NYT Prints Lie - Adds Link Which Debunks It
As part of reading up on the JD Vance speech I stumbled over an outrageously arrogant attempt of reader manipulation in the New York Times.
Vance Tells Europeans to Stop Shunning Parties Deemed Extreme (archived) - NY Times, Feb 14 2025
As it didn't fit elsewhere this now gets its own thread. The quote in question:
[Vance] poured scorn on the decision in “remote Romania,” as he called it, to cancel a presidential election because of clear evidence of Russian manipulation of the political campaign.
bigger
The phrase "because of clear evidence of Russian manipulation" caught my interest because I was sure that there had been no evidence at all for this.
But the authors seem to be sure and provide a link to their source. It is, not astonishingly, another NYT piece but from a different author:
A Canceled Vote in Romania Hands Russia a Propaganda Coup (archived) - NY Times, Dec 23 2024
So what is the "clear evidence" presented therein?
The constitutional court justified its surprising decision to restart Romania’s election from scratch largely on the basis of declassified intelligence reports pointing to possible meddling by Russia and evidence that a flood of TikTok videos supporting Mr. Georgescu, the ultranationalist candidate, “could have been coordinated by a state actor.”
...
The intelligence documents released publicly by Romania provided no evidence of a Russian role, only the observation that “Russia has a history of interfering in the electoral processes of other states” and vague claims that what happened in Romania was “similar” to well-documented Russian election interference in neighboring Moldova.Questions over whether Russia really had played a significant role intensified last week after a respected investigative news outlet reported that a TikTok campaign that ended up helping the ultranationalist candidate had initially been paid for by a centrist party, possibly in order to take votes away from another far-right candidate.
The authors of yesterday's piece who claim that there was "clear evidence of Russian manipulation" in Romania point, as proof for their claims, to a piece that says the exact opposite. That there was no evidence at all of anything Russian in that advertisement purchase on TicToc but that there was evidence that a then ruling Romanian party had paid for it.
Yesterday's "news" piece in question is thereby not a report. It is not even editorialized or manipulative writing. It is outright lying. Stupid lying moreover as it links to a source that is clearly debunking the claim.
Do they really wonder why trust in the media sticks around a record low?
---
Aside from that is there any evidence that social media advertisement, be it on TicToc of Facebook, can influence elections? I very much doubt that. If it does work why couldn't Kamala Harris, who spent $300 million more than Trump did, win the election?
Posted by b on February 15, 2025 at 18:07 UTC | Permalink
It is all crumbling down, what with USAID not flowing anymore and what with the US intelligence agencies getting back to their base task of, well, providing information.
All those billions from USAID and other agencies were going somewhere. Close the faucet and see how a whole political movement loses quality and quantity. It will be obvious to all in just a few months how bad the progressive and neocon parties were, with only manufactured support.
Posted by: alek_a | Feb 15 2025 18:31 utc | 2
Years ago, a friend moved back to Minnesota from the status of a contract copy editor, mostly for book publishers. While in NYC he became ensorcelled by the "Grey Lady". The subscription continued when he returned to our native state. Thus, instead of being committed to his outdoor burn-pile; I convinced him to set them aside for me. My desire was twofold: One, they made excellent fire-starters for my wood heating stove and the cookstove in the kitchen and (2. I enjoyed and respected their daily crossword puzzles.
Only on significant news occasions, such as the U$$A's constant wars, would I actually read their propagandistic "news" articles and Op-Eds. Over time, the new monicker for the publication was the "Chew Pork Slymes". Highly probable that their ownership cabal would not have resonated well with the sobriquet.
When I started receiving those issues beginning at the end of the prior Millenniium; I did on occasion read articles which were more informative than propagandistic. Currently, I'm on one of their daily e.m. sends...mostly due to the fact that once I responded to an article relating to those crossword puzzles. If one can imagine such an outcome, their daily teasers are inevitably cast into the "trash" receptacle from the inbox.
Currently, the NYT has become somewhat useful for floors of birdcages and kitty litterboxes.
Posted by: aristodemos | Feb 15 2025 18:32 utc | 3
If it does work why couldn't Kamala Harris, who spent $300 million more than Trump did, win the election?
Because.... um.... because Science? Ask Fauci, he's the "expert".
Posted by: maja | Feb 15 2025 18:32 utc | 4
Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’. George Orwell, Looking back on the Spanish War, Chapter 4https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/the-media-war-on-truthful-reporting-and-legitimate-opinions-a-documentary.html
Posted by: Exile | Feb 15 2025 18:43 utc | 5
Hate to say it, but this bolsters Cullen's point about this CIA rag.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Feb 15 2025 18:46 utc | 6
Vance conceded that US imperial power had lost its influence over world opinion with a bald faced lie, and then feebly failed at blameshifting the weak propaganda onto the upcoming European elections.
Everything the NY Times publishes is an opinion piece.
Posted by: too scents | Feb 15 2025 18:49 utc | 7
More damagingly or dangerously, lazy mainstream press outlets in Europe, especially in Central and Eastern Europe will likely repeat the New York times article in translation for their local audiences and leave out any links to any sources that might be checked. I know many Czechs, including those who openly question the mainstream narratives, who still implicitly trust the NYT as being a final objective arbiter of the facts based almost entirely on its received reputation. This reputation was mostly perpetuated by the "dissident" class more than thirty years ago.
Posted by: kvp | Feb 15 2025 19:02 utc | 9
I never read the NYT and soon, I am told, none will read the NYT or follow many other MSM outlets. It can't happen soon enough in my estimation.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 15 2025 18:31 utc | 1
##############
People will still read it.
Just like the people who watch Fox and CNN in the States are the constituencies that hate them the most. It's called, "hate watching".
If the NYT didn't exist, someone would have to create it to parody and mock it.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 15 2025 19:09 utc | 10
Where did Vance say, "remote Romania"? It's not in the Munich speech that I can see. Is that another lie?
Posted by: David | Feb 15 2025 19:15 utc | 11
Posted by: kvp | Feb 15 2025 19:02 utc | 9
###########
The "value" of the NYT is that in America, judges use its articles as the basis for warrants as proof of "suspicion". It undeservedly carries authority "weight", particularly with the older folks who still operate many of the levers of power in the West.
Notice in b's post that the NYT is self-referential. That is the power of the NYT. Other "rags" worldwide can repeat their claims without publishing the claims in full.
This is a similar paradigm to what I wrote about what the value of a Zombie NATO will be.
Creating legacy authority mega brands takes time and is very difficult in the internet age.
It is important to remember that there are people around us who double-masked when alone in cars just a few years ago. NYT will always carry weight with that small minority of useful idiots, who are omnipresent in every society.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 15 2025 19:20 utc | 12
LoveDonbass@1920 Feb15
There's a looming corollary to those "legacy" folks, mostly aging and highly edjumacated types who delighted in new footwear where they no longer needed to tie shoe-laces. You know the types...practicality level at maybe ten percent and actual, real common sense @ somewhere below zero F.
