Trump Impeachment Ethics Train Wreck

The Big Lies Of The “Resistance”: A Directory, Updated (11/29/2023)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

[When I wrote the previous post adding Big Lie #10 to this compendium, I decided to read the whole thing again. That occasioned numerous updates (and repaired typos, of course.). I found it worth reading again; heck, I wrote it, and I had forgotten most of it. So I’m re-posting the revised version now…]

Introduction

The “Big Lie” strategy of public opinion manipulation, most infamously championed by Adolf Hitler and his propaganda master Joseph Goebbels, has, in sinister fashion, become a routine and ubiquitous component of the Left’s efforts to remove President Donald J. Trump from office without having to defeat him at the polls, and subsequently after his defeat, to attempt to prevent him from defeating a hopelessly inept failed successor. One of the most publicized Big Lies, that Trump had “colluded” with the Russian government to “steal” the Presidential election from Hillary Clinton was eventually exposed as such by the results of the Mueller investigation, the discrediting of the Steele Dossier, and the revelation that Democrats (like Adam Schiff) and the mainstream news media deliberately misled the public. and Democrats, with blazing speed, replaced it with another Big Lie that there was a “Constitutional crisis.” I could have added that one to the list, I suppose, but the list of Big Lies is dauntingly long already, and this one is really just a hybrid of the Big Lies below.

Becoming addicted to relying on Big Lies as a political strategy is not the sign of ethical political parties, movements, or ideologies. Perhaps there is a useful distinction between Big Lies and “false narratives,” but I can’t define one. Both are intentional falsehoods designed to frame events in a confounding and deceptive manner, so public policy debates either begin with them as assumptions, thus warping the discussion, or they result in permanent bias, distrust and suspicion of the lie/narrative’s target. For simplicity’s sake, because I believe it is fair to do so, and also because “Big Lie” more accurately reflects just how unethical the tactic is, that is the term I will use.

Big Lie #1. “Trump is just a reality TV star.”

This is #1 because it began at the very start of Trump’s candidacy. It’s pure deceit: technically accurate in part but completely misleading. Ronald Reagan was subjected to a similar Big Lie when Democrats strategically tried to denigrate his legitimacy by  referring to him as just an actor, conveniently ignoring the fact that he had served as Governor of the largest state in the nation for eight years, and had split his time between acting and politics for many years before that, gradually becoming more involved in politics and public policy. (Reagan once expressed faux puzzlement about the denigration of his acting background, saying that he thought acting was an invaluable skill in politics. He was right, of course.)

In Trump’s case, the disinformation was even more misleading, He was a successful international businessman and entrepreneur in real estate, hotels and casinos, and it was that experience, not his successful, late career foray into “The Apprentice” (as a branding exercise, and a brilliant one), that was the basis of his claim to the Presidency.

The “reality star” smear still appears in attack pieces, even though it makes even less sense for a man who has been President for four years. The tactic is ethically indefensible . It is not only dishonest, intentionally distorting the President’s legitimate executive experience and success,  expertise and credentials, it is also an ad hominem attack. Reality TV primarily consists of modern freak shows allowing viewers to look down on assorted lower class drunks, vulgarians, has-been, exhibitionists,  idiots and freaks. Class bigotry has always been a core part of the NeverTrump cabal, with elitist snobs like Bill Kristol, Mitt Romney, the Bushes, and George Will revealing that they would rather capitulate to the Leftist ideology they have spent their professional lives opposing (well, not Mitt in all cases) than accept being on the same team as a common vulgarian like Donald Trump. Continue reading →

Gee, What A Surprise: The FBI Finds No Evidence That The Jan.6 Capitol Riot Was An “Insurrection”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

shocked face

There’s the “shocked face” of the once popular commercial featuring a talkative and opinionated infant. (The kid must be 40 by now, but his expression is immortal.)

Yet another Big Lie that the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance”/ Democrats/ Mainstream media) wielded shamefully for a disgusting amount of time is tumbling down. From Reuters:

“The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials. Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations. “Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

Continue reading →

Unethical And Intolerable: Waters, Babbitt, Sicknick, Part 2.

