On CNN in 2015, I said: “If Hillary Clinton paid somebody to try to destroy the Republican brand, they would do exactly what Donald Trump has done.”
.. In May 2016, I warned: “Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama cannot destroy the conservative brand. Donald Trump can. Donald Trump can redefine what it means to be a Republican and what it means to be in a conservative. In a way, Trump is more dangerous to conservatism than Obama and Hillary because he is posing as a conservative.”
.. Trump has had six months to learn the job, improve, and advance a conservative agenda. He’s 0-for-3. What is more, if even his new chief of staff Gen. John Kelly cannot fix this mess—and it is now incredibly clear that even he cannot perform miracles!—it won’t be fixed. At some point, it’s time to pull the plug. That time is now.
What exactly do I mean by “pull the plug”? These three things
- As former McConnell chief of staff Josh Homes suggests, Republicans should “reassert an identity without Donald Trump.” What this means to me is that Republican politicians should pursue their own agenda, independent of concern about Trump’s plans or legacy. In other words, act as if he doesn’t exist—as if he’s irrelevant.
- All good-thinking conservatives should now commit to supporting a viable and serious primary challenge to Donald Trump in the GOP primary. This should not be a perfunctory exercise, but rather, a full-throated attempt to replace him as the nominee. Further, where you stand on this should be considered a defining moment. Personally, I would nominate Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska as the kind of person conservatives should back.
- It’s time to quit making excuses for Trump apologists and enablers. Although I always try to be civil to everyone, those who defend the indefensible do not deserve our respect. Further, aside from chief of staff John Kelly, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and national security adviser H.R. McMaster—people we should be begging to stay on duty—anyone who continues to serve Donald Trump’s political agenda (and here, I would also grant a waiver for serious professionals working for, say, Health and Human Services) have cast their lot.
Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve Inside Google and Out
the problem was not that he expressed an unpopular opinion, but a disrespectful one
.. “The problem here was that this was disrespectful disagreement — and there’s really no respectful way to say, ‘I think you and people like you aren’t as qualified to do your job as people like me.”
.. Wesley Chan, a venture capitalist at Felicis Ventures and an early Google employee who left the company in 2014, said Google had no choice but to fire Mr. Damore.
“It’s not about free discourse,” said Mr. Chan. “It’s about advancing a fringe viewpoint which is hurtful to a large population of the company.”
.. there may be a way to argue that the memo and its recommendations — such as “stop alienating conservatives” — constitute a “concerted activity” to aid and protect his fellow workers, which may be protected under federal labor law. However, Google can argue that his memo created a hostile workplace for women.
“There’s no free speech in the private sector workplace,” said Katherine Stone, a labor and employment law professor at University of California, Los Angeles. “Clearly, the company was concerned that he was making the environment difficult for people to do their jobs.”
The dark source of Roger Ailes’s power
he was trotting out his standard case about the lack of respect he received in New York, despite his immense professional accomplishments.
.. They all look down their noses at me.” Roger was having trouble making his point, though, because of the parade of well-wishers who kept interrupting to shake his hand, kibitz and flatter
.. “Kind of undermines your point, doesn’t it? Half this restaurant is kissing your ring.” “Yeah,” he replied without irony. “But they hate doing it.”
.. That worldview of unending grievance was the cornerstone
.. The Internet did not, as is so often alleged, usher in the siloed media environment.
.. Ailes did that — by proving that there is money, influence and power to be found in serving well-defined interest groups instead of trying to please the widest possible audience.
.. Ailes knew that repetition is the key to buy-in
.. The channel’s ideological prism also insulated Fox News from the bane of traditional outlets — the slow news day
.. Producers could always unearth obscure stories that would be judged trivial by traditional journalistic standards and fit them into a larger narrative about the assault on values
.. The War on Christmas, anyone?
.. “But if you try to come after me from the right, I’ll have to kill you.”
.. he had a different objective: turn talking points into news items for millions of persuadable eyeballs.