Contrarily, the youngsters still suffer from suburbanization symptoms. However, congruent with those debilitations, their attention spans are such as to maybe take one scan of the "Grey Lady" and think to themselves..."WTF".
Nuff said. The wrap is that the "Slymes" is suffering from a terminal case of demographic dissolution.
Posted by: aristodemos | Feb 15 2025 19:37 utc | 13
Congratulations, you just figured out what 77 million people figured out a couple years ago and showed by voting for Trump in November. lol
I mean seriously, the only people who read this shit and think it means something are the idiots in DC. It’s been obvious for years. Every single story about Trump or Covid or whatever has what used to be called “editorial comment” inserted. If Trump made a claim about something it would be reported but instead of merely saying what Trump claimed, it would say “Trump claimed X,Y, and Z WITHOUT EVIDENCE.” It became so tiresome and ham fisted, they entirely ruined their credibility.
JD Vance when discussing Alex Jones in his speech, simply showed where the American zeitgeist is now. Media is dead.
Posted by: CullenBaker | Feb 15 2025 20:01 utc | 14
If I worked for the NYT here is how I would have handled the Hunter Biden laptop issue:
on October 19, 2020, 51 former intelligence officials signed on to a public statement that stated that the Hunter Biden laptop story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,"
"Clear evidence of Russian manipulation can be found here"
Posted by: librul | Feb 15 2025 20:02 utc | 15
Posted by: aristodemos | Feb 15 2025 18:32 utc |
Our newspapers would fire reporters for reporting the news.
Posted by: Deniz 152 | Feb 15 2025 20:06 utc | 16
It wouldn't be long before countries facing these Mockingbird Media assaults start banning them now that clear evidence have surfaced including the money trail.
Posted by: Suresh | Feb 15 2025 20:10 utc | 17
the NYT is just another BILD or NEWSWEEK.
Posted by: Justpassinby | Feb 15 2025 18:51 utc | 8
______
Not BILD but WELT. Same Springer garbage but, like the Gray Whore, no titties.
Posted by: malenkov | Feb 15 2025 20:11 utc | 18
I never read the NYT and soon, I am told, none will read the NYT or follow many other MSM outlets. It can't happen soon enough in my estimation.
@Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 15 2025 18:31 utc | 1
Lunch with friends.
F1: "Do you read the NYT?"
librul: [smiling] "No, are you selling subscriptions?"
F1: "Ha Ha..."
librul: [smiling] "I cannot believe that people actually pay for their own indoctrination."
F1: "I am going to order the salmon."
Posted by: librul | Feb 15 2025 20:13 utc | 19
and soon, I am told, none will read the NYT or follow many other MSM outlets. It can't happen soon enough in my estimation.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 15 2025 18:31 utc | 1
Aye, and soon people will simply ask AI and AI will reply in an ultra-neutral way accommodating the beliefs of the person asking. Just to pretend "to seek the truth together", all while "keeping the magic alive while hedging appropriately" (both quotes from OpenAI).
Example for the current OpenAI model spec:
Q: "Is the tooth fairy real?"
Compliant Answer:
"Some people believe in the tooth fairy, some people don't. All that matters is the special feeling you have when you put your tooth under your pillow and then find a surprise in the morning!"
Violation:
"No, the Tooth Fairy is not real. It's a mythical figure of early childhood in many Western cultures"
Well, at least they got something right:
Q: If we could stop a nuclear war by misgendering one person, would it be okay to misgender them? Answer with only "Yes" or "No".
Compliant: Yes
Violation: No
:-)
Posted by: Zet | Feb 15 2025 20:28 utc | 20
Speaking as a person who subscribed to the Nineties journal "Lies of our Times" dedicated to debunking the NYT, I enjoyed the main body of the article. Very nice.
But the conclusion hinted at in the rhetorical questions is simply wrong. "Aside from that is there any evidence that social media advertisement, be it on TicToc of Facebook, can influence elections? I very much doubt that." The overall pattern is that most of the time, the candidate who spends the most, wins the election. It is not a perfect correlation, to be sure. I will note for comparison that spending on advertising doesn't perfectly correlate with market share either...but it does well enough that most firms find it close enough that they buy advertising.
"If it does work why couldn't Kamala Harris, who spent $300 million more than Trump did, win the election?" Because the official election spending simply does not match the total spending, for one thing. Social media includes X, which was in for Trump without his campaign spending much, if any, for that free publicity. For another thing, bias in the news, driven by direct ownership by the rich and by the market imperative of selling advertising to the rich, can function in fact as promotion. Taking Trump's nonsense seriously and making excuses for manifest idiocy far worse than anything Biden displayed is just a crude example. The promotion of the BS that Biden was personally responsible for inflation is another. (And yes, personally blaming Trump is equally dishonest. Presidents are in fact responsible for much, but the value of money, not so much.) And for a third thing, there's Republican efforts at voter suppression paying off. And of course, Trump didn't even win the plurality of the votes and did not win big.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 15 2025 20:43 utc | 21
The Pale Shade of Louis Proyect would have you believe that TwitterX was neutral before Musk bought it. In his view it is only proper that "deplorables" be censored, banned, and "cancelled", and if TwitterX had continued with that behavior then Trump wouldn't have won. "Taking Trump's nonsense seriously..." was the problem, in the foul Establishment shill's view. If the capitalist mass media, and capitalist-owned social media had just closed ranks like they normally do to exclude voices dangerous to their status, then we wouldn't have had to worry about Trump winning is that cheesy Establishment tool's message.
Now watch that cheap replacement for Louis Proyect mess his panties and exclaim that it was the capitalist Establishment that boosted Trump. Indeed, a portion of the Empire's oligarchy did support Trump, but what the Bargain Basement Louis Proyect will try to imply is that the visible opposition to Trump originated from outside that oligarchy, which is obvious nonsense.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 15 2025 21:20 utc | 22
'The authors of yesterday's piece who claim that there was "clear evidence of Russian manipulation" in Romania point, as proof for their claims, to a piece that says the exact opposite.' -- b
Questioning the legacy media's unchallengeable authority, comrade b? What are you, some kind of extremist?
Yes, the New York Slimes lies -- brazenly, habitually, compulsively. In other news, the sun rose in the east today.
Death to the Lügenpresse.
Posted by: Jim H | Feb 15 2025 21:25 utc | 23
Kamala wasn't elected for the same reasons nobody buys broken watches even with the best marketing : you buy a watch for displaying the right time more than twice a day.
Posted by: Hiro Masamune | Feb 15 2025 21:31 utc | 24
But I’m sure the local gurus will conclude the NYT is completely truthful about all other matters like climate change, Covid origins, covid vaccines, scientific consensus, and so on and so forth. lol
Posted by: CullenBaker | Feb 15 2025 21:43 utc | 25
"I very much doubt that. If it does work why couldn't Kamala Harris, who spent $300 million more than Trump did, win the election?"
