Seriously, Though . . .

 

Seriously, though, Steve Bannon really has declared war on Elon Musk, vowing to oust him from the White House without, of course, giving any explanation as to how.

I read with some interest this article, comparing their feud to the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.  Who do you root for when two really bad guys go to war against each other?

The author says that, just as we backed Iraq because we saw them as the saner player, now we should back Bannon on the theory that he is less evil than Musk.  His argument is that at least Bannon has principles, even if they are bad ones.  "Bannon has ideological goals; Musk has personal, vaguely psychosexual desires."  Bannon is consistent.  Musk changes his mind every five minutes.  Bannon's ideas might have a non-toxic, "domesticated" version.  "Musk is just a neurodivergent Bond villain."

Well, I disagree with the assumption that Bannon is any less evil than Musk.  I think they are about equal.  I generally prefer an opportunist with no principles to someone with unrelentingly bad principles.  At least the opportunist can be rational if it is in his interests.  Someone who changes his mind every five minutes is unlikely to have the perseverance to do the sort of damage that an inflexible ideologue can do.  Bannon openly calls himself a "Leninist" and has declared his wish to burn it all down.

So if the choice is which is the bigger ideological threat, I would say Bannon.

But in their feud I would still back Bannon over Musk any day of the week for a simple reason.  Bannon is nowhere near as powerful as Musk.  

Musk's assets have been estimated at over $300 billion.  Bannon's are worth a measly $48 million.  Musk controls the algorithms of hundreds of millions of followers on social media.  Bannon influences through the 44th most popular podcast on Apple.  When Rudy Giuliani reached a $150 million settlement of the defamation case by Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, many people wondered if there was a financial backer paying them off.  Musk is an obvious suspect. We know it can't be Bannon, since the amount exceeds Bannon's entire fortune.   Musk could also afford to pay off $787 million defamation settlement by Fox News or even the $1.5 billion judgment against Alex Jones.  The amounts are pocket change to him.  Bannon can't.  Bannon can be sued for defamation if he tells a sufficiently outrageous lie on his podcast.  Under Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, Musk is immune from suit for any lies his algorithms deliberately promote.  As suggested above, Musk may very well have the wealth to neuter our defamation laws against any right-wing source by paying their judgment. 

And, of course, Musk has Trump's ear.  Bannon does not.

All of which amounts to saying I am all for Bannon's crusade to take down Musk.  I just think he is fighting with a plastic spoon against a man armed with an entire arsenal.

How Donald Trump Could Keep His Promise to End the War in Ukraine in 24 Hours

 

Barring something truly miraculous between now and noon tomorrow, it seems a safe bet that Trump will not succeed in his goal of ending the war in Ukraine before he is even inaugurated.

It seems equally unlikely that he will end the war within 24 hours of being inaugurated, as he promised on other occasions.

But so what, really.  Since facts don't matter to the MAGA faithful, Trump can simply not and say he did.  If he could claim that he built the wall, made Mexico pay for it, "took the oil" in the Middle East, and even that he saved Obamacare, why not just casually remark that he has ended the war in Ukraine and leave it at that.

And don't forget that Trump has a much stronger propaganda apparatus at hand than he did last time.  Last time he was largely dependent on Fox News and talk radio.  This time he has social media at his command and more.  Tell Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to spike any stories about the war.  Let TikTok know that spiking stories about the war is the price of readmission.  Also tell other social media companies that their willingness to spike all stories about the war is the price for avoiding anti-trust actions.  Put out the word that any TV station mentioning that the war is still going on will lose its license.  Give Jeff Bezos a similar directive for the Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong a directive for the LA Times.  Threaten PBS and NPR with a loss of federal funding if they mention the war.

The New York Times may be a somewhat tougher nut to crack, but in order to avoid the appearance of a liberal bias it will doubtless feel obligated to give reports that the war is still ongoing and reports that it is over equal time.  

Threaten 50% tariffs against any foreign leader who mentions to war in a public forum that Americans are likely to hear.  

And pretty soon all mention of the war will be suppressed and low information voters will fully believe  Trump's claims that the war is over and duly give him credit.

