Say What? is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing, and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class.
Tim Donner: The New York Times did it again this week, publishing another story that is nothing new but seeks to ramp up hatred for President Trump and anybody associated with him. This time, it was a defamatory story about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in which -- wait for it -- they left out the minor detail that the woman who was the alleged victim of the alleged lewd sexual advance by Kavanaugh described in the story way back in his freshman year at Yale University says she doesn't remember the incident. President Trump went to a rally in New Mexico and made a predictably bombastic demand.
President Trump: I call for the resignation of everybody at The New York Times involved in the Kavanaugh story. And while you're at it, the Russian witch-hunt hoax, which is just as phony a story.
Tim: But one of the reporters on The New York Times story, Kate Kelly, went on MSNBC to say this was just an innocent mistake.
Kate Kelly: There was zero intent to mislead anybody about the details of the incident. That excerpt that we ran in The Times was an adaptation of what's in our book. We included the additional detail about this other, as yet unreported allegation.
Host Lawrence O’Donnell: In your draft of the article, did it include those words that have since been added to the article?
Kate Kelly: It did. I think what happened actually was that we had her name and The Times doesn't usually include the name of victim. And so I think in this case the editors felt like maybe it was probably better to remove it. And in removing her name, they removed the other reference to the fact that she didn't remember it.
Tim: Oh, okay, sure. Blame the editors. And that was evidently the talking point distributed to The Times’ inner circle. Because on Fox News, the longtime executive editor of The Times, Jill Abramson, echoed the same point.
Jill Abramson: I mean, no one has challenged the basic accuracy of the story that they published. It's true that material fact was left out, and The Times ran an editor's note explaining that, which is what you do when you leave something out. But it was no conspiracy to leave out that fact. It was unfortunately cut from the piece.
Tim: Even if what these people at The New York Times say, in this instance, turns out to actually be true, which we have no way of checking because it was like 35 years ago or whatever, given the fact that they and their fellow travelers in elite media who sold out the last speck of their journalistic credibility at the altar of taking down Trump, any way they can get away with, no one believes them anymore. They are the quintessential boy who cried wolf.
Meanwhile, impeachment theater made its debut on Capitol Hill this week as desperate Democrats begin a process that the voters, other than those addled by hatred for Trump, clearly don't want. But damn it, they're going to do it anyway. And they began the spectacle by calling former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to testify. And it was every bit the circus you would have expected, even after Lewandowski said he wasn't going to say anything new.
Corey L.: The White House has directed me that I not disclose the substance of any conversations with the president.
Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX): This is a House Judiciary, not a house party.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): You are here to participate in a continuing coverup.
Corey L.: I can't divulge confidentiality.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN): You're not going to stonewall me in my questioning.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY): The president is intent on obstructing our legitimate oversight. You are aiding him in that obstruction, and I will remind you that Article Three of the Impeachment against President Nixon was based on obstruction of Congress.
Tim: Ooh, scary. Jerry Nadler's a scary guy, huh? But after going through the wringer, Lewandowski said it's quite obvious what these Democrats are up to.
Corey L.: What we know is that the far left wing of the Democratic Party has to have these hearings to protect themselves in their congressional districts from further left progressives who want to take them out in their primary race.
Tim: Yup. That's exactly what's happening here. Trump will just laugh all this off and experience the benefit of opposing a party clearly overreaching with impeachment, and with no ideas other than hatred of Trump, and, oh yeah, getting rid of fossil fuels and private health insurance and borders. That'll go over big in the heartland.
And then there's the matter of guns. The most fearsome, though not best known, pro-gun-rights organization is Gun Owners of America, which has now begun its offensive on the Democratic presidential candidates with a new ad that simply plays the actual words of the candidates.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN): Everyone up here favors an assault weapon ban.
Beto O’Rourke: Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.
Joe Biden: We have to get assault weapons off the street.
Klobuchar: Everyone up here favors magazine limitations.
Biden: And we have to get buy-backs and get them out of their basements.
Tim: That ad concludes with the words on screen, "Exposed: Democrats are coming for your guns."
But then there's the matter of climate catastrophe, another radical notion that most of the leading Democratic presidential candidates claim is so severe that we need to abolish fossil fuels in favor of a 100% green economy at a cost of tens of trillions of dollars, if not hundreds of trillions. And so the Democrats in the House held a hearing on climate justice this week. And if you listened to this young teen activist shaking in her boots over the climate, you'll get an idea of how so many millennials have been convinced that the end of the world is nigh.
Jamie Margolin: My name is Jamie Margolin. And I'm a 17-year-old climate justice activist from Seattle, Washington … I want the entirety of Congress, in fact, the whole US government, to remember the fear and despair that my generation lives with every day … the reality is, my generation has been committed to a planet that is collapsing … solving the climate crisis goes against everything that our country was unfortunately built on: colonialism, slavery, and natural resource extraction.
Tim: So there you see the real agenda, to tear down the foundations of a nation built on colonialism and slavery and laying waste to the planet. I'm starting to believe that they actually believe this sky-is-falling stuff.
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