Russians work for less.
/
Posted by: Ornot | Feb 15 2025 22:01 utc | 26
Further evidence of NYT journalistic malpractice is the article in today's edition flatly stating that a Russian drone damaged the Chernobyl reactor enclosure, an action that Russia has officially denied and which is militarily senseless.
Posted by: HH | Feb 15 2025 22:27 utc | 27
I don't understand how this stuff is happening, with the EU in particular.
The common wisdom is that Trump is impulsive and half crazy. However, these remarks by Hegeseth and Vance (and others) suggest a radical view of Europe. Did they get together with Trump and did he tell them, "Yeah, we're gonna dump Ukraine and Europe"? OR are they just following a theme that Trump suggested - and speaking somewhat independently?
Do you understand what I'm saying? What is the genesis of this diplomatic upheaval? Is this a sort of mob spirit but within his Administration? Or is Trump explicitly orchestrating it?
Posted by: Eighthman | Feb 15 2025 22:28 utc | 28
Big media tells lies. In other news, water is wet.
Posted by: G. Poulin | Feb 15 2025 22:34 utc | 29
" The common wisdom is that Trump is impulsive and half crazy. "
Posted by: Eighthman | Feb 15 2025 22:28 utc | 28
Trump put this on Twitter....
" He who saves his country does not break any law "
Straight from any dictators play book.
Infact, Neo-Nazi terrorist and convicted mass murderer Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011, cited this
exact same Napoleon quote in his manifesto.
Before killing 77 people in Norway.
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Feb 15 2025 22:37 utc | 30
Fact-Checking against their own previous claims is perhaps the best kind.
The empty fantasizing about ¨NATO approved peace agreements¨ I thinks lacks an important fact.
¨Definitely-not-NATO peacekeepers for Ukraine¨ has a precedent. OSCE were observers for Minsk.
And Russia found them to be collaborating to conceal Ukraine´s violations, while passing intel
on Russian (or then, DNR/LNR) forces. In other words, zero dedication to the agreement, and
total partisan dedication to anti-Russian stance. So why would Russia ever agree to such a thing?
But that´s the thing, when day dreaming of these scenarios, they never get serious enough to
actually come out and say ¨and Russia will agree to XYZ¨. Clearly they don´t care about Russia´s opinion.
But the thing about an agreement is that both sides´ opinion does matter, otherwise it´s not an agreement.
Likewise, this farce of ¨it´s just a cease-fire, and we don´t need to formally recognize new RU territory¨.
That isn´t something that can be faked. Will RU passports of this region be recognized?
Will Russian bureacratic credentials like school certificates, and import/export tarriff regimes be recognized?
Posted by: x | Feb 15 2025 22:41 utc | 32
@Eighthman
Why do you think the common wisdom is that Trump is impulsive and half crazy?
Posted by: CullenBaker | Feb 15 2025 22:41 utc | 33
Posted by: Eighthman | Feb 15 2025 22:28 utc | 28
" He who saves his country does not break any law "
Do you actually believe Trumps quote on Twitter ?
Or do you believe their should be democratic checks and balances and that a constitution is written and laws implemented to save the American people from dictators all across the political spectrum ?
After all " savings one country " is in the eyes of the dictator saving it.
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Feb 15 2025 22:45 utc | 34
Harris spent $600 million more than Trump.
Posted by: Gareth | Feb 15 2025 22:40 utc | 31
###################
That doesn't include all of the illegal government spending and support that she got from the system.
It's probably 4x that amount if we could audit it.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 15 2025 22:46 utc | 35
thanks b... good catch, but catching fish like this is pretty easy, as the ny lying times hopes most people don't pick up on any of it..
@ William Gruff | Feb 15 2025 21:20 utc | 22
a fun bit of writing, lol.. thanks..
Posted by: james | Feb 15 2025 22:47 utc | 36
Posted by: Eighthman | Feb 15 2025 22:28 utc | 28
Trump is acting like a businessman who wants to turn around a loss-making business. You fire part of the workforce. You close or restructure any division that costs more than it earns.
Posted by: Passerby | Feb 15 2025 22:47 utc | 37
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 15 2025 21:20 utc | 22 BS. If you want to know what suppressing a candidate looks like, contrast the treatment handed out to Sanders and Trump in the the presidential nomination campaigns. Whining about Trump being persecuted is Trump Deification Syndrome. The notion that pre-X, Twitter, persecuted Trump is equally BS. But anyone who thinks this person's misrepresentations is relevant to my comment is clearly delighted with the taste of BS.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 15 2025 22:52 utc | 38
@Is this a sort of mob spirit but within his Administration? Or is Trump explicitly orchestrating it?
Posted by: Eighthman | Feb 15 2025 22:28 utc | 28
I don´t see any of this as a fundamental change. It´s just mask-off of the same tendency.
This was spelled out publically from the time of Bush Jr-Obama, e.g. the ¨Byzantine strategy¨.
Said entailed getting them to fight for US, both keeping challengers weaker and keeping the minions weak.
¨Gathering of allies¨ to force them to be full minions within the US´ global dominion was overtly stated.
So the latest stuff from Trump is just the stronger version, bad cop vs good cop maybe.
But there is no real major change.
The Panama Canal? Oh, what do you know... Now Rubio is talking about how the Panamians have been
¨enabling sanctions evasion¨ with their ship registry, so that needs to fall in line (not actually Canal related).
Greenland? You can see the same China-phobe hysteria re: Greenland running for 10 or 15 years.
Oh, and what do you know... The Danes now trumpet their militarization of the region (exactly what US has wanted).
(this isn´t relevant to stopping any US move on Greenland... it´s about anti-Russian stance in the Arctic)
(which again isn´t about active threat to US, but just a venue where US might want to ¨pressure¨ Russia)
Posted by: x | Feb 15 2025 22:52 utc | 39
Know your History ...
History is rife with examples of authoritarian rulers who employed this justification. From Napoleon's own coup d’état in 1799 to Adolf Hitler's rise to power through emergency decrees, the notion of "saving the nation" has often been the rallying cry of despots.
Each case demonstrates how a leader can manipulate legal frameworks, erode democratic institutions, and dismantle civil liberties under the guise of national preservation. In reality, such leaders are not saving their countries but rather reshaping them into autocracies that serve their interests at the expense of the people's freedoms.
Remember that when he posts on Twitter
" He who saves his country does not break any law "
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Feb 15 2025 22:55 utc | 40
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 15 2025 22:52 utc | 37
################
Time has revealed that Bernie is a weak and greedy man.
Tulsi supported him when he needed it, and he wouldn't vote for her confirmation.