That is certainly how I expect Trump to fight inflation, immigrant crime, etc.

An Update on Alexander Smirnov

Hat tip Emptywheel, we now know a little more about what the investigators knew about Alexander Smirnov and when they knew it.  The vetting took place in July, 2020, shortly after Smirnov made his shocking allegations.  Apparently my prior impression that Smirnov's allegations were disproven by his travel records was not entirely correct.  Special Counsel has filed a vetting of Smirnov's story with the court, which shows that the reality is somewhat more complex. 

Actually, it is far from clear what the vetting revealed because most of it is blacked out.  However, we can compare Smirnov's allegations in the FD-1023 statement to his handler, the results of the investigation, and the indictment say about the four meetings that Smirnov alleged.

First alleged meeting:  

Smirnov said that in "late 2015 or early 2016" he was introduced to Oleksandr (Alexander) Ostapenko.  The FD-1023 statement does not give Ostapenko's background other than to say that there is more information about in in a 2018 1023.  In any event, Ostapenko does not appear to have worked for Burisma.  Nor does the report say where they met, only that Smirnov and Ostapenko "traveled to Ukraine" to meet with Burisma officials.  Present were Burisma's CFO Vadym Pozharsky (Vadim Pojarskii), Mykola Zlochevsky's daughter and her husband, and a US business partner of Smirnov whose name was blacked out and who did not understand what was said because he did not speak Russian.  One gathers from this that Ostapenko is a Russian-speaking Ukrainian businessman of some type.  Smirnov alleges that Pozharsky told him that Burisma hired Hunter to "protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems," but gave no further details.*

The FBI's examination of Smirnov's passport revealed that he was in Ukraine 5/22/15 through 5/23/15; 10/10/15 through 10/12/15; and 11/30/15 through 12/6/15.  The latter two visits were both in "late 2015" and thus consistent with Smirnov's story.  The FBI said that it could be difficult to pinpoint the exact meeting and suggested asking for credit card receipts.  

The indictment states that this statement is proven false, not because of Smirnov's travel records, but because he met with Burisma officials for the first time in 2017, under the Trump administration.  The source for this appears to be "Associate 1," "a Ukrainian business consultant," presumably Ostapenko, and "Associate 2," "a American who owned a cryptocurrency business."  "Associate 2" is definitely the American identified in Smirnov's 1023 and it was apparently his travel records that disproved the first meeting.  "Associate 2" did not travel outside of North America between 2011 and 2017 and therefore could not have been at the first meeting, as Smirnov alleged.  The indictment also cites e-mails from 2017 introducing Smirnov to Burisma officials for the first time.  

Second alleged meeting:

Smirnov then alleged that he met with Ostapenko and Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky in Vienna "approximately one or two months after the aforementioned Burisma meeting in Ukraine," about the time the Joe Biden publicly called Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin corrupt and called for his removal.  Smirnov alleged that it was at this meeting that Zlochevsky said he had paid Joe and Hunter Biden each a $5 million bribe to remove Shokin.  Needless to say, this would be a serious crime, and the fact that Smirnov never reported the alleged meeting until 2020 was a major red flag.

In this case, Smirnov's travel records really did disprove the alleged meeting.  Biden publicly called for Shokin to be removed in December, 2015.  Smirnov's October, 2015 trip to Ukraine really did take place about two months earlier.  His travel records showed he went through the Vienna airport twice in October, 2016 and once in December 2016, but never in 2015.  The investigator could not rule out the possibility that Smirnov might have driven to Vienna from some other country in Europe.  

The indictment confidently says that Smirnov was not in Vienna at the time of Biden's speech.

Third alleged meeting:

Actually, the third alleged meeting was a telephone call between Smirnov, Ostapenko, and Zlochevsky, said to have taken place after Trump was elected but before he was sworn in.  No location was given.  Smirnov alleged that during the meeting Zlochevsky said the Bidens coerced him into making the payment, and that he had texts and recordings to prove it.

