On Friday, almost 700 US veterans issued an open letter in support of the president, in which they argued the Atlantic allegations were another attempt to interfere with the 2020 election.

"Recent baseless media attacks against President Trump from anonymous sources are just another example of the depths to which the President's opponents are willing to descend to divide the nation and meddle in this election", the letter said.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert Wilkie, also came to Trump's defence. When asked if he has ever heard President Trump making disgraceful comments about service members, he responded: "Absolutely not".

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/202009071080384965-atlantic-editor-in-chief-expects-more-reporting-on-alleged-trump-comments-about-veterans/

 

Meanwhile, Pelosi still claims her "blue rinse" was legit... (Yes I know, she stains her hair with mousey brunette dye, not blue-rinse, but it's more funny that way...).

 

In a way, The Atlantic may have fallen into the trap of being fed "disinformation" by secret Trump "disinfo-experts" who know that the disparaging information will create an outrage and possibly encourage troopers to vote for Trump rather than for Biden. It's called "reverse psychology with a hint of lemon."

 

See also:

beangate is taking over america...

 

From Glenn Greenwald

ONE OF THE MOST HUMILIATING journalism debacles of the Trump era played out on December 8, 2017, first on CNN and then on MSNBC. The spectacle kicked off on that Friday morning at 11 a.m. when CNN, deploying its most melodramatic music and graphics designed to convey that a real bombshell was about to be dropped, announced that anonymous sources had provided the network with a smoking gun proving the Trump/Russia conspiracy once and for all: During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump Jr. had received a September 4 email with a secret encryption key that gave him advanced access to WikiLeaks’ servers containing the DNC emails which the group would subsequently release to the public 10 days later. Cable news and online media spontaneously combusted, as is their wont, in shock, hysteria and awe over this proof that WikiLeaks and Trump were in cahoots.

CNN has ensured that no videos of the festivities are available on YouTube for anyone to watch. That’s because the claim was completely false in its most crucial respect. CNN misreported the date of the smoking gun email Trump Jr. received: Rather than being sent to him on September 4 — 10 days prior to WikiLeaks’ public release, thus enabling secret access — the email was merely sent by a random member of the public after the public release by WikiLeaks (September 14), encouraging Trump Jr. to look at those now-public emails.

Though the original false report cannot be viewed any longer (except in small snippets from other networks, principally Fox, discussing CNN’s debacle), one can view the cringe-inducing video of CNN’s senior congressional correspondent Manu Raju explaining, after the Washington Post debunked the story, that “we are actually correcting” the reporting, doing his best to downplay what a massive blunder this was (though the whole thing is fantastic, my favorite line is when Raju says, with no small amount of understatement, “This appears to change the understanding of this story,” followed by, “Perhaps the initial understanding of what this email was, perhaps is not as significant based on what we know now”):

See video here...

The CNN page which originally published the blockbuster story contains this rather significant correction at the top:

Washington (CNN) Correction: This story has been corrected to say the date of the email was September 14, 2016, not September 4, 2016. The story also changed the headline and removed a tweet from Donald Trump Jr., who posted a message about WikiLeaks on September 4, 2016.

So mistakes happen in journalism, even huge and embarrassing ones. Other than some petty schadenfreude, why is this worth remembering? The reason is that that sorry episode reflects a now-common but highly corrosive tactic of journalistic deceit.

Very shortly after CNN unveiled its false story, MSNBC’s intelligence community spokesman Ken Dilanian went on air and breathlessly announced that he had obtained independent confirmation that the CNN story was true. In a video segment I cannot recommend highly enough, Dilanian was introduced by an incredibly excited Hallie Jackson — who urged Dilanian to “tell us what we’ve just now learned,” adding, “I know you and some of our colleagues have confirmed some of this information: What’s up?” Dilanian then proceeded to explain what he had learned:

That’s right, Hallie. Two sources with direct knowledge of this are telling us that congressional investigators have obtained an email from a man named “Mike Erickson” — obviously they don’t know if that’s his real name — offering Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. access to WikiLeaks documents. … It goes to the heart of the collusion question. … One of the big questions is: Did [Trump Jr.] call the FBI?

 

How could that happen? How could MSNBC purport to confirm a false story from CNN? Shortly after, CBS News also purported to have “confirmed” the same false story: that Trump Jr. received advanced access to the WikiLeaks documents. It’s one thing for a news outlet to make a mistake in reporting by, for instance, misreporting the date of an email and thus getting the story completely wrong. But how is it possible that multiple other outlets could “confirm” the same false report?