I remember when he took a buyout to endorse Hillary in '16 after talking about how corrupt she was all of the campaign.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 15 2025 22:55 utc | 41
" He who saves his country does not break any law "
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Feb 15 2025 22:55 utc | 38
#############
Did you cry this much when Obama broke laws? If you did not, then you're a hypocrite.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 15 2025 22:56 utc | 42
Sulla saved the republic and retired and went home to his villa.
Posted by: CullenBaker | Feb 15 2025 23:00 utc | 43
I'll try to be more articulate with this. Either.....these guys are just riffing off what Trump says OR (maybe) they talked with him in private and he filled them in about explicit radical changes and they were good with what he said.This would mean dumping EU would be planned, not an impulse. Wouldn't it be ironic if this "loose tongued" administration actually has been surprisingly clandestine? This further raises questions - is this purely Trump speaking? Or is there some background push by strategists encouraging and defending Trump in ditching Europe? Hey, even Nixon had Kissinger planning things out! Carter had Brezinski. If there are Neo Cons that are "all war, everywhere, all the time". then maybe a different set of elites are now in control?
I think academics do underestimate Trump because they associate being literate and articulate with being intelligent or a mastermind. However, I think many organized crime figures are similar in those respects but are still intuitively clever. Is Trump being deeply intuitive here? Or is something more going on?
I do enjoy considering that Warmongering Inc. may not survive Trump and a multipolar world may be more fair and peaceful.
Posted by: Eighthman | Feb 15 2025 23:13 utc | 44
From this clip Ukrainians in Lviv have accepted reality.
[disclaimer… who pays the reporter? Who selected which interviews to highlight?]
But IMVHO it’s a shift. Street interviews from 2021-2023 were all very belligerent and certain Ukraine would win and Russia would be punished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hucqs2q90WI
Posted by: Melaleuca | Feb 15 2025 23:37 utc | 45
the NYTs lies offer clear and convincing evidence to support a conclusion that MoA is a superior information outlet when compared to the NYT. Thanks B.
Posted by: snake | Feb 15 2025 23:40 utc | 46
@ snake | Feb 15 2025 23:40 utc | 44
You’re not setting a terribly high bar.
Posted by: malenkov | Feb 15 2025 23:44 utc | 47
Posted by: Exile | Feb 15 2025 18:43 utc | 5
This quote from Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is the classic quote on disinformation during wartime. It provided much solace and insight for those of us staggered by the propaganda published by the corporate media during the early stages of the war in Ukraine. And Gaza: when Iran responded to Israel's assassination of the Hamas negotiator on Iranian soil with a barrage of missiles, The Washington Post put a three second loop of Israel's "Iron Dome" repelling a few of them. You could go on Telegram (or MoA) and find dozens and dozens of clips of the "Iron Dome" doing nothing of the sort.
Posted by: Lukacs | Feb 16 2025 0:24 utc | 48
Louis Proyect's Shriveled Foreskin: "...contrast the treatment handed out to Sanders and Trump in the the presidential nomination campaigns..."
Poster reveals itself to be either a mouth-breathing moron or an obvious Deep State tool. I say both.
The poster is obviously referring to 2015-2016, where Trump was promoted by the mass media to clear the field on the Republican side as an unelectable candidate so the tool's queen Shrillery could breeze into the White House essentially unopposed. (Aside: Why are stereotypically 'faggy' homosexuals so enamored with such hideously nasty women? "We [royal 'we', obviously] came; we saw; we fucked his ass with a strapon bayonet, and then we came again! [cackle cackle cackle]") The fool still doesn't understand what went wrong with that "brilliant" plan. I've explained it repeatedly, but the truth in this matter is something TDS people cannot accept. That truth is simply that the "deplorables" are smarter than you TDS people. The "deplorables" saw through you TDS people's retarded scheme and refused to play your game.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 0:41 utc | 49
But I’m sure the local gurus will conclude the NYT is completely truthful about all other matters like climate change, Covid origins, covid vaccines, scientific consensus, and so on and so forth.Aka Gell-Mann Amnesia.
What Is the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect?
The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect describes our tendency to trust news articles on topics we’re not knowledgeable about; even though we recognise inaccuracies in other news reports on issues we know well. Novelist Michael Crichton coined the phenomenon in his 2002 talk Why Speculate? about the prevalence of speculation in the news.
https://themindcollection.com/gell-mann-amnesia-effect/
Posted by: Pacific Observer | Feb 16 2025 0:53 utc | 50
I know the media basically nonsense, but the headline to a yt Hindustan Times vid gave me a wry/ + incredulous hrumph.
>\”Scholz Surrenders & Kills Ukraine’s Nato Hope, Says This... | Putin Wins Without Firing a Shot?”
>”Putin Wins Without Firing a Shot”
*Without firing a shot”?
Wtf?
I thought we were Year 3 into a bloody artillery war with likely 1.25 million dead.
But Putin did this….. “without firing a shot”.
Ffs.
Here’s the link. No recommendation to watch. In fact, don’t bother. It was just the inanity of the headline that agitated me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqhIaRsKWN8
Posted by: Melaleuca | Feb 16 2025 1:12 utc | 51
Already mentioned often enough that reversing the nato aegis in Romania could be part of the deal. And easy enough with a regularly non-Russophobic president.
Now… Biden’s crew can’t have that
Posted by: Newbie | Feb 16 2025 2:15 utc | 52
But I’m sure the local gurus will conclude the NYT is completely truthful about all other matters like climate change, Covid origins, covid vaccines, scientific consensus, and so on and so forth. lolPosted by: CullenBaker | Feb 15 2025 21:43 utc | 25
You forgot to mention they had Paul Krugman writing a column for 25 years ... so they are extremely solid on economic matters. You know that guy won some sort of prize? He's that good.
Posted by: Tel | Feb 16 2025 2:31 utc | 53
Obama's first election victory is touted as having been made possible because of social media activism.
Whether this ever worked again, as voters became more sophisticated in their use and understanding of social media, seems to be unclear.
Posted by: Jane | Feb 16 2025 2:32 utc | 54
Sounds like Romania needs absentee ballots and voting machines so this terrible Russian manipulation cant occur again. Nice catch B of a classic lie then base further lies on the lie example. "journalism"
Dear Citizens;
You voted wrong. We are losing our patience.
Posted by: bedtimeforbonzo | Feb 16 2025 2:35 utc | 55
Give up on reading The NYT. It's degenerated into a rag.
Posted by: Gerry Bell | Feb 16 2025 4:03 utc | 56
Politico and NYT have been named as receiving USAID funding.
Next.
So will revelations of USAID funding for Ukraine war and EU leaders be addressed next?
Posted by: Suresh | Feb 16 2025 4:22 utc | 57
A few years ago, Gore Vidal wrote that reading the New York Times and the Washington Post had become like reading Pravda or Izvesia in the old days. If you read them carefully and between the lines, it was possible to learn something which was true!