Since this was a phone call with no location given, the initial vetting could not check it against travel records.  The indictment says that the conversation never took place because Associate 1 (Ostapenko) never spoke to Zlochevesky, either in person or by phone.   

Fourth alleged meeting:

The fourth alleged meeting was also a phone call, this time with a location given. Smirnov said that on some unspecified date in 2019 he met with Ostapenko on matters unrelated to Burisma.  Nonetheless, some time during the meeting Ostapenko called Zlochevsky, who was then on the run and hiding in an unknown location in Europe.  During the conversation, the subject of the alleged bribe again came up and Zlochevsky said the money transfer was so well concealed that it would take ten years to trace it.  The handler apparently expressed some skepticism because he asked why Zlochevsky would make such unsolicited admissions.  Smirnov said bragging of this type was common.

The FBI was able to confirm that Smirnov really did travel to London on unrelated matters from October 7-11, 2019.  The main evidence the indictment offers against the phone call is that Ostapenko (Associate 1) never spoke to Zlochevsky.   

Emptywheel finds it interesting that Smirnov's visit to London and the alleged conversation happened about the same time Lev Parnas was arrested while heading to Vienna, apparently to meet with Zlochevsky.  She suggests that if the phone call happened, Zlochevsky may have been using Smirnov as an alternate channel to circulate dirt on Hunter Biden after his attempt to convey it to Parnas was thwarted.  That sounds most implausible to me.  In all prior dealings with Giuliani, Zlochevsky had denied any improper dealings with the Bidens.  Why would he change his story in 2019?  And why give any credence to Smirnov's allegations about the meeting, given that alleged 2019 conversation was the tail end of a whole string of fabrications?**

Named individuals

The vetting also asked what Smirnov knew about a series of Russian or Ukrainian individuals and some companies.  I recognized two of the names.  Vadym Pozharsky was the Burisma CFO and is mentioned in Smirnov's 1023.  Pozharsky really was an associate of Hunter Biden and really did send and e-mail to Hunter thanking him for introducing Pozharsky to Hunter's father.***  Karina Zlochevska was Zlochevsky's daughter and is mentioned in the 1023.  They appear to be real associates, who Smirnov met in 2017.  He appears to have taken many of the details of the initial 2017 meeting (location, people attending, American colleague who did not speak Russian) and simply moved them back in time to "late 2015 or early 2016."  

I have no idea who any of the others were. 

Interestingly, the report does not mention any response from Smirnov on either Pozharsky or Zlochevska.****  He denied any knowledge about the others, which is probably true.  He recognized that if he made anything up about about them, the FBI could spot the lie.  

Emptywheel was able to shed some light on one of the named individuals -- Michael Guralnik.   Guralnick was apparently a Ukrainian born in Soviet times, who graduated from the Soviet military academy, served ten years in the Soviet army, and later became a US citizen.  He was associated with Giuliani's attempts to dig dirt on Joe Biden and also corresponded with Lindsey Graham.  Emptywheel links a Daily  Beast article that mentions various others associated with Giuliani,  none of whom are mentioned in the FBI's vetting.

Other:

The vetting also mentions that Smirnov's first reports to the FBI on Burisma are from the spring of 2017 and there was no earlier mention.  Nor was there anything else from any other source to suggest that Joe or Hunter Biden had been bribed.  The FBI then asked how Zlochevsky communicated with the Bidens and the handler said that Smirnov did not know.  Presumably Smirnov recognized that if he named a method the FBI might investigate it and find out that he was lying.   Almost four pages are then blacked out.  

Steps not taken/recommended further investigation:

The FBI has three stages of initial inquiry:  assessment, preliminary investigation and full investigation.  (The Durham Report discusses the distinction at some length on page 24).  The vetting was an assessment, which limited the scope of investigation.  Recommendations for further investigation included interviewing Smirnov's colleague, going over Smirnov's travel records in greater detail with him, investigating Smirnov's phone, especially his exchanges with his handler, and comparing with other reports, including with other agencies.  The remainder of the report (about three pages) is blacked out.

