What we are witnessing with the Trump tsunami of executive orders and direct assaults on the Deep State is the creation of a new norm, one that, now that I think about it, should have manifested itself long ago. Note that I didn’t refer to the current wave of orders and directives coming out of the White House as a “blitzkrieg.” That would just feed into the hysterical narrative from the Axis that an elected U.S. President using his Constitutional powers to manage the Executive Branch is “fascist.” Apparently the Left is going to keep using the “Trump is Hitler” nonsense because it’s worked out so well for them.
A new President from the opposing party obviously has a huge tactical advantage if he moves this quickly and forcefully. The only arriving administration that came close to what Trump has done was Roosevelt’s first term, and he couldn’t move nearly this fast. The phenomenon makes me wonder if there is a previously unrealized advantage to a President taking four years off between terms and calculating what went wrong and how to do better the next time.
Trump is obviously not one to conclude, “This time, I need to think things through before I tweet or open my big yap,” but he clearly figured out that he was sabotaged his entire four years because he naively trusted entrenched government employees to be patriots loyal to their President rather than working behind the scenes to undermine him. Far from being an attack on democracy, Trump’ forceful and essential course correction is a defense of it, and entirely ethical: responsible, fair, and the fulfillment of Trump’s promises.
CBS, only a month before a Presidential election that was believed to be a toss-up, deliberately used its flagship news magazine show, “60 Minutes,” to throw a lifeline to Kamala Harris. The network was caught red-handed at this, as this admittedly critical coverage clearly shows…
In response to CBS’s cheat, Trump sued the network last year for $10 billion, “alleging” that “the network”60 Minutes” deceptively edited the featured interview with Harris to help her candidacy, or perhaps not to hurt her candidacy is more accurate, since it hid a typical Harris outbreak of gibberish in response to a straightforward question. The lawsuit alleges this because “60 Minutes” did deceptively edit the interview. There is no non-risible argument that it did not. Ethics Alarms issued two posts about this nauseating example of unethical partisan broadcast journalism, here and here. CBS could have backed up its “It isn’t what it is” defense of the incident by releasing the raw transcript of the Harris interview, but it would not, more smoking gun evidence of its attempted election interference by withholding that smoking gun.
My plan is to do another Post 2024 Election Freak-Out Update today, but this chapter deserves its own post.
Last night while watching the DirecTV news mix, which allows me to sample CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and BBC America simultaneously, I was puzzled to see Rachel Maddow, snearing and mugging as usual, featuring old Watergate headlines about the “Saturday Night Massacre,” when President Nixon ordered a succession of Attorneys General to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who, the assumption went, was getting too close to uncovering Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up.
“What does that have to do with the price of beans?” I asked myself. I clicked on Rachel, which I usually won’t do unless there is a loaded pistol aimed at my head. Of course! Interim D.C. U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr. had dismissed about 30 federal prosecutors who worked on the January 6, 2021 cases over the past four years. The prosecutors who had worked on Jack Smith’s lawfare prosecutions of Trump for the mishandling of classified material at Mar-A-Largo and his alleged attempt to steal (back) the 2024 election have already been pink-slipped or soon will be. Rachel, repeating the agreed-upon Axis talking point, was saying that this is Trump emulating Nixon, preventing “justice” and hobbling law enforcement. CNN got around to the same narrative a bit later.
Indeed, all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. President Trump would have been incompetent, foolish and naive not to fire all of these lawyers. Maybe some of them were ethical and capable of independent thought (as their ethics rules require), but there is no way to figure out which. Most of them have been poisoned by the “Deep State “Get Trump!” culture seeded bt Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others. As with the FBI and intelligence personnel who are losing their ability to sabotage this President in his second term as they did in his first, those lawyers heading out the door cannot be trusted. It would make no more sense to allow them to undermine President Trump with leaks and worse than it would have made sense to keep Jack Smith around; luckily, he had the sense to resign.
Two days ago I had a terse disagreement with a (another) Trump-Deranged relative who kept throwing Axis talking points at me like bread crumbs to pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Then when she was out of legitimate arguments…actually, long after she was out of legitimate arguments, she hung up on me in the middle of my sentence.