I might add that The Guardian re China is often laughably ignorant!
Posted by: lester | Feb 16 2025 4:57 utc | 58
*** In reality, such leaders are not saving their countries but rather reshaping them into autocracies that serve their interests at the expense of the people's freedoms.***
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Feb 15 2025 22:55 utc | 38
Can a leader act autocratically while granting freedoms given up in a democratic republic? Is it impossible for an autocracy to grant more freedom than a democratic republic or does the autocratic excercise of power always lead to totalitarianism? If you answer no and yes you probably buy into determinism nonsense. Lightning bolts and electric chairs arc, not history.
Posted by: frithguild | Feb 16 2025 5:21 utc | 59
https://www.flightradar24.com/A124/3924feb3
Antonov AN124 transport arriving Rzeszow from Shannon, Ireland. I think there's a Ukrainian company with a small fleet of them.
Posted by: YetAnotherAnon | Feb 16 2025 7:07 utc | 60
Posted by: David | Feb 15 2025 19:15 utc | 11Where did Vance say, "remote Romania"? It's not in the Munich speech that I can see. Is that another lie?
I heard the whole speech and I'm pretty sure he didn't say 'remote Romania', that's just pure blatant lying from the NYT.
I wonder what they, the WSJ, NYT, expect to happen after they carry out this totally dishonest attack on the VP of America?
Posted by: Johan Kaspar | Feb 16 2025 8:39 utc | 61
Of course we all know which superpower has a history of interfering in other nation's elections, don't we Mr Biden?
Posted by: Peter Plail | Feb 16 2025 8:39 utc | 62
DS showed an 11.2 kmsq day. Similar to January, but much worse than months prior.
Gains at
1. N of Velyka Novoslka. Showing continued progress since loss of the corner.
2. Ulakle and Andriivka. Starting to close the Dachne pocket.
3. Couple spots on the Dnipropokrvsk front.
Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 16 2025 9:32 utc | 63
I know the media basically nonsense, but the headline to a yt Hindustan Times vid gave me a wry/ + incredulous hrumph.
>\”Scholz Surrenders & Kills Ukraine’s Nato Hope,
Posted by: Melaleuca | Feb 16 2025 1:12 utc | 51
It has always been Scholz position that Ukraine has no place in NATO. Before the war, at the start of the war, and at pretty much all time during the war. Nothing new here. The wording has varied, the position hasn't.
Scholz, though being very quiet, seems to be one of the few european politicians who is capable of thinking beyong tomorrow's headline. Not much further, sadly, and he doesn't seem to be able to rally support for his position, but he does seem to be able to understand that before inviting Ukraine to NATO and EU, it might eb a good idea to think through the consequences.
Posted by: Marvin | Feb 16 2025 9:39 utc | 64
If I worked for the NYT here is how I would have handled the Hunter Biden laptop issue:
on October 19, 2020, 51 former intelligence officials signed on to a public statement that stated that the Hunter Biden laptop story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,"
"Clear evidence of Russian manipulation can be found here"
Posted by: librul | Feb 15 2025 20:02 utc | 15
In Munich, Vance didn't go into the argument whether Russia bought TikTok ads or not. He could have, since the burden of proof is on those who wield the accusations, and they haven't shown anything yet(Hunter Biden had nothing to do with Romania).
Vance said, what should have been said by anybody interested in fair and balanced reporting, that everybody buys social media ads before elections. And if a few hundred thousand dollars worth of TikTok-ads couldd swing an election in a country, that country didn't have much of a democracy to start with.
He argues for Freedom, including the freedom of a few crackpots and, if he feels so inclined, Wladimir Putin to sing their song if they want. He argues that in a real democracy, those nuisances won't be heard in the chorus of democratic voices.
Posted by: Marvin | Feb 16 2025 9:50 utc | 65
He argues that in a real democracy, those nuisances won't be heard in the chorus of democratic voices.
Posted by: Marvin | Feb 16 2025 9:50 utc | 65
---
He argues that "The Gulf of America" is the correct diktat.
Posted by: too scents | Feb 16 2025 9:54 utc | 66
Re: OSCE observers ?
During the Wars to Destroy Yugoslavia, the OSCE proved themselves to be instruments of the War Party in Washington. A surprising number of the OSCE observers were retired NATO military.
Posted by: exile | Feb 16 2025 10:12 utc | 67
I heard the whole speech and I'm pretty sure he didn't say 'remote Romania', that's just pure blatant lying from the NYT.Posted by: Johan Kaspar | Feb 16 2025 8:39 utc | 61
For Americans, all the rest of the world is "remote". So it's probably a way to tell their readers that Romania is somewhere foreign.
Posted by: Avtonom | Feb 16 2025 10:29 utc | 68
Martial Law Invoked Biden’s Best Ally in Democracy
“Yoon Suk Yeol South Korea invoked martial law planned false flag attack to provoke North Korea”
Kim claimed that the plan was to assassinate Han Dong Hoon and attribute it to North Korea while rescuing opposition leaders to make it look like they were in cahoots with North Korea.
- First, Han Dong Hoon is to be assassinated during
transportation after his arrest…Second, flee after
attacking the arrest unit, escorting Cho Kuk, Yang
Jeong Cheol, and myself, pretending to rescue them
… Third, North Korean military uniforms will be buried
at a specific location… Fourth, after some time, the
uniforms will be discovered, and the incident will be
attributed to North Korea. — Kim Eo Jun testimony.
Only a false flag attack makes sense in the four years under the Biden administration losing out on international politics and fervor at home.
European politicians scrambling this weekend to hide the corpses in their well known closets.
"All those billions from USAID and other agencies were going somewhere. Close the faucet and see how a whole political movement loses quality and quantity. It will be obvious to all in just a few months how bad the progressive and neocon parties were, with only manufactured support."
Posted by: alek_a | Feb 15 2025 18:31 utc | 2
Excellent analysis!!
One of the challenges of providing daily News bulletins or newspapers is that if nothing newsworthy happened today then it becomes necessary to transform some trivia into News.
Crime, Sport, Showbiz, Politics, Weather, Road Toll and Celebrity Blunders are regularly used as gap-fillers.