Special counsel appears to have taken the additional steps -- interviewing Smirnov's colleague, reviewing the texts he exchanged with his hander, talking to Ostapenko, and looking at the e-mails Smirnov exchanged.  These additional measures decisively disproved Smirnov's allegations.

In short:

The initial vetting of Smirnov's report was less thorough than the investigation that led to his indictment, but enough to raise serious questions about his allegations.

Results of the initial vetting that seemed to corroborate Smirnov's report:

1. Smirnov was confirmed to know the people he mentioned in the 1023 and did not claim knowledge of people he did not know.
2. Smirnov traveled to Ukraine about the time of the alleged first meeting in Kiev.
3. Smirnov traveled to London in 2019, as alleged.

This was presumably what Scott Brady was referring to when he said that he had confirmed that Smirnov was in the places he alleged at the times he alleged.

Results of the initial vetting that undermined Smirnov's report:

1. Smirnov's earliest reports of contact with Burisma date to 2017, contradicting the claim in 1023 that he met with Zlochevsky in 2015 and 2016.
2. Smirnov was not in Vienna at the time of the alleged second meeting.

This is to say nothing of Smirnov's failure to report the foregoing until 2020!  I supposed one could say that he did not report the first two meetings because he was afraid of retaliation from Joe Biden, then Vice President.  But why didn't Smirnov report the whole business in 2017 or 2019, when Trump was in office?

Apparently the FBI decided that Smirnov was not trustworthy because nothing further happened at the time.  Special Counsel, when forced to investigate further, learned that:

1. Smirnov's e-mails exchanged in 2017 confirmed that he was meeting with Burisma officials for the first time.
2. Smirnov's American colleague was definitely not in Ukraine at the time of the first alleged meeting.
3. Ostapenko denied every speaking with Zlochevsky, either in person or by phone.
4. A month before Smirnov made the 1023 claiming that Zlochevsky had told him he had bribed Joe and Hunter Biden, Smirnov exchanged texts with his handler expressing a belief that the Bidens had been bribed and that he would have the tape proving it as soon as he met with "the guys" (presumably his Russian sources).  Nothing in these texts so much as suggested that Smirnov had any personal information on the subject.

Special Counsel recommended a four to six year sentence (the judge imposed a six year sentence).  Emptywheel considers this seriously excessive, although she is not sure why Special Counsel made the recommendation -- most likely confidence that it would not matter because Trump would issue a pardon.  In particular, she is offended that the sentencing recommendation blames Smirnov for all the time and resources he made government expend investigating his lies.  Emptywheel believes that the government could have seen through the lies with the exercise of minimal common sense, and that its waste of resources was the result of Republicans relentless pressuring it to pursue this most implausible lead.  

Congressman Jerry Nadler has asked the Inspector General to investigate the whole dubious business.  Alas, it seems a safe assumption that Donald Trump will spike the whole thing and we will never learn the real story.

_______________________________________________

*That is not, in and of itself, necessarily evidence of a crime.  I read an excellent New Yorker article pointing out that a weak country being invaded by its more powerful neighbor and heavily reliant on a powerful sponsor for its protection is not going to antagonize the powerful sponsor by investigating a company with its Vice President's son on the board of directors.

**I supposed he could have changed his story because the whole business had gone public and he wanted to change his story accordingly.

***Joe Biden denied such a meeting and his schedule did not reflect one.  However, it later appeared that Joe Biden made an unscheduled appearance at a charity dinner his son was attending and briefly spoke to Pozharsky.

****Several words are blacked out before naming those two.  Writ Media is named after the two and also does not have response.  The FBI knew that Smirnov knew Pozharsky and Zlochevska, since they are named in his 1023.  Possibly the omitted words say that the FBI is not asking about these.

Confessions of a Square

 And yes, I have to admit I am extremely old-fashioned in news consumption.  I prefer to read, rather than hear or watch news.  Aside from the problems of listening to news at work, the advantages of reading news are (1) you can actually take in information faster by reading than listening and (2) reading lets you set your own pace.

I like scrolling through tweets up to a point but end up wanting something meatier to sink my teeth into, like an extended article.