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The late Paul Harvey’s iconic “the rest of the story” isn’t quite as ugly as this story itself, which I wrote about here. It does, however, put a cap on one more disgusting example of the news media deliberately engaging in fake news reporting to advance a partisan agenda.

Let’s use CNN’s report, since we know if there was any way out, any way to spin the story and keep the false narrative going, the network of Fredo, Don Lemon and the atrocious Brian Stelter would try it. Nope, though the medical examiner did his best:

US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick suffered strokes and died of natural causes one day after responding to the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, Washington DC’s chief medical examiner has determined.The medical examiner, Francisco Diaz, didn’t note any evidence that Sicknick had an allergic reaction to chemical spray or list any internal or external injuries, according to The Washington Post, which first reported the ruling. Still, Diaz told the newspaper that “all that transpired” on January 6 “played a role in his condition.”The ruling all but ensures that the Justice Department won’t be able to pursue homicide charges in Sicknick’s death. In March, two men — Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania, and George Pierre Tanios, 39, of West Virginia — were arrested and charged with assaulting Sicknick.

The reason they can’t be prosecuted is that there is no evidence that Sicknick’s death was connected to the January 6 riots in any way. There never was. Diaz’s gratuitous claim that “all that transpired played a role in his condition” is just face-saving hackery.

What does that even mean? “Played a role”? Either something that happened at the Capitol killed him or it didn’t. Did Sicknick die of a broken heart to see America’s house sullied by an angry mob? HOW did the events “play a role”? Diaz doesn’t say, meaning he’s engaging in irresponsible speculation to give the lying journalists something to cling to. The statement breaks down to “post hoc ergo propter hoc“—a logical fallacy so well-known and ancient that it’s in Latin: “After this, ergo because of this.” There is no reason to believe that Sicknick would not have died if nothing had happened at the Capitol.

Note also that CNN is sticking with “insurrection,” a description it has not applied to any of the far more violent and lengthy takeovers of government buildings during the George Floyd Freakout. We learned this week that with even a half-competent response from the Capitol police, the gang of idiots would never have made it inside the Capitol. They had no firearms; they were a mob of about 300; they had as much chance of taking over the government or having any substantive impact whatsoever as Shirley Temple had to be an Olympic powerlifting gold medalist.

But never mind that: this is business as usual for all of the mainstream news media. The AUC memo went out that January 6 was an “insurrection” because that was going to be the way they finally “got” Donald Trump: accuse him of plotting “a violent uprising against the government,” and the memo never was retracted. Sicknick’s death at the hands of the rebels was a key part of the fiction, so it was repeated over and over, even in the Senate trial by the House prosecution as fact. The Biden Administration and Democrats were accomplices: they took the nauseatingly cynical step of staging a Capitol Rotunda viewing of Sicknick’s casket, which made the lie that “he died defending his country” vivid and dramatic (and cheapened the honor, which only a handful of ordinary citizens have been awarded).

When the “they hit him over the head with a fire extinguisher” tale didn’t pan out, they went with the “He died because they sprayed him with bear spray,” or he was caught in a bear spray crossfire, or something. Yes, the President of the United Sates plotted an insurrection that would take over the nation using bear spray and fire extinguishers. Diabolical!

As the substack reporter did when the Sicknick story first started falling apart, Glenn Greenwald has given us the best dose of undiluted contempt for how it was handled, writing yesterday in part,

Continue reading →

Your Deranged Friends Don’t Care That They Are Being Lied To About The “Insurrection,” But You Have An Obligation To Tell Them Anyway

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

tie guy

In “Journalism Ethics/Legal Ethics/Government Ethics Rot: The Democrats And Journalists Tried To Convict Donald Trump With Fake News,” Ethics Alarms covered the fact, and it is a fact, not an opinion, that the mainstream media and Democrats—the AUC, essentially—deliberately lied to the public in order to appeal to emotion and hype the significance of the January 6 riot. It appears that they were caught at the last second, which is why the decision to call witnesses was suddenly and mysteriously reversed in favor of a vote the Democrats knew they were going to lose.