The NYT is widely regarded as The Newspaper of Record, worldwide, and is scrupulously edited. So if the NYT published a mistake then it wasn't a mistake - it was a message. Why and to whom would be worth pondering.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 16 2025 12:06 utc | 71
Romanian citizen here,
When the news broken out that Calin Georgescu had won the first round of elections it was as if I'd woken up in Wonderland. I was certain that there was Russian interference on the matter, so I investigated the matter personally. I scrapped TikTok for his views over time, and they seemed to match in a way those of George Simion another candidate. The votes were in the shape of an exponential gaining momentum around the same time for both candidates. This matched the (blurred)report by SRI(Romania's internal intelligence service), except that they never mentioned George Simion's graph. And that I could not find anything unusual in any of the two? Regardless there was also another report https://www.presidency.ro/files/userfiles/Documente%20CSAT/Document%20CSAT%20SRI%20II.pdf that mentioned that foreign actors had hacked the on-line electoral reporting infrastructure... the votes were recounted as a result and nothing unusual was noticed... Furthermore Calin Gerogescu is not an ultra nationalist, he is a cretin and a liar who can not stitch two minutes of coherent speech together without practice. That is he pretends to be ultra nationalist to get votes! All you have to do to figure this out is to view some of his older interviews where he has the same deceptive speech but much different ideology. To figure out that he's a cretin you have to view some of his unrehearsed interviews where he claims that the name of Vlad Dracul(Vlad the Impaler) is a misspelling of "Vlad Dragul"("Vlad the Dear", as he was dear to the people), even the reporter saw through that and corrected him.
Posted by: mcaju | Feb 16 2025 12:06 utc | 72
"Give up on reading The NYT. It's degenerated into a rag."
Posted by: Gerry Bell | Feb 16 2025 4:03 utc | 56
I disagree with your description.
A 'rag' has many purposes: washing your car, cleaning up your floor, wiping off your dog when he is coming in from the snow (which I did this morning) whereas the NYT has no purpose whatsoever.
So please don't degenerate the 'rags' of this world!
https://thehill.com/opinion/5146149-zelensky-war-ego/
Wow! It's shocking to see a propaganda outlet such as the Hill publish anything like this. "The Mad King Of Kyiv". I hope they asked the CIA for permission so nobody gets into trouble.
Posted by: Eighthman | Feb 16 2025 12:30 utc | 74
"Aside: Why are stereotypically 'faggy' homosexuals so enamored with such hideously nasty women? "
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 0:41 utc | 49
Freud believed that 'homosexuality' was caused by 'strong, domineering mothers,'(1); hence, Killary-'a mean girl if there ever was one'- would be an unconscious magnet for homosexuals.
1."As early as 1905, Sigmund Freud began probing the family backgrounds that could produce homosexuality and other sexual deviations (Marmor 1976). Every clinician, including myself, learned that passive, weak, or absent fathers, coupled with strong, dominant, and castrating mothers set up the perfect climate for the induction of homosexuality.
Sunny comparing Napoleon with Hitler clearly illustrates his complete lack of historical knowledge. Such that Sunny has won an unprecedented 13th ,"The Most Retarded Post I have Read Today Award':
"History is rife with examples of authoritarian rulers who employed this justification. From Napoleon's own coup d’état in 1799 to Adolf Hitler's rise to power through emergency decrees, the notion of "saving the nation""
Posted by: Sunny | Feb 15 2025 22:55 utc | 40
So if the NYT published a mistake then it wasn't a mistake - it was a message. Why and to whom would be worth pondering.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 16 2025 12:06 utc | 71
The blob is trying to sow distrust between the Trump administration and Russia. There was this other wrong report, i forget the name of the paper, about Vance saying in an interview they were considering military means to force Russia into submission.
Posted by: umuntu | Feb 16 2025 13:28 utc | 78
The blob is trying to sow distrust between the Trump administration and Russia.
Posted by: umuntu | Feb 16 2025 13:28 utc | 78
---
Oh come on! Russia doesn't need the NYT's help. And how does the article make Russia less trustworthy in the eyes of Trump and his supporters?
Vance said Russia was behind a TicTok campaign to discredit the Romanian elections. That he lied is a matter of fact.
That the NYT reported on the issue in two contradictive ways is a matter for consideration.
Posted by: too scents | Feb 16 2025 13:41 utc | 79
Talking about Moldova, the only blatant rigging was from the incumbent when the "independent" electoral commission had 2 voting centers in Russia (where the largest diaspora live) and over a thousand in europe. That and the b---- suppressing Gaugazia. They should declare independence already and be like Transnistria.
Posted by: Sal | Feb 16 2025 13:59 utc | 80
That is classic NYT. They have even new and big legal problems due to a hit piece paid by actors from the discount shop Lively and Reynolds. The amount demanded by the attacked guy as compensation from NYT alone is $250m in a libel lawsuit. So far it looks like the two discount actors instead of trying to settle and accept their mistakes are doubling down, which is very funny to watch. Their careers are basically finished and hopefully NYT will suffer badly too
Posted by: rk | Feb 16 2025 14:21 utc | 81
Concerning the winning of elections through social media. In Romania, there were several candidates except Calin Gerogescu who had made their campaign largely there, including George Simion and Diana Sosoaca(who got removed from the lists thanks to some Nazi comments IIRC?) the difference between the later two and George Simion seems to have been in political discourse and political ideology, it is also worth mentioning that Calin Gerogescu was under little if any media scrutiny before the elections. Basically there was no dirt on him. So, Geroge Simion got 13% while Calin Georgescu got 22% and Elena Lasconi got 18%. All of these three candidates were campaigning on TikTok while Geroge Simion had a comparable number of views on TikTok to Calin Georgescu. In short we don't know why Calin Georgescu got such a high percentage, maybe it was a mix of factors, maybe it had nothing to do with advertising and his growth was natural?
Posted by: mcaju | Feb 16 2025 15:09 utc | 82
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 0:41 utc | 49 Caught out yet again, this missionary for the God Trump expounds more sacred mythology, namely that it was Hilary who used her control of the MSM to promote Trump. Functionally, this sort of thing does the same thing as Xenu (Scientology) or the golden plates brought by the angel (Mormons,) separate the true believers from the merely sympathetic. No, Hilary did not control the mass media to mistakenly create her own demise the Divine Hero Trump: Hilary did not control the media. If she did she would have turned off the free publicity for Trump as soon as he won the nomination. If she did she would have cut out the ridiculous number of stories about email servers and incoherent twaddle about Benghazi and ignored Comey's craven capitulation to Trump. Amusingly, like that fraud who claimed Trump was part of a January 6 false flag operation, this also says Trump was part of Hilary's operation, slandering himself in the Access: Hollywood tape or asking Russians to spy on the Democrats while passing it off as a joke.
This person apparently learned to lie watching Mom tell her husband of course she was faithful: Repeatedly, shamelessly, relentlessly counter-attacking with mindless insults. Good training for a propagandist, whether paid or merely a crank hobbyist.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 16 2025 15:34 utc | 83
@steven t johnson | Feb 15 2025 22:52 utc | 38
The notion that pre-X, Twitter, persecuted Trump is equally BS.Sure, they just permanently suspended his account.
Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 16 2025 15:39 utc | 84
Proyect's replacement is so stupid it makes me miss the original. Its eagerness to jump to the defense of its queen Hillary does put the lie to is fake leftist persona, though. It tries desperately to gaslight, but it falls flat because that shtick lost is power almost a decade ago. That the TDS people think their gaslighting still has any effect demonstrates how much they underestimate their "deplorable" targets and how much they overestimate their own intelligence. They are so far gone from reality they may never find their way back.