It’s possible because news outlets have completely distorted the term “confirmation” beyond all recognition. Indeed, they now use it to mean the exact opposite of what it actually means, thereby draping themselves in journalistic glory they have not earned and, worse, deceiving the public into believing that an unproven assertion has, in fact, been proven. With this disinformation method, they are doing the exact opposite of what journalism, at its core, is supposed to do: separate fact from speculation.

 

With this disinformation method, they are doing the exact opposite of what journalism, at its core, is supposed to do: separate fact from speculation.

CNN ultimately blamed its anonymous sources for this error, but refused to out them by insisting that it was a somehow a good faith mistake rather than deliberate disinformation (how did multiple “good faith” sources all “accidentally misread” an email date in the same way? CNN, in the spirit of news outlets refusing to provide the accountability and transparency for themselves that they demand from others, refuses to this very day to address that question).

But what is clear is that the “confirmation” which both MSNBC and CBS claimed it had obtained for the story was anything but: All that happened was that the same sources which anonymously whispered these unverified, false claims to CNN then went and repeated the same unverified, false claims to other outlets, which then claimed that they “independently confirmed” the story even though they had done nothing of the sort.

 

IT SEEMS THE SAME MISLEADING TACTIC is now driving the supremely dumb but all-consuming news cycle centered on whether President Trump, as first reported by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, made disparaging comments about The Troops. Goldberg claims that “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day” — whom the magazine refuses to name because they fear “angry tweets” — told him that Trump made these comments. Trump, as well as former aides who were present that day (including Sarah Huckabee Sanders and John Bolton), deny that the report is accurate.

So we have anonymous sources making claims on one side, and Trump and former aides (including Bolton, now a harsh Trump critic) insisting that the story is inaccurate. Beyond deciding whether or not to believe Goldberg’s story based on what best advances one’s political interests, how can one resolve the factual dispute? If other media outlets could confirm the original claims from Goldberg, that would obviously be a significant advancement of the story.

Other media outlets — including Associated Press and Fox News — now claim that they did exactly that: “confirmed” the Atlantic story. But if one looks at what they actually did, at what this “confirmation” consists of, it is the opposite of what that word would mean, or should mean, in any minimally responsible sense. AP, for instance, merely claims that “a senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of events and a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer who was told about Trump’s comments confirmed some of the remarks to The Associated Press,” while Fox merely said “a former senior Trump administration official who was in France traveling with the president in November 2018 did confirm other details surrounding that trip.”

In other words, all that likely happened is that the same sources who claimed to Jeffrey Goldberg, with no evidence, that Trump said this went to other outlets and repeated the same claims — the same tactic that enabled MSNBC and CBS to claim they had “confirmed” the fundamentally false CNN story about Trump Jr. receiving advanced access to the WikiLeaks archive. Or perhaps it was different sources aligned with those original sources and sharing their agenda who repeated these claims. Given that none of the sources making these claims have the courage to identify themselves, due to their fear of mean tweets, it is impossible to know.

But whatever happened, neither AP nor Fox obtained anything resembling “confirmation.” They just heard the same assertions that Goldberg heard, likely from the same circles if not the same people, and are now abusing the term “confirmation” to mean “unproven assertions” or “unverifiable claims” (indeed, Fox now says that “two sources who were on the trip in question with Trump refuted the main thesis of The Atlantic’s reporting”).

It should go without saying that none of this means that Trump did not utter these remarks or ones similar to them. He has made public statements in the past that are at least in the same universe as the ones reported by the Atlantic, and it is quite believable that he would have said something like this (though the absolute last person who should be trusted with anything, particularly interpreting claims from anonymous sources, is Jeffrey Goldberg, who has risen to one of the most important perches in journalism despite — or, more accurately because of — one of the most disgraceful and damaging records of spreading disinformation in service of the Pentagon and intelligence community’s agenda).

But journalism is not supposed to be grounded in whether something is “believable” or “seems like it could be true.” Its core purpose, the only thing that really makes it matter or have worth, is reporting what is true, or at least what evidence reveals. And that function is completely subverted when news outlets claim that they “confirmed” a previous report when they did nothing more than just talked to the same people who anonymously whispered the same things to them as were whispered to the original outlet.

