I know this guy (not the guy in the picture: that’s Ben Stiller as “Mr. Furious” in “Mystery Men”), an opinionated retired lawyer convinced of his own intellectual superiority. I was still surprised at the bias and incompetence of his recent substack post titled “Trump: Death by Yesbuts.” Yet because it is another manifestation of extreme Trump Derangement, my Trump Deranged Facebook friend, another retired lawyer whose intellect is to Mr. Hirsch’s as Elon Musk’s is to a sea sponge, actually linked to this thing approvingly on Facebook. It is to weep. Is stupidity contagious now? Do we need a vaccine?

The author signals his incompetence and ethical vacuum in his very first paragraph by mocking jurors in a hung jury who told him, “Of course there was a reasonable doubt, but he was guilty.” We are not even told which side the jurors voted for, a factor rather crucial to making sense out of his analogy. That statement by itself would be consistent in the mouths of any of the jurors in Reginald Rose’s “Twelve Angry Men” who finally acquit the almost certainly guilty accused because the prosecution didn’t sufficiently prove the case against him. It was very reasonable for any juror to conclude that the kid committed the murder but that nonetheless, he was not proven guilty in court. In fact, this was my conclusion after watching the whole O.J. Simpson trial.

The rest of the article quickly devolves into standard anti-Trump distortions, name-calling and bias, as well as the familiar narrative discussed in my previous post. Hirsch writes,

Back in 2017, [Trump] told the Conservative Police Action Conference that “Nobody loves the First Amendment more than me.” But, he added, “The fake news doesn’t tell the truth. It doesn’t represent the people. It never will represent the people. We’re going to do something about it.”

In other words, “Yes, but….” “Freedom of speech” is a great phrase but the speech better not say bad things about me!

False translation, but then bias makes you stupid. Fake news doesn’t serve the people. Fake news is a blight on democracy, and it is very important to do something about it. Trump was not talking about news “saying bad things,” he was talking about the deliberate manipulation of facts for partisan gain.

2. The author indulges in his own deliberate spinning of facts, citing as an example of his “yesbut” hypocrisy, “the wannabe Christians who hate immigrants and the poor. Universal love, but….” I presume, since he is a progressive, a hack and a hypocrite, Hirsch is speaking of illegal immigrants, and equating wanting to enforce the law with hate. Similarly, I assume that by “hating the poor” he means those who are not in favor of income redistribution. If that’s not what he means, than he’s not being sufficiently clear. Both lawyers and substack pundits have to write better than that.

3. We read, “Trump’s 2017 screed wasn’t his only dip into these toxic waters. In 2019, he accused social media companies of “discriminating against conservatives” and vowed that “all regulatory and legislative solutions” would be used against against them “to protect free speech.” What toxic waters? Calling the news media and Big Tech on their obvious effort to constrict public discourse and distort the public’s understanding of events? Social media companies were discriminating against conservatives: Twitter banned Trump, YouTube deplatformed them, Facebook banned Ethics Alarms. Hirsch’s concept of punditry is “don’t confuse me with facts, my mind’s made up.” Ultimately we didn’t need regulatory and legislative solution: Musk bought Twitter, Facebook fired its censors, and the censorship pushed by the Biden Administration was exposed. Hirsch: “Partisan censorship? What partisan censorship?”

4. Next he runs right into my previous post today:

As far back as 2016, Candidate Trump warned that “We’re going to open up those libel laws, so when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post…writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.” A few months later, he announced that “Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post.”

An honest commentator would point out the recent examples of deceptive editing and malicious reporting that have begun costing news organizations money, as in the Nick Sandman cases, Trump’s successful suit against “60 Minutes,” and more. The news media has proven itself no longer worthy of the Times v. Sullivan shield. But the substacker is just another Trump Deranged hack, and not interested in fair or balanced analysis. He proves it with this closing sally:

Me, Me, Me. Law matters when he can use it. When it hurts, discard it. Truth is whatever helps him, so he lies. It’s been clear for years, and yet he was reelected. How? Are more than half of us as narcissistic, as sociopathic as he is, or was the majority duped by his appeals to the worst in us? It’s scary either way. But I know too many honest, caring people who voted for him. So do you. I can’t believe so many of us are such lost souls. I hope I’m right about them. Otherwise, we’re all lost.

Gee, what a trenchant argument!

“Ooooh, I hatehimIhatehimIhatehimsoooomuch, and anyone who doesn’t hate him is an idiot or scum!”

This is the “deplorables” argument, which reaches peak absurdity when one considers that the administration Trump was running against was objectively a fraud and a cover-up, his opponent was a babbling idiot, that Trump’s opposition tried to lock him up and inspire crazies to kill him, and he was opposing, among other things, open borders, institutional discrimination against men and whites, and the fast-tracking of minors into life-altering sex-reversal treatments. The author can’t imagine anyone finding Trump’s position on those issues persuasive unless they are “lost souls.” Wow.

Yet this cretinous drivel was promoted on Facebook by a wise and even brilliant man. Why? Because it was a Trump Hate piece, and that made it good. I only wasted time fisking this cow pie to show how low Trump Derangement is making my friends go for support.