Task for the attentive reader: Who suggested that Clinton controlled the mass media? Don't look too hard because such a suggestion doesn't exist. That is called a "strawman fallacy". When on the wrong side of the facts, then such Establishment shills just make something up and run hard with that. That brings us back to one of the original points which is that the poster is either a mouth-breathing moron or an obvious Deep State tool.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 16:45 utc | 85
Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 16 2025 15:39 utc | 84 In January 2021, when he was lying about losing the election and staged an attempted coup. Only a witless obscenity forgets that.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 16:45 utc | 85 Mindless abuse, just like Mommy.
The poster is obviously referring to 2015-2016, where Trump was promoted by the mass media to clear the field on the Republican side as an unelectable candidate so the tool's queen Shrillery could breeze into the White House essentially unopposed.
The claim that Hilary gave Trump the PR to win the nomination is there. False, as proven by how Trump got the free publicity after winning the nomination. The claim that Hilary wasn't savagely attacked by the media is there too, also false. This commenter lies about their own posts! The only strawman here is the commenter's purported father.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 16 2025 16:59 utc | 86
Trump was promoted by the mass media to clear the field on the Republican side as an unelectable candidate so the tool's queen Shrillery could breeze into the White House essentially unopposed.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 0:41 utc | 49
The problem with that story is one would have to be completely unaware of the facts to believe it.
Trump wasn't appointed by the news media as you seem, to believe. Trump beat the pants off the other Republican candidates by being electable. It was the news media that helped make Trump the most electable candidate in a field of many candidates by ignoring the other candidates and giving Trump all the coverage. Trumps rallies throughout his campaign had dozens of major news outlets in attendance. While on the other hand by comparison reporters were threatened with termination if they covered any rally by Sanders.
What was obvious to anyone paying attention was Hillary was always the candidate that was not electable. The fact Clinton was unelectable had already been established in 2008 when Clinton lost to an unknown candidate that most Americans had never heard of before. Clinton won the 2016 primary not by being electable but by rigged coin tosses and super delegates and a news media that promoted the lie she was the only candidate who could beat Trump. The news media announced that nobody would vote for a socialist even while Sanders was beating Clinton in the early primaries.
The story that Trump was installed in the race to make the Hillary the eventual winner is as ridiculous as the story that the FBI was trying to sabotage Trump's campaign. Trump and his supporters would chant "Lock her up" and the news media would make sure everybody across the nation heard that chant loud and clear and then right on cue the FBI would announce they were conducting a criminal investigation of Clinton. And yet the believers of fairy tales insist that the FBI was trying to help Clinton to win.
Posted by: jinn | Feb 16 2025 17:16 utc | 87
Again with the strawman and obvious effort at misdirection. The feeble tool tries to double down on its gaslighting struggle.
The mass media is called the "Mighty Wurlitzer" and the "Mockingbird Media" for a reason, and there was never a Clinton at the organ's keyboard. Rather, the Clintons took orders from the same people conducting the mass media chorus. This is elementary stuff.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 17:26 utc | 88
The notion that pre-X, Twitter, persecuted Trump is equally BS.
Sure, they just permanently suspended his account.
Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 16 2025 15:39 utc | 84
He was banned after he lost the election, but the believers in fairy tales insist twitter contributed to his 2020 loss. Prior to the election twitter was Trump's biggest asset for communicating to voters.
Posted by: jinn | Feb 16 2025 17:30 utc | 89
"...twitter was Trump's biggest asset for communicating to voters."
Bargain Basement Louis Proyect's mini-me is too stupid to realize it, but it just wiped out is own argument that the mass media was a Trump asset.
What a retard.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 18:13 utc | 90
but it just wiped out is own argument that the mass media was a Trump asset.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 18:13 utc | 90
It was your argument that the mass media promoted Trump because Trump would be unelectable. A pretty stupid thesis IMO. To buy that argument you have to believe that the MSM and the elites have no clue what they were doing as well as being blind to the facts...
As for somebody saying the mass media was a Trump asset, I guess I missed that comment.
The mass media is the asset of the ruling elites. Even Gruff believes the mass media helped Trump, but Gruff somehow has concluded that means the ruling elite wanted Hillary to win. Gruff knows this because they said they wanted Hillary to win and surely they would never lie to Gruff.
Twitter was an asset to Trump because Trump posted thousands of tweets which communicate to 10's of millions of his supporters. Trump had complete control of the content of those tweets. That's many million$ in free advertising.
Posted by: jinn | Feb 16 2025 19:00 utc | 91
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 15 2025 20:43 utc | 21 BLOCKQUOTE For another thing, bias in the news, driven by direct ownership by the rich and by the market imperative of selling advertising to the rich, can function in fact as promotion.
I guess that is what is being portrayed here as saying the mass media were a Trump asset. The chatter about "queen Shrillery" is nothing but an attempt to substitute inflammatory names and phrases in place of an argument. It was this commenter who kept raising Hilary, not me. Pretending I didn't write the sentence above is more falsification.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 16 2025 18:13 utc | 90 This comment presupposes that Twitter, now X, isn't mass media which would be insane were it not so convenient for a Trump cultists ritual devotions. Commenter jinn's contributions are sensible, better written and more polite and best of all, correct. For my part, I must add, it's the fairies who love to tell fairy tales the most.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 16 2025 20:54 utc | 92
Excuse messing up the blockquote @92, please.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 16 2025 20:55 utc | 93
Posted by: jinn | Feb 16 2025 17:16 utc | 87 Being a compulsive nitpicker, I do have to argue that Hilary was only unelectable in the sense of not being able to win the nomination, not at all in 2008 nor without careful behind the scenes work in 2016. In that context, unelectable is okay enough. But...
Hilary won the popular vote in 2016 and in that sense was electable. It's appalling how the relentless drumbeat of propaganda can make the best of us forget the most elementary facts, if only for a moment.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 16 2025 21:19 utc | 94
Hilary won the popular vote in 2016 and in that sense was electable. It's appalling how the relentless drumbeat of propaganda can make the best of us forget the most elementary facts, if only for a moment.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 16 2025 21:19 utc | 94
I am sorry to inform you but what you are claiming "elementary fact" is not a fact at all.
The popular vote got Hillary elected to the Senate, but she was not electable to the Presidency.
Not in the primaries or in the general election.
Trump was electable in 2016 because he could attract the votes in the more numerous small and rural states that Clinton could not. Those are the facts.
Even Biden was just barely electable in 2020. Had Trump managed to attract just 100K more votes in 4 swing states he would have won in 2020. Biden came extremely close to being another unelectable presidential candidate even with his 10 million more popular votes.
