RUTHFULLY YOURS

House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy told CNN Wednesday morning that his committee is looking into how the White House handed domestic abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter.https://amgreatness.com/2018/02/14/porter-saga-media-concern-abuse-secondary/

The media has been on a weeklong feeding frenzy since the Daily Mail posted an exclusive interview with Porter’s second ex-wife claiming he emotionally and verbally her during their brief marriage. (The next day, after Porter resigned, the Mail published another exposé, detailing more accusations from Porter’s first wife, including a 2003 photo of her with a black eye, allegedly from him.) Porter has denied the charges, calling them a “coordinated smear campaign” since the tabloid ranan article the week before about his relationship with Trump’s communications advisor, Hope Hicks.

But the fallout is continuing unabated and now Congress is getting involved.

Gowdy blasted both the White House and the FBI for not being more forthcoming about Porter’s employment and security clearance process: “Who knew what, when, and to what extent—those are the questions I think need to be asked, and Congress has a role to play.” This morning, his committee sent letters to FBI Director Christopher Wray and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly asking for clarification on apparently conflicting statements by Wray and Press Secretary Sarah Sanders about when Porter’s background investigation was completed.

The outrage cycle over the Porter matter quickly shifted from his irrefutable guilt to condemnation of the White House—particularly of Chief of Staff John Kelly—for employing a known abuser. Kelly defended Porter in the first Mail article, calling him a “man of true integrity and honor.” Since the Mail story broke February 6, the Washington Post has published 98 articles and columns targeting Kelly. The day after the allegations appeared, deputy editor Ruth Marcus was already blasting Kelly, claiming—without any proof—that Trump’s chief of staff “knew of the FBI reports.”

Wray’s Contested “Contradiction”

The “they knew!” talking point ostensibly got a boost yesterday when Wray testified on Capitol Hill and answered a question by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) about the FBI’s involvement in Porter’s background check. Here’s how it went down:

Wyden: Was the FBI aware of the allegations related to Rob Porter and domestic abuse? And if so, was the White House informed this could affect his security clearance, when were they informed, and who at the White House was informed?

Let’s begin with Godwin and get it out of the way.

Imagine for a moment that Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister for the Third Reich, was an amicable fellow (which he was not), smiled often (which he didn’t), and decided to go on a goodwill tour of the West, with the cutest cheerleaders from the Hitler Youth in tow.

Imagine further that the Western media, knowing the scale of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, focused all its coverage on how cute the kids were and how well put-together Goebbels was—such a dashing fellow with his bespoke Hugo Boss suits, Italian shoes, and perfectly coiffed hair. Never mind his regime’s death camps, or its military ambitions, or its summary executions.

Sadly, over the past few days, this contrafactual seems far less far-fetched as Western media took on the role of Leni Riefenstahl—glamorizing and spreading propaganda for the murderous rogue regime of North Korea, all the while trivializing its human rights abuses.

North Korea sent Kim Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un and the nation’s director of “Propaganda and Agitation,” on a “charm offensive” to South Korea over the weekend. With cheerleaders and pop-stars in tow, her mission was to help rehabilitate North Korea’s image and shift focus away from the regime’s human rights abuses and away from the fact that the Hermit Kingdom, essentially, is a giant prison. The Western media was all too happy to report on Kim’s sense of style, her shoes, her hair, and lack of makeup—to the exclusion of the moaning, emaciated elephant in the room.

Malicious, Lazy, or Both?

There could be many reasons for this embarrassing spectacle—ranging from outright complicity, to political malice, to plain old laziness. Most likely it’s that pre-existing biases and journalistic laziness are creating a witch’s brew that threatens to glamorize evil.

Western journalists are so blinded by disdain for the Trump Administration that any chance to embarrass the president and hurt his agenda is seen as a welcome opportunity. Reporting on the superficial North Korean overtures as though they were genuine while noting Mike Pence’s reluctance to engage those attempts is creating a moral equivalency between a vice president they don’t like with a murderess. Yes, this may hurt Trump politically, but at the cost of “normalizing” (to use a popular term these days) one of the most repressive regimes on the planet.

Many Americans over the weekend observed the mainstream media’s fawning coverage of North Korea at the Olympics with abject disgust — especially in light of the hostile coverage of Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence.

The over-the-top praise of the North Korean cheer squad and Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un, has been nothing short of disgraceful.

Yo-jong (whose leering, smirking mug brings to mind Kill Bill’s meteor hammer-wielding villainess Gogo Yubari) is the deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of North Korea’s Workers’ Party and a member of the Politburo. This is probably not a pleasant woman.

CNN was impressed, however: “Kim Jong Un’s sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics,” the network gushed on Saturday. CONTINUE AT SITE

Gaze upon the colossal edifice at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in the national capital and you might get the impression that something really important is happening, or at least being recreated, inside. Pass through the Newseum’s doors, however, and your excitement may quickly be doused: It’s essentially a building full of stories you could easily find on the Internet, dull games, and large corporate displays of self-celebration. There’s a Bancroft Family Ethics Center (“kiosks allow you to tackle real-life reporting dilemmas and see how journalists and other visitors responded”), an NBC News Interactive Newsroom (“gives visitors a chance to play the role of a reporter or photographer”), and a New York Times Great Hall (“a continuous flow of news and free speech. Instant, breaking, historic news that is uncensored, diverse and free”). The privilege of strolling amid such gimmickry will cost you dearly — $25, in a city heaving with museums that cost nothing. The ticket price is higher than the Baseball Hall of Fame ($23) and the same as the (suggested) entry fee of America’s foremost repository of great painting and sculpture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Attractions such as these, and the slippers once worn by Wonkette (I couldn’t remember her name either; upon investigation, it’s Ana Marie Cox) haven’t exactly delivered the throngs. The Newseum is mainly an event space, colorful background for canape-chewers and champagne-sippers whose custom earned the place twice as much ($18 million) last year as did admissions ($7.8 million). Overall, it lost more than $8 million last year and won’t last much longer. Its proprietors are looking for a way to sell off the building and move its contents to environs more suited to their importance — say, a fruit stand out in Gaithersburg.

For more than a year and a half, the media have gone all-in on reporting every possible angle of President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia. No story update has been too small, no encounter with a Russian too inconsequential, and no anonymous source too sketchy to generate outsize coverage and histrionic claims from major media.

But as the Russian collusion story disintegrates, another interesting story ascends. Investigations by multiple congressional committees as well as an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Justice have shown irregularities in the handling of the most politically sensitive probes in recent memory: the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information while secretary of State and the investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged nefarious ties with Russia to meddle in a U.S. election.

These investigations have resulted in the firing, demotion, and reassignment of at least six top officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice. And all of those personnel changes were made before even the first official reports and memoranda from these investigations were made public.

In recent weeks, however, some official documents have come to light. These are statements made by elected members of the U.S. government on the record, not selective and political leaks from anonymous sources. So how have the media responded to these official statements regarding wrongdoing? Mostly by downplaying, mocking, and ignoring them.

When the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s majority memo was made public last week, many journalists highlighted Democratic talking points against it or otherwise rushed to defend the agencies credibly accused of abuse of power. As soon as they could, they dropped the story, despite the dramatic claims in the memo.