Kellyanne Conway gave a master class in not answering questions in her Fox News interview
We are having a culture that does not respect life from conception to natural death and this president gave the most — this Manhattan male billionaire, who was pro-choice most of his adult life gave the impassioned defense of life that anybody has ever heard coming from a presidential podium.
.. WALLACE: And chief strategist Stephen Bannon went much further. Quote, “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”
But Bannon wasn’t finished. “The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence and no hard work. You’re the opposition party. Not the Democratic Party. You’re the opposition party.”
Kellyanne, do you understand how offensive that is?
.. CONWAY: I understand how offensive it was to never be taken seriously that Donald Trump could be elected president. On great days, we were ignored. On most days, we were mocked.
WALLACE: A lot of us — a lot of us reported on it fairly, and that’s a different issue.
CONWAY: No, no, no, it is the issue, because it extends into this presidency, Chris. You can’t put a piece of tissue paper between the way Donald Trump was covered as the Republican candidate, the Republican nominee, the president-elect, and the president. It’s all the same. It’s an anti-Trump screed. It’s completely disrespectful to the Office of the President.
Why — look at what happened this week. Nobody is interested in learning the policies. It’s just —
WALLACE: I’ve been asking about policies today. I asked you about the vetting.
CONWAY: Well, look —
WALLACE: I asked about Mexico. I asked you about the Supreme Court.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Those are legitimate questions, are they not?
.. WALLACE: Let me get if I may to the real point, politicians complain about bad press. I think you have some legitimate complaints about bad press. The First Amendment protects the press. We are in the Constitution.
And it’s offensive, quite frankly, that have folks — any politician, but folks who have been in the White House for a week lecture us about what we should and shouldn’t do and that we should keep our mouth shut.
.. CONWAY: — what my colleague Steve Bannon is saying is, why don’t you talk last and listen to America more. Let me tell you something, I know what he meant. I worked with him everybody. The media failed to learn America. Donald Trump prove something that the media failed to do, which is he understood America. The idea that we were never taken seriously —
.. WALLACE: — we have zero intelligence and zero integrity, and that we shouldn’t keep our mouths shut is offensive.
CONWAY: I think it’s called listen more.
.. And let me just say something else happens. It’s the way that everything is cherry picked. Bias media coverage it’s easy to detect. It frankly helps us because this was such an elite rejection of election, where the establishment, the elites were all rejected by the voters.
It turns out they’re a heck of a lot more of them than us, Chris. And that’s how we won. Why is that relevant? It’s relevant because people — who is cleaning house? Which one of the first network to get rid of these people who said things that just weren’t true.
Talk about fake news, talk about alternative facts, what happened last week? I went on three network Sunday shows. I spoke for 35 minutes on three network Sunday shows. You know what got picked? The fact that I said alternative facts, not the fact that I ripped a new one to some of those hosts for never covering the facts that matter to America’s women, 16.1 million women in poverty as we sit there, the 12.4 million who have no health insurance. Everybody should feel outraged.
.. The billions of dollars we have spent as a nation on public education, only to have millions of kids trapped in schools that fail them and never really promote and protect their intelligence and prepare them for the world that they all deserve. They shouldn’t be restricted by the zip code where they live. They should be lifted up.
.. There’s no question that when you look at the contributions made by the media, money contributions, they went to Hillary Clinton. We have all the headlines, people should be embarrassed. Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go
.. Who’s the first editorial — the first blogger that will be left out that embarrassed his or her outlet? We know all their names. I’m too polite to call them by name. But they know who they are, and they’re all wondering, will I be the first to go?
The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go. If this were a real business, if the mainstream media were a thriving private sector business that actually turn a profit, which is not true of many of our newspapers, Chris, 20 percent of the people would be gone. They embarrassed, they failed to protect their shareholders and their board members and their colleagues.
.. WALLACE: And let me say, you didn’t rip me a new one.