals are cracking wise about wine spritzers.  There's enough in the way of cultural decay midwived by the Jarrett regency that the less cheerful pushback, such as calling the legacy journalists Lugenpresse, might be simmering.