And I don't like podcasts.  Podcasts only engage the auditory centers of my brain.  The rest of my brain is being unused and getting impatient.  I need to mend clothes or do something else with the rest of my brain to listen to podcasts.  Whatever did people do back when the main form of news and entertainment was the radio?

Why the End of the Legacy Media Would Be Really, Really Bad

 

Since Donald Trump won the election, Elon Musk has been exalting the the legacy media are finished, that they are out of touch and in a bubble and that social media is the journalism of the future.  Needless to say, Musk does not see anything out of touch or in a bubble about promoting or believing blatant lies about Hurricane Helene.  Presumably he saw those lies as authentic, making the little matter of factual accuracy irrelevant.

And plenty of people on our side are also dismissing the legacy media as irrelevant -- too afraid of being accused of liberal bias to call Trump out pre-election and now too intimidated by him to do hard-hitting reporting.  Instead, our side is setting up its own podcasts and Substrack accounts to do what the legacy media is too timid to do.

In effect, it is the return of the blogosphere.  Well, as one who never left blogging in favor of tweeting, I am happy to see it make a comeback.  However, blogging was never the same as real journalism and it is not a substitute for real journalism.  If the legacy media dies and social media/Substrack/podcasts take its place, we will have lost something immensely valuable.

The chart above is revealing in more ways than one.  Most obviously, it shows that objective journalism is more reliable than advocacy journalism.  But the vertical axis is noteworthy.  At the very top, it places "Fact Reporting."  Next comes "Mix of fact reporting and analysis," followed by pure analysis, then opinion, and then unreliable sources.  The point here is not so much that there is anything wrong with analysis or even opinion, but that a focus on analysis and opinion means that someone else is actually gathering the facts.  Gathering the facts, after all, is what journalism is all about.

Furthermore true journalism is labor-intensive.  It means more than just seeing a factlet on line or hearing a rumor and repeating it.  True journalism means in-depth investigation, thorough-going fact checking, and pursuing multiple sources.  Doing that it a lot of work.  It is generally more work than one person can do.  Quality journalism calls for reporting, checking, and editing.  It is a team effort.  This contrasts with, say, a typical blog/Substract, which is usually analysis of other people's reporting, or a podcast, which is the same, or an interview of someone with actual knowledge.

I will concede that advocacy journalism (left or right, at least in theory) can produce boutique publications that do through, in-depth factual investigation of specific topics.  In fact, boutique publications are almost always advocacy journalism, whereas objective journalism tends more toward "middle brow" publications, i.e., reporting daily news, rather than in-depth investigation of a narrow topic.  But good investigative journalism by boutique publications best serves as a supplement to daily news rather than a substitute.  The in-depth nature of boutique publications comes at a serious cost to the breadth of middle-brow, daily news publications.  This breadth is necessary for an informed citizenry.

In short, what you get on social media is not real journalism.  It is parasitic on real journalism.  If the host dies, even the minimal value of news from social media will die with it.  Boutique journalism can offer valuable in-depth information on a narrow topic, but without broad-based, reliable reporting of the daily news, boutique journalism lacks the context to give it meaning.  

Elon Musk wants to kill real journalism.  We shouldn't be helping him.

Reflections on Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" Speech

 

Retrospectives on Jimmy Carter often say that his presidency began circling the drain when he gave the "malaise" speech.  (Some acknowledge that he did not actually use that word).

The most fascinating aspect of that speech is not so much the problems he was addressing or the solutions he proposed, but just how contemporary it sounds.

This is what Jimmy Carter said in 1979:

 

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

We remember when the phrase "sound as a dollar" was an expression of absolute dependability, until 10 years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our Nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed.

Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our Nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

 Change a few particulars, and it might be something any politician -- or any commenter on social media -- might say.

Right now the refrain was that the COVID pandemic, the lock downs, and the 2020 riots destroyed trust in our institutions.

Before that, people lamented that George Bush lying us into the war in Iraq and the bailout of financial institutions destroyed our trust in the system.

