RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/398940-polling-could-be-missing-reality-again

The biggest “fake news” story of the last few years was that Donald Trump had almost no chance of being elected president. The entire pundit-polling-news establishment (including myself) was wrong, and the expectation was that these institutions would recalibrate their coverage to reflect a true picture of the country. They made an enormous miscalculation and they would, of course, make changes.

Almost two years later, very little has changed in polling and analysis at major institutions and news media. If anything, the polling has drifted even further from reality when you look at the questions being asked and, more importantly, the questions not being asked. You don’t need polls to see the America you live in. You need polls to understand the part of America you don’t know, don’t see, and don’t understand.
I believe that, in 2016, many of the national election polls were basically accurate, depicting a fairly close race, but the analysis of them was sophomoric, failing to understand the electoral college power of the unique coalition Trump amassed. His daily Midwest rallies were dismissed as curiosities of a desperate candidate with no real chance of winning. Boy, were they wrong.

This disconnect could be happening all over again. Take a look, for example, at the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll for July. It’s very professional and a generally accurate poll. Look at what it found this month: Trump’s approval rating edged up 1 point and his “strong approval” went up 3 points. His personal image improved several points. The congressional horserace closed 4 points in the direction of Republicans.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/26/media-gaslighting-cant-hide-fact-trump-campaign-was-spied-on/

After a year of alarming revelations, the media are still more interested in proving the Trump campaign treasonously colluded with Russia than wrestling with the fact that the FBI spied on a presidential campaign.

On Saturday night, heavily redacted copies of the FBI’s application to wiretap Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page were released. The portion of the 412-page document that was not redacted supported the claims of Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as those made by the majority of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The senators and the representatives had issued reports alleging that the FBI used an unverified Clinton campaign document to secure a wiretap against an American citizen, that the application for the wiretap used circular reporting and lacked verification for its central claims, and that it made materially false claims related to the source’s credibility.

President Trump tweeted triumphantly and hyperbolically about what the documents showed regarding the FBI’s behavior toward his campaign. Whatever you think about Trump’s reaction to the release of the FISA application, the media reaction to the story was disingenuous and even more hyperbolic than the president’s tweets. After a year of continuous and alarming revelations, the media are still more interested in proving the Trump campaign treasonously colluded with Russia than wrestling with the fact that the FBI spied on a presidential campaign, and used dubious partisan political research to justify their surveillance.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270841/greatest-hysteria-american-history-dennis-prager

You and I are living through the greatest mass hysteria in American history. For many Americans, the McCarthy era held that dubious distinction, but what is happening now is incomparably worse.

For one thing, any hysteria that existed then was directed against the greatest evil in the world at the time: communism. Then-Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee notwithstanding, there really were Americans in important positions who supported communist regimes enslaving their populations and committing mass murder. McCarthy was on to something.

In contrast, the country is choking on hysteria over the extremely unlikely possibility — for which there is still no evidence — that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, and the absurdity that President Trump works for Russian President Vladimir Putin.​

For another, the mainstream media did not support McCarthy. Most in the media were highly critical of McCarthy. Today, the mainstream media are not the voices of caution. They are the creators of the hysteria. There have been conspiracy theories throughout American history (e.g. Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill President John F. Kennedy alone; the moon landing never happened). But this is the first time the media have created and promoted a conspiracy. Not surprisingly, they have dropped any pretense of objective reporting in the process.

And while some Americans were unfairly labeled communists during the McCarthy era, countless Democratic politicians and leaders in news and entertainment have called members of the Trump administration and the tens of millions of Americans who support the president fascists, white supremacists, haters, xenophobes and even Nazis.​

In the case of Mariia Butina, the lengths to which derangement is driving the left.

Another sign of the left is losing its mind and overplaying its hand in the Trump-Russia saga is the sudden obsession and fulmination over a Russian woman named Mariia Butina.

“Republicans Have an Alger Hiss Problem Named Mariia,” exclaims the title of a Politico piece getting a lot of play in the press. It states:

Alleged Russian spy Mariia Butina was arrested just a few days short of the 70th anniversary of the last major accusation of Russian infiltration in America’s political system: when on August 3, 1948, Time editor and ex-communist Whittaker Chambers publicly accused former high-ranking State Department official Alger Hiss of being a Soviet agent.

Rattled Democrats, including President Harry Truman, handled the fallout poorly, hesitating to distance themselves from Hiss and unwittingly feeding a conservative narrative that they were soft on communism.

Republicans are now having their own Alger Hiss moment.

The author maintains that Butina’s alleged efforts to ingratiate herself with conservative organizations and the GOP speaks to “how intertwined Russia and the Republican Party are becoming, and whether the Republican Party is willing and able to disentangle itself.” (A noteworthy aside: this Politico piece could use an update in light of Reuters’ exclusive report that Butina in 2015 had met with “wider high-level contacts in Washington than previously known,” including actual government officials from the Obama administration.)