Quite aside from this specific story about whether Trump loves The Troops, conflating the crucial journalistic concept of “confirmation” with “hearing the same idle gossip” or “unproven assertions” is a huge disservice. It is an instrument of propaganda, not reporting. And its use has repeatedly deceived rather than informed the public. Anyone who doubts that should review how it is that MSNBC and CBS both claimed to have “confirmed” a CNN report which turned out to be ludicrously and laughably false. Clearly, the term “confirmation” has lost its meaning in journalism.

 

Read more:

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/05/journalisms-new-propaganda-tool-using-confirmed-to-mean-its-opposite/

 

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Sad... Meanwhile few media outlets will touch the story of biden's sacrifice...

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney tweeted out a cutting remark at Dem House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday.

The Utah pol posted a photo of himself getting a haircut from his wife at home — and included a dig at Pelosi over her beauty-salon debacle amid the coronavirus crackdown.

“Getting cleaned up for resumption of the Senate. Better salon than Pelosi’s!” the Utah politician and onetime presidential candidate wrote above a photo of himself grinning while sitting in front of wife Ann as she wields scissors over his locks.

 

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2020/09/07/mitt-romney-tweets-cutting-remark-at-nancy-pelosi/

 

Is Mitt's wife a professional hairdresser/barber? And did Ann really cut Mitt's hair? Has she done a really better job than Pelosi's Salon? 

 

We have a picture of Mitt and his wife BEFORE  the haircut:

 

So many important hairy questions as the planet hurls towards the horror reelection of Trump... Meanwhile, Biden is trying to get hold of Trump by the short and curly, while only grasping at nettles... This coming November election could be like a rerun of "Shampooed" with Warren beattie ("Gorgeous" — courtesy of MAD magazine)... in which he has sex with everone, twice over:

 

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The salon owner, who released footage of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) getting her hair done without a mask, has received over $309,695 on GoFundMe at the time of publication. Pelosi notably said owner Erica Kious had created a “set-up” to sting her but supporters across the nation have rallied behind the San Francisco small business owner on the crowd fundraising site. 

The video was released by Kious last week and showed a maskless Pelosi walking through the salon after thousands of hair shops across the nation have closed, many permanently and some were even jailed, as a result of the policies encouraged by Pelosi.

 

Read more:

https://saraacarter.com/gofundme-for-salon-owner-who-exposed-pelosis-maskless-hypocrisy-raises-over-309k/

 

 

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US President Donald Trump is itching to get back on the campaign trail after being sidelined by a COVID-19 infection but is unlikely to hold any in-person events until at least Monday, aides say.

Uncertainty remains about whether Mr Trump, who was diagnosed with COVID last week, is still contagious.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said the president was ready to go as soon as he got approval from his doctor, telling Fox News: “He wants to talk to the American people, and he wants to be out there”.

“There are medical tests underway that will ensure that when the president is back out he will not be able to transmit the virus,” Ms McEnany said, adding Dr Conley would lay out the details later.

“He won’t be out there if he can transmit the virus.”

It comes as Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the president appeared to be “in an altered state right now” and queried a potential “impairment of judgment”.

Ms Pelosi has been raising questions about Mr Trump’s mental fitness since his COVID-19 diagnosis and demanding more transparency about his health.

She unveiled legislation that would allow Congress to intervene to remove a president but insisted it was not about Mr Trump.

The bill would set up a commission to assess a president’s ability to lead the country and ensure a continuity of government.

Ms Pelosi said it was inspired by the need for greater congressional oversight of the White House.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2020/10/10/donald-trump-coronavirus-campaign-2/

 

Trump was a fool before, he is a fool now. No change. But Pelosi reminds me of these small dogs that can't seem to stop yapping at big dogs: yap yap yap... Impeach, impeach, impeach... Her demeanour is a constant diminishing of her standing... and pointing out to the presence of the big dog. She seems to represent the insane side of sanity...

 

 

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Newly-filed financial disclosures show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband have invested up to $1 million in CrowdStrike, American cybersecurity technology company and the originator of ‘Russian hacking’ claims.

Financial disclosures show Pelosi (D-California) and her husband Paul buying CrowdStrike shares on September 3, according to a RealClear Investigations report by journalist Aaron Mate. Since then, the stock went from $129.25 a share to $142.97.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/503111-pelosi-invests-crowdstrike-russiagate/

 

 

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