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The Decline And Fall Of The (Trumpist) 'Wall Street Journal'

The Decline And Fall Of The (Trumpist) 'Wall Street Journal'

Many American institutions have beclowned themselves in the past 10 years — too many to list. To count the right-leaning institutions that have not succumbed to Trumpian populism takes only one hand. But the decline of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page has been particularly galling because, compared to the Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College or the Claremont Institute, it had farther to fall.

In the pre-Trump era, the paper had some integrity. While the board was broadly aligned with the Republican Party, its editorials didn't hesitate to differ with Republicans on major questions.

In the Trump era, the Journal has become, if not Pravda, then something like The Nation magazine.The Nation reliably whitewashed the sins of the Soviet Union and other communist regimes because it regarded anti-communism as a greater threat to the world than communism itself. Similarly, The Wall Street Journal has gradually become a parody of itself on the grounds that Democrats are always and forever the greatest threat to the country.

With that guiding principle, there is simply no Republican, no matter how deranged or unfit, whom the Journal will not prefer to a Democratic opponent. In 2022, the Journal advised its Arizona readers to choose Kari Lake for governor despite the fact that Lake had called for the 2020 election to be decertified, denounced mask wearing and encouraged the use of hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic, promised to criminally pursue journalists who "dupe the public," and pronounced the nation "rotten to the core" when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago. The Journal didn't mention most of that in its endorsement, claiming, hilariously, that Arizona's election was primarily about school choice.

This week, commenting on the drone kerfuffle, the Journal intoned that it couldn't be sure what people were seeing — but it was certain that the whole thing could be attributed to the erosion of trust in government.

Noting that "non-cranks" have reported seeing things that move strangely in the dark, the Journal quoted Jon Bramnick, a GOP state senator from New Jersey, who said, "It must be something going on that they can't tell us because they are so fearful of what the public's gonna do when they hear what the drones are doing."

You might think the paper would rebuke this state senator for getting out over his skis and encouraging conspiratorial thinking, but no, the editorial notes that "This is how deep the suspicion runs. And when that happens, conspiracy theories fill the air as much as drones do."

And guess who's responsible for this erosion of trust?

"The Biden administration has squandered its credibility to the point that it's rational not to believe what it says. Remember the Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the continental U.S.? The administration downplayed its importance while it was courting better relations with Beijing, only to shoot it down over the Atlantic Ocean."

Whoa. If you want to cite relations with Beijing as a source of mistrust, the Trump administration offers far more dire examples. While he was chasing a "great trade agreement" with Xi Jinping (the terms of which were never honored, by the way), Trump repeatedly lied about and minimized the risk of COVID-19, which had far more serious consequences for Americans' lives than waiting until the big spy balloon was over the ocean before shooting it down.

Nor did the Journal see fit to mention that Trump is, right on schedule and very on brand, stoking conspiracies of government malfeasance about the drones. He popped off: "Can this really be happening without our government's knowledge. I don't think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!"

This is not to excuse President Joe Biden's betrayal of trust in repeatedly promising that he would not pardon his son and then doing so, or misleading the public about the degree of his physical and mental decline. But for the Journal to look at the world of 2024 and conclude that the erosion of trust in government is due to Biden without ever once mentioning that Trump and his minions are the most prolific bilge spillers imaginable is to be completely without scruple.

Just in the last few weeks of the campaign, Trump falsely alleged that FEMA was purposely withholding hurricane assistance in order to funnel funds to illegal immigrants, that the Congo was emptying its prisons to send convicts to the United States and that the 2020 election was stolen.Trust is crucial to the successful functioning of society. Many social science studies have found that nations with high trust have less corruption and greater prosperity than those with low trust. It makes sense.

If you believe that most people are untrustworthy, you will rely only on those within your own family or tribe and be less likely to engage with outsiders. Trust is a social and economic lubricant. It's also, as we've learned, quite easy to undermine when people get their information from online rumors and irresponsible politicians and other actors who stoke distrust for their own political ends.