I think it’s an important post about an important story, but very few people have read it (it’s been viewed 5 times today), or know that contrary to the assertions of President Biden and others, nobody was killed by the rioters, and a park police officer did not “give his life in defense of democracy.” There have been very few news stories pointing out that the Times quietly changed its false story that launched this myth, or that the Democrats deliberately entered it as false evidence in the impeachment trial.

When Ethics Alarms becomes a primary source of news that supposed journalists refuse to cover, we are in big, big trouble, especially since fewer people appear to be coming here (theories abound).

Glenn Greenwald, the primary beacon of that post, is doing what he can to spread the word of just how dastardly the AUC has been in spreading disinformation about the riot. He, as you know if you have been reading here, lost his job at his own journalism organization when it refused to allow him to spill the beans about the Hunter Biden scandal. In his latest post, Greenwlad revealed that the Brian Sicknick falsehood was far from the only example. [I will mention again here that everyone who wants to fight against the increasingly tight noose biased journalism has around the neck of our republic should subscribe to Greenwald’s feed at substack. Do it here.]

For example, we have another false story peddled by the Times and repeated up and down the news media. Here’s Greenwald:

Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month (Yes, It’s More Impeachment Analysis, And I’m Sick Of It Too, But This Is Important): Professor Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Shredding-the-Constitution

..Even with acquittal all but ensured, there was no room for constitutional niceties like free speech or due process. There was only one issue — the same one that has driven our media and politics for four years: Trump. Through that time, some of us have objected that extreme legal interpretations and biased coverage destroy our legal and journalistic values.

—-George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, constitutional law expert, on the conduct of the Democrats before and during the just-completed second Trump impeachment trial.

This statement, as well as the rest of his article for The Hill yesterday, was not only astute (though Turley’s observations should have been obvious) but personally welcome, in part because it tracked exactly with what I have been writing here for four years, but  in no small part because I was almost finished with a post making the same points. For Turley to make them is, of course, better, since a lot more people, though not nearly enough, pay attention to what he says. It was especially welcome because not one but two friends (among others) had made fatuous and indefensible assertions about the impeachment in the past two days, inspiring me to start that now redundant post.

My theme was going to be about how their now completely unhinged, Ahab-like mania to destroy the former President had led them to deny the importance of what once were accepted by liberals and conservatives alike—but especially liberals before their rebranding as “progressives”—as crucial, indispensable, core American values relating to personal liberty and government interference with it. The rationalizations employed in this scary process are stunning.

Prime among them as been 2020’s rationalization of the year: “It isn’t what it is,” #64. As I noted in the previous post, a Facebook friend (whom I strongly suspect was one of the self-exiled progressive Ethics Alarms commenters) wrote on the platform to the usual acclaim of  “likes” and “loves” that the 57 Senators who voted for this corrupt impeachment were voting “for democracy.” They were in fact doing the opposite, and in many ways, as Turley’s article explains (though again, it should be obvious.) Then, in a discussion with a more rational friend, another lawyer, about how the House impeachment had deliberately bypassed due process, I was told that there is no right of due process in an impeachment proceeding, nor should the prohibition of ex post facto laws and bills of attainder apply. Here was a lawyer making technical arguments against ethics. “Legally, due process only applies to life, liberty, and property,” she lectured. “A job is none of those.”

I could rebut that, but the point is that both the Declaration and the Constitution mark out basic values of our society, not just laws, but ethical values. “Due process” means fairness, and this lawyer, an alleged progressive, was arguing that the government doesn’t have to be fair while depriving the public of an elected official and that elected official of his job, and that individual of his ability to seek that job or another one. This is what hate and arrogance have done to the Left.

Continue reading →

Journalism Ethics/Legal Ethics/Government Ethics Rot: The Democrats And Journalists Tried To