Tuesday, April 09, 2019

Anonymous Sources at NYT


 The failure of the Mueller report to find clear evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians makes the New York Times stories about collusion look incorrect and poorly reported.  One of the main problems is the use of anonymous sources.  It looks like NYT reporters have either been making up their stories or their sources have been lying to them.  In any case, the NYT has embarrassed itself and soiled its reputation.  It has proved Trump’s claims of “fake news” to be true.  This is a shame because the NYT in the past has been an excellent newspaper. 

The NYT, like the rest of the Democratic, liberal establishment has been unable to accept Hillary Clinton’s loss in the last election.  The Democrats and the NYT took up the cry of “collusion” between Trump and the Russians as a means of removing Trump from office.  As time went on, however, it became less and less likely that they would be able to do so.  Trump became too firmly established in office, and concrete evidence of collusion failed to appear.  The Democrats turned from trying to change the election results to trying to impeach Trump. 

The Democrats had a handful of accusations that they touted continuously, such as the Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya, and the Steele dossier on Trump’s activities in Russia.  I don’t see that anything illegal happened at the Trump Tower meeting.  If the Russians had claimed that Hillary was spying for them, wouldn’t the Trump campaign have been justified in finding out if there was anything to those claims?  Do the Democrats and the NYT believe that Hillary is above reproach and that and to suspect her any wrongdoing is treason?  The NYT and the Democrats are guilty of such blind devotion to Hillary that they cannot see the world as it is. 

The Democrats have betrayed the US by spending all of their time trying to invalidate the last election.  The real problem is that Trump is a bad President, most recently illustrated by his firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and naming of Stephen Moore and Herman Cain to the Fed.  He can’t keep competent people in his administration and surrounds himself with ideological idiots.  If they were responsible, the Democrats should be trying to keep the US from running off the rails, rather than just throwing up roadblocks to governing and making ad hominem attacks on Trump. 

They need to focus less on ideological purity and more on getting things done.  For example, on the border, they need to focus on what to do about a genuine influx of refugees on the border, rather than on the insensitive handling of a few immigrant children.  A slew of House committee meetings on whether Trump colluded with the Russians will not help govern America.  They will just consume the time of the House and the Administration.  The House and the Senate should try to pass some bipartisan laws reigning in the President.  The huge budget deficit and national debt should be something that some Republicans are interested in, perhaps getting enough Republicans to support a bill passed by the House, hopefully avoiding another government shutdown.  It will be hard, but Sen. McConnell appears to be getting fed up with Trump and may be willing to challenge him on something dear to the Republicans’ hearts, like fiscal responsibility.  They could try to force Trump to name permanent Cabinet secretaries, perhaps by cutting off the salary of any person who has been “acting” in a position that require Congressional approval for more than a year, not the whole agency, just the official, unless perhaps he is granted a Congressional waiver in cases of hardship. 

There are lots of things that need to be done.  The Democrats should let Trump have immigration as his issue, and focus on other, more important things, like the deficit, healthcare, or Income inequality.  Forget the Green New Deal for now and focus on smaller, more achievable goals.  In the meantime, try to maintain good relations with our traditional allies, despites Trump’s insulting rhetoric toward them, try to keep the economy on a sound basis, try to prevent the social safety net from being completely destroyed, and just try to keep America running in a reasonable way.  If the Democrats were patriots, they would take on the job of getting the country through this trying time of the Trump Administration in the least damaging way possible.  Instead, every Democratic leader in Congress seems to be grandstanding by running for President.  What about doing the job at hand?