The drone affair is fluff and will doubtless be forgotten in a month if not sooner. But the spectacle of the Journal chastising the Biden administration without a solitary word about Trump and his enablers (in whose ranks they stand) is breathtaking.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Playing By The Old ‘Clinton Rules’ — All Innuendo, Few Facts

Playing By The Old ‘Clinton Rules’ — All Innuendo, Few Facts

As a professional matter, I’ve been halfway dreading Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy. The 2016 Democratic nomination appears to be hers for the asking. Democrats enjoy a strong Electoral College advantage. And yet it’s hard to imagine how she can overcome the unrelenting hostility of the Washington media clique.

Try to imagine the New York Times and Washington Post teaming up with Fox News impresario Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. on an “exposé” of any other politician in Washington. Joe Conason wasn’t exaggerating much when he called it the “Hitler-Stalin Pact” of contemporary journalism.

The two newspapers agreed to “exclusive” arrangements with one Peter Schweizer, a right-wing operative and author of Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. The book’s publisher is HarperCollins, a News Corp subsidiary like Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, etc.

Basically, we’re in Ann Coulter country here. Schweizer’s not a journalist, but a controversialist for right-wing “think tanks.” A former consultant to Sarah Palin and ghostwriter for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Glenn Beck, he makes his living vilifying Democrats. Media Matters has posted a long list of withdrawn or retracted stories under his byline.

Reporters for the British Sunday Times evaluated an earlier Schweizer book and found that “[f]acts that are checkable do not check out. Individuals credited for supplying information do not exist or cannot be tracked down. Requests to the author for help and clarification result in further confusion and contradiction.”

The New York Times, in contrast, praised the fellow’s “meticulous” reporting. All this in service of a front-page “blockbuster” by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire insinuating that as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton sold out the national interest, helping a Russian company to buy uranium mines in Wyoming from a Canadian corporation in exchange for a few million dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation, the family’s charitable enterprise.

That and a $500,000 speaking fee awarded by a Moscow bank to the Big Cheese, her husband, the former president — a guy who’s been averaging $7.5 million a year making speeches.

“Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown” the Times concedes early on.

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. The insinuation couldn’t be any clearer than if they’d hinted that Vladimir Putin was Hillary’s lover.

The diligent reader must persevere almost to the bottom of the murkily narrated 4,400-word story to learn that the uranium transaction had to be signed off on by all nine federal agencies comprising the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, that none apparently dissented, and that the State Department’s man on the committee stated, “Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter.”

Oh, and the Wyoming mines aren’t actually in operation, probably because the worldwide price of uranium has fallen following Japan’s Fukishima disaster. The Russians would probably sell them back, cheap.

No matter, it’s really all about what the Times calls “the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation.”

Besides Hillary and Putin, the story’s other suspicious character is Canadian mining executive and philanthropist Frank Giustra. Besides pledging half his income to good works such as the Clinton Health Access Initiative — bringing cheap HIV/AIDS drugs to 9.9 million people in Third World countries — Giustra’s other big sin was supposedly relying on Bill Clinton’s help to negotiate a multinational buyout of uranium mines in Kazakhstan.

Giustra has called the Times account arrant nonsense. He even provided a flight manifest to a Forbes reporter to prove that contrary to the newspaper, he didn’t take Bill Clinton with him to Kazakhstan at all. Moreover, as an extremely careful reader can determine, Giustra sold all of his Uranium One holdings in 2007 — two years before Hillary became Secretary of State — and so had nothing to gain from company’s 2010 transaction with the Russians.

Or from his charitable donations.

Giustra’s second suspect act was setting up something called the Canadian Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership. That too seems to have confused the scandal-hunting reporters and their supporters on the Washington Posteditorial page. See, even if there’s no evidence of a quid pro quo, the Post thundered, the Clinton Foundation had promised transparency while Hillary was in office.

“However, the Times said the contributions of some connected to the Uranium One deal were not disclosed. The newspaper unearthed them in Canadian tax records. This lapse is exactly the sleight of hand that creates suspicion… What were the Clintons hiding?”

Basically, as it turns out, the fact that Canada is a sovereign country whose laws prohibit such disclosures.

Look, there’s a reason articles like the Times’ big exposé are stultifyingly dull and require the skills of a contract lawyer to parse. Murky sentences and jumbled chronologies signify that the “Clinton rules” are back: all innuendo and guilt by association. All ominous rhetorical questions, but rarely straightforward answers.

Photo: Niu Xiaolei/Xinhua/Sipa via USA/TNS

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