And in 1979, Jimmy Carter was saying we lost trust in our institutions due to the 1960's assassinations, the Vietnam war, the Watergate scandal, inflation, and the oil embargo.

And lest one think that at least there was trust in our institutions before that, don't forget that an earlier generation had to deal with the corruption of the Harding Administration, the Great Depression, and World War II.

And before that someone was proposing that the nation actually lost its innocence in 1919 when the World Series was rigged.

It's almost as if there have always been problems.

I am old enough to have a teenage memory of Jimmy Carter's speech.  And, young as I was, it seemed to me even then that maybe living in an illusion -- falsely thinking that our armies were invincible, our leaders incorruptible, and our resources limitless -- was not sustainable, and that facing unwelcome realities was simply a fact of life.

An unwelcome but inevitable part of growing up for every child is learning that one's parents are not perfect.  And an unwelcome but inevitable part of reaching political adulthood is learning that our institutions are not perfect either, and that our society has problems.

But true maturity lies in understanding that no parents are perfect, that no institutions are perfect, and that every society has always had problems and always will.

How much of the true underlying cause of so many of our political problems is that all too many people have not reached that state of civic adulthood?

Donald Trump's Cynicism is Extraordinary

 

Donald Trump's New Years Day tweet on the debt ceiling shows a truly extraordinary degree of cynicism.  Basic factual background, for anyone who needs filling in, is here.

Short version: The debt ceiling limits the federal government's ability to borrow.  No other country has an equivalent provision.  So long as the government spends more than it receives, it necessarily has to borrow and sooner or later its borrowing will run up against the debt ceiling.  At that point, it will only be able to pay part of its bills.  No one knows what will happen next, because no one wants to find out, but the general assumption is that it will be very, very bad.

Republicans in Congress have regularly used that threat as a way to blackmail Democratic presidents, most recently in 2023, when Speaker Kevin McCarthy backed down and extended the debt ceiling until after the election.  

Now Trump is calling for abolition of the debt ceiling, tweeting:

The extension of the Debt Ceiling by a previous Speaker of the House, a good man and a friend of mine, from this past September of the Biden Administration, to June of the Trump Administration, will go down as one of the dumbest political decisions made in years. There was no reason to do it - NOTHING WAS GAINED, and we got nothing for it - A major reason why that Speakership was lost. It was Biden’s problem, not ours. Now it becomes ours. I call it “1929” because the Democrats don’t care what our Country may be forced into. In fact, they would prefer “Depression” as long as it hurt the Republican Party. The Democrats must be forced to take a vote on this treacherous issue NOW, during the Biden Administration, and not in June. They should be blamed for this potential disaster, not the Republicans!

The cynicism of this statement is so remarkable it really calls for unpacking.  

He is well aware that a debt ceiling breach could cause serious economic harm -- so severe that he uses the terms "1929" and "Depression" to characterize the possible results.

Then he says that Kevin McCarthy's decision to lift the debt ceiling was "one of the dumbest political decisions made in years" because any harm caused by the breach would have been "Biden's problem, not ours."*

Then he becomes outraged that once he becomes President, the Democrats must might give him a taste of his own medicine.  He is angry that they might want to harm the economy to hurt him -- right after saying Republicans should have harmed the economy to hurt his predecessor!  Ignored here: once Trump is inaugurated, Republicans will control all branches of government and are quite capable of raising the debt ceiling with no help from Democrats.  Apparently he does not trust Republicans to do so.

In any even, he does not care what happens to the economy.  He just wants to ensure that, "They should be blamed for this potential disaster, not the Republicans!"

____________________________________________________
*Probably not entirely true.  While the resulting economic fallout would undoubtedly have led to a Republican landslide win, a Republican landslide win would not have put an immediate end to the economic fallout.  Just as Obama was blamed for not immediately ending the aftermath of the financial crisis and Biden was blamed for not immediately ending the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, Trump would ultimately be blamed for not cleaning up fast enough from a debt ceiling breach.  He does best to do this time exactly what he did last time -- inherit a country in reasonably good shape and take credit for that.