I have never been tolerant of that rude, insulting tactic. I regard it as the equivalent of a slap in the face or a punch in the mouth, except more cowardly. She almost immediately called back to apologize with a classic “I’m sorry but…” message, but so far, I am not in the mood to take her calls. I have never hung up the phone on a friend, relative or colleague. Unsolicited salespeople, yes, in fact, almost always. Not anyone whom I respect, however, and I expect the same courtesy.
I know that some of my extreme reaction to that tactic is because my late wife, in the worst of her alcoholic relapses when she was defensive, feeling guilty and hardly in her right mind, hung up on me a few times. Nonetheless, my bias against that conduct is emotional, visceral and, frankly, justified.
Is that a gender-linked thing, I wonder? I have never had a man hang up on me, but more women than I could count on one hand have done it. Grace also had friends and family members hang up on her, to which her response was to call back, then hang up on them.
There’s the mad-hanger-upper calling me again on my cell, fourth time today.
I think I’ll let her stew a bit longer. Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do…
As I turn the topic choice over to you, I’m going to choose now to mention the astonishing gaslighting going on yesterday at Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing and on CNN and MSNBC as they did their best to echo the nonsensical fantasy version of the FBI being painted by such hucksters as Senator Amy Klobuchar. Patel has been a harsh critic of the FBI, as anyone who has paid any attention in the past decade or so is forced to be. The organization is political, frequently incompetent, and untrustworthy. Yet over and over yesterday I heard that it was completely non-partisan, had no agenda but to serve justice, and is staffed by heroes. Even though Patel’s opening statement documented many examples that contradict this idealized image (which is promoted in the entertainment media to an absurd, indeed boring extent), the same message kept coming: the FBI is wonderful. How dare anyone criticize it?
Given the ugly history of the agency, this “It isn’t what it is” defense is especially weird.
There. Whew! As Jimmy Durante used to say, “I’m glad I got that out. On my last X-ray, it showed up as a safety pin!”
I am proud to say that I thought “The Three Amigos” was a largely unfunny and lousy movie when I saw it the first time…this, despite the fact that I generally admire John Landis as a director of comedies (he will always have a place dear in my heart for directing “Animal House”), and although I generally appreciate the talents of the movie’s stars, Steve Martin and Martin Short (Chevy Chase not so much). For some reason it has been showing repeatedly on MGM+ of late, and upon re-watching the thing after my sock drawer was in order, I found another reason to hate it other than its annoying tone and its predictable gags. This time around, the film seemed egregiously racist.
Oh no! Have 40 years of relentless bludgeoning by political correctness, hyper-sensitivity and wokism taken over my brain? When I first viewed the film (which Wikipedia tells me was ranked 79th on Bravo’s list of the “100 Funniest Movies,” a factoid that only reaffirms my long-standing belief that Bravo is useless), that thought never occurred to me for a second.
One of many films that borrows heavily from the Western classic (and ethics movie) “The Magnificent Seven,”—others include “A Bug’s Life” and “Battle Beyond the Stars” along with a pretty bad remake, with Denzel Washington standing in for Yul Brenner—“The Three Amigos” (the film’s score is by the same composer who scored “The Magnificent Seven”) tells the tale of three incredibly white silent movie stars who end up rescuing a town of substantially helpless and poor Mexicans. The town’s tormenter is “El Guapo,” the evil leader of the most ugly, stupid, dirty and brutal band of Mexican bandits in silver screen history. All right, maybe the Mexicans in “The Wild Bunch” are worse, but the white guys in that bloody film are hardly what you’d like to see your daughter bring home to meet the family either. Naturally the three white guys prevail, despite their collective IQ of about 210, for an average of 70 each (it actually breaks down to 85 for Martin’s character, with Short at 70 and Chase at 65).
