There goes The New York Times, letting Republicans redefine reality again

Robert Mueller’s Wednesday statement spurred a Terrible Trifecta from The New York Times: a terrible headline, terrible opening paragraphs, and a terrible tweet. Mueller made clear that Russia tried to rig the 2016 election and that he could not clear Donald Trump of obstruction, nor could he rule out a “broader conspiracy” with Russia despite having insufficient evidence to charge more people. What did the Times make of this?

The headline: “Mueller Delivered a Message. Washington Couldn’t Agree on What It Was.” 

The tweet: “News Analysis: The much-anticipated public debut of Robert Mueller as special counsel proved as polarizing and unsatisfying as almost everything else about his two-year investigation, @peterbakerNYT writes.”

The first two paragraphs … well, you can pretty much guess. Donald Trump heard “Case closed” while “the president’s adversaries” heard “Time to impeach.” Mueller’s investigation and message were “polarizing and unsatisfying.”

Here’s a question for Peter Baker, previously the author of an article about Attorney General William Barr’s initial letter whitewashing the Mueller report, headlined “A Cloud Over Trump’s Presidency Is Lifted”: Any time Republicans reject facts, do we call those facts polarizing? Because we are talking about a man who has lied more than 10,000 times in less than 30 months in office, and a party that stands behind him. We are talking about a Senate majority leader who held a Supreme Court seat open for nearly a year because it would be so wrong to fill it in an election year, and now says of course he would fill a Supreme Court seat in 2020.

The facts do not apply. Honor does not apply. We are talking about a party organized around the ruthless pursuit of power, so of course they will do their damnedest to turn anything inconvenient to them into a “polarizing” issue. And the more the media enables them, the more they will get away with it. Peter Baker and The New York Times are apparently happy to enable.

from Daily Kos http://bit.ly/2JJUfWs