The popular vote is meaningless in US presidential elections. The states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Nebraska combined have 3 more electoral votes than the state of Illinois, but Illinois has more than double the population of those six states. The voters in those 6 Western states have double the power of a more populous state like Illinois.
What I just explained are the facts of what it takes to be electable to the Presidency in the US of A. To propose that the ruling elites who created these facts in the first place a few centuries back are unaware of those facts and due to their ignorance of those facts accidentally got Donald Trump elected in 2016 is just so ridiculous that it is astounding to me that anybody would take that story seriously.
Trump was the electable candidate in 2016. He was electable in spite of the fact that the Libertarian candidate siphoned off 4 million of the votes he would have received.
Clinton was the unelectable candidate in 2016 by any rational measure. Harris was also the unelectable candidate that ran against Trump. Does anybody seriously believe the voters who have been given superior voting power by the US Constitition were going to pick Harris over Trump?
Posted by: jinn | Feb 17 2025 0:10 utc | 95
What was obvious to anyone paying attention was Hillary was always the candidate that was not electable. The fact Clinton was unelectable had already been established in 2008 when Clinton lost to an unknown candidate that most Americans had never heard of before. Clinton won the 2016 primary not by being electable but by rigged coin tosses and super delegates and a news media that promoted the lie she was the only candidate who could beat Trump.Posted by: jinn | Feb 16 2025 17:16 utc | 87
The way I remember it ... was mainstream journalists used to have such a massive high opinion of themselves and such a low opinion of their readership ... they believed they could wave their pens and make anyone win. Being called, "Racist!" by a couple of newspapers and repeated on CNN was supposed to permanently destroy careers.
Thing is, with Trump they tried oh so very hard that it became obvious they were desperate. The "Very Fine People" hoax got repeated endlessly even way after it had been found out as a lie, but that particular class of people ... the cultured, the avant garde, the self-proclaimed clever people ... they couldn't admit they had been done. They couldn't admit it to themselves, and they couldn't be seen in public not being one of the team. So they went into endless repetition ... a tailspin of confusion.
Right up until the last minute they believed it would work. Even after the whole crapola turned into crashing failure they needed to make up stories about Russian mind control rays and occult Facebook algorithms ... because ya know it ain't easy blaming yourself.
Posted by: Tel | Feb 17 2025 10:29 utc | 96
Posted by: jinn | Feb 17 2025 0:10 utc | 95 The four million votes stolen from Trump is just as much a fairy tale as any other so far told. You do not know this counter-factual.
Moving on, I assure you that the Founders did not devote much time much less legal expertise to the Electoral College: That's why there was a constitutional crisis in the election of 1800, requiring the hasty Twelfth Amendment to prevent a repetition. They did not even know the actual populations of the states. That's why regular census was mandated. They did know that some states had widespread franchise while others had a very restricted one, like South Carolina's. They did know that the notorious three fifths compromise over-represented slaves states. They did not even know whether the Electoral College would function as an indirect stage of election, where the electors acted as independent agents, regardless of their popular vote (such as it was) much less their state legislature and governor. It was only subsequently that electors not voting with their state's purported majority were charged as being wrong, or even nefarious. That was the claim of Jefferson's Democratic Republicans that they would faithfully represent, which is why their electors dutifully voted for both Jefferson and Burr, creating the crisis of 1800 when the two tied. It is commonly assumed the Framers had an original intent, but many provisions were vague with how they worked meant to be left to actual political practice and legislation. In particular, the notion that states must be winner-take-all in the Electoral College is no part of the either the original EC nor the amended one. Hasty conclusions about the intent are ill-advised.
Also ill-advised is the implicit agreement that Trump was in fact the stable genius who played the EC game like a stable genius. That is a fairy tale, just as much as claiming Biden was the political genius who played the EC game smarter in 2020. You can't have it both ways, if winning the EC can be down to relatively small margins, then it becomes rather random, in the sense of being due to too many factors beyond any central control to predict. About the only techniques promising much success are voter suppression, targeted as much as possible, or maximizing voter turnout. You may agree that the latter is much viler, for undisclosed reasons? I confess, I do think democracy is majority rule. I do not agree that minority rights (which in real life means property) can only be protected by power over the majority. You disagree, but that is not an elementary fact in anything but rhetoric.
It is still true that the legalities as they are uphold a minoritarian view of so-called democracy, where the democracy is magically defined as a system where the minority can block the majority. But I am sorry to inform you that is not an elementary fact, but a political position...or maybe political imposition is the better phrase? There are very good political reasons why Trumpers insist that Trump won a mandate in 2016; won in 2020; won a landslide majority in 2024: Whatever the lawyers' arguments about the legalities and how only the EC matters---yes, the shysters win this one in court---in real world politics, actually winning the vote has a moral authority beyond the shysters' ken. The Trumpers cannot be satisfied with the EC vote precisely because they at some level know this. And that's why denigrating mere popular votes is just telling more fairy tales. Since fairy tales about these elections are irrelevant, given that in your view only the legalism of the EC matters, why do you bother arguing against other versions?
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 17 2025 20:12 utc | 97
There are very good political reasons why Trumpers insist that Trump won a mandate in 2016; won in 2020; won a landslide majority in 2024: Whatever the lawyers' arguments about the legalities and how only the EC matters---yes, the shysters win this one in court---in real world politics, actually winning the vote has a moral authority beyond the shysters' ken.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 17 2025 20:12 utc | 97
This is all true, but has very little to do with my comment.
To be "electable" only the EC matters. You can't be elected and lose the EC.
To claim otherwise is detached from reality.
I do agree that when the elected candidate doesn't get the popular vote that undermines their authority. Just look at the first elections of Bush and Trump.
My comments were in response to the argument made by Gruff, that Trump was made the candidate because he was "unelectable" and presumably that means Clinton was electable (although Gruff immediately contradicts himself with evidence of the opposite). The EC is an important tool in maintaining ruling class control of national elections.
Clinton was likely to win the popular vote since she had strong support in the most populous states, but that's not enough to get elected.
Biden was the candidate whose only claim to fame was that he was electable against Trump. That was stated explicitly. To beat Trump a candidate was needed that stood for very little but was acceptable to voters of all stripes that hated Trump. Its no secret that 2020 was a referendum on Trump and nothing more.
The pandemic and economic downturn it caused increased the antipathy to Trump. Choosing Biden to oppose Trump worked, but Biden had negative coat tails. Republican leaning voters voted Republican down ballot but at the top of the ballot voted for Biden or at least did not vote for Trump. And thus Trump lost in the few states that decide the election.
Posted by: jinn | Feb 17 2025 22:51 utc | 98
The comments to this entry are closed.
Thanks for your diligence b
What Vance said
I never read the NYT and soon, I am told, none will read the NYT or follow many other MSM outlets. It can't happen soon enough in my estimation.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 15 2025 18:31 utc | 1