Robert Kennedy, Jr. is one of President Trump’s nominees for his Cabinet that I would not be disappointed to see rejected. His nomination is transparently the fulfillment of a political quid pro quo between him and Trump. There is nothing shocking about that: it is a standard tactic in a strange arena that often embraces Bizarro World ethics. Kennedy’s crusade against vaccines in general has exploded the number of anti-vaxxers in the U.S. and undoubtedly caused unnecessary deaths. Democrats won’t mention his extreme climate change positions, including RFKJ’s advocacy of criminal penalties for “climate change deniers,” but that is also, in my view, a disqualifying feature of his career in the public eye. I would not be surprised if Trump himself is hoping Kennedy’s nomination is rejected. I would not be surprised if he has taken steps behind the scenes to ensure that it is. I hope he has.
Nonetheless, Caroline Kennedy’spublic letter to four ranking Democratic Senators condemning her cousin and attacking his character as well as his positions is a particularly odious betrayal and Machiavellian political shiv in the kidney. The letter is also spectacularly hypocritical, and an excellent, if nauseating, example of abuse of celebrity and influence as well as a stunning lack of self-awareness.
This rates a Nelson. Mr. Muntz has been getting a work-out on Ethics Alarms lately. The Nelson, as frequent readers here know, is used when condign justice arrives for some ethics miscreant of note, or when such an individual beclowns himself or herself. Nelson Muntz, for the culturally ignorant, has been a regular character on “The Simpsons” for more than two decades. His function is to issue a mocking laugh when he encounters the misfortunes or witnesses the embarrassments of other Springfield residents.
Jim Acosta is a long-time CNN reporter with delusions of grandeur. He is an “advocacy journalist” (which means, ironically, that he’s not a journalist at all) who fashioned himself as Dan Rather to Donald Trump’s Richard Nixon, or Sam Donaldson to Trump’s Ronald Reagan, the dogged liberal reporter knight pledged to slaying the conservative President dragon. Unfortunately for Jim and the rest of us, Acosta isn’t as smart as Rather or as careful as Sam, and is more unethical than either.
Though Acosta led the broadcast media siege of fake and spun news along with Big Lies and double standards to cripple Trump’s first occupation of the White House, CNN figured out that his act was not going to play this time around. Trump 2.0 took over after a decisive electoral win and a higher approval rating from the public than he had at any time in his first term. CNN, seeing its ratings sinking and trying to tack to the center after thoroughly discrediting itself in 2024 (along with the rest of the mainstream media that insisted Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign, Tim Walz wasn’t a boob and Donald Trump was an insurrectionist) decided that Acosta was a liability (“Welcome to the party, pal!“) so they moved his show to the midnight slot, which is the CNN equivalent of Hitler sending an officer to the Russian front.
So Acosta, laboring under the delusion that he deserves better, quit. Here was his astoundingly pompous farewell:
I just wanted to end today’s show by thanking all of the wonderful people who work behind the scenes at this network.
You may have seen some reports about me and the show, and after giving all of this some careful consideration and weighing in alternative timeslots CNN offered me, I’ve decided to move on. I am grateful to CNN for the nearly 18 years I’ve spent here doing the news.
People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House covering Donald Trump.
Actually, no. That moment came here when I covered former President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator there, Raul Castro, about the island’s political prisoners.
As the son of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson: It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant.
I have always believed it’s the job of the press to hold power to account. I’ve always tried to do that here at CNN, and I plan on doing all of that in the future.
One final message. Don’t give in to the lies. Don’t give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope.
Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message. I will not give in to the lies. “I will not give in to the fear!”
Post it on your social media so people can hear from you, too.
I’ll have more to say about my plans in the coming days. But until then, I want to thank all of you for tuning in. It has been an honor to be welcomed into your home for all these years.
That’s the news. Reporting from Washington. I’m Jim Acosta.
Bye! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, you self-righteous, arrogant hack.
I know that the Dunning-Kruger Syndrome describes people who are so stupid that they don’t know they are stupid, but what do you call the syndrome when you think you are brilliant at your job when you really stink at it? That’s Acosta. Reading his nauseating statement from last night, I took a tour of the Ethics Alarms dossier on Jim. It is necessarily much thinner than it could be: Acosta quickly identified himself as belonging in the same group with Joy Reid, Don Lemon, Charles M. Blow, Courtland Malloy, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and others, openly biased pundits and broadcast journalists who viewed bringing down Donald Trump by any means necessary as their Holy Grail. I ignored his predictable dishonesty and lack of professionalism except when it was too egregious to let stand (or when I was short on topics).
1. A norm is born! In November, I wrote again about Harvard’s unethical and dishonest propagandists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt after earlier pronouncing them Academic Ethics Villains. “These two favorites of the New York Times are substantially responsible for the Axis of Unethical Conduct‘s Big Lie #6: “Trump’s Defiance Of Norms Is A Threat To Democracy,” a cornerstone of the Harris Campaign’s desperate “Trump is Hitler” strategy. They had just issued another one of their fear-mongering and academically indefensible Times op-eds, banging that same metaphorical drum with their (profitable!) argument that any genuine student of Presidential history (like they claim to be) knows is 100% hooey, and using the beat to argue for Democrats taking unprecedented measures to block Trump from the presidency….all of which defy previous democratic norms! The Levitsky and Ziblatt hypocrisy has nonetheless become, apparently, a standard weapon for the Axis to use against Trump, as increasingly absurd as it.”
Trump, like all functioning Presidents who understand the office, creates new “norms.” (Fortunately, the Joe Biden innovation of the President being a hollow shell maneuvered by hidden hands does not look like it will become a norm.) During Trump’s first term, he created a norm by using social media to make the case for his own leadership while competing with the Axis news media’s efforts to debase him. Such direct contact with the public hearkened back to the days of FDR’s “fireside chats” on the radio. Trump is no Roosevelt, and his often hasty tweets in ALL CAPS often did more damage than good. Still, the use of social media as an unfiltered means of reaching the public without the spin of media partisans is destined to become standard operating procedure, at least for President bold enough to do it, and not delegate their social media accounst to 20-something nerds. Now, thanks to artificial intelligence bots. Trump, or any President, can create his (or her) own political cartoons via the meme-maker function, and get more circulation via social media than most news sources can give to outdated hacks like the self-righteous ex-WaPo cartoonist discussed here.
The viral “Trump as bad-ass gangster” meme above, following nicely on the “Melania as gangster” talk around her flashy Inauguration fashion statement, also guarantees that “FAFO” will enter the lexicon beyond its Gen X origins. FAFO is short for “Fuck around and find out,” or, in Tony Barretta’s words, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”…. or, in my father’s generation’s words, “Actions have consequences.”
I think I’ll dedicate this edition of the Friday Forum to Nelson Muntz…
Item: In at least one case already, Trump’s much maligned tariffs reboot has had the desired response. Stellantis (STLA) is making a number of US moves in response to the Trump administration’s focus on building products in America through the raising of tariffs on Canada and Mexico The company owns Ram, Jeep, Dodge, and other brands. In a letter to employees, Stellantis North America COO Antonio Filosa confirmed a number of specific actions it will take to “entail a multibillion-dollar investment in our people, great products, and innovative technology, all here in the US.” Stellantis said it would build a new midsize pickup truck at the recently shuttered Belvidere, Ill., assembly plant. Trump’s tariff threat has been the fallback argument of my Trump Deranged sister when she couldn’t come up with any rational reason to support Kamala Harris.
Item: Speaking of irrational, this essay in the New York Times (which I missed somehow) might kill poor Nelson as it could make him laugh himself to death. Literally challenging “Family Ties,” to which I I alluded in this post yesterday, woke or Trump Deranged parents describe their “Where did we go wrong?” lament as they discovered that their offspring voted against their “values” in “When Your Son Goes MAGA.” [Gift Link!] One of the horrified parents is a Democrat in Portland, Oregon who, the Times says, “voted enthusiastically for Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election.” I can see why someone might hold her nose and vote for Harris, but voting for her “enthusiastically” is inexcusable. She says she argued about abortion, guns and immigration with her MAGA cap-wearing son, and tells him “facts don’t matter to you.” Ponder THAT for a second or two….
Despite this intro, I’ll be thrilled if commenters can find some non-political ethics issues to discuss,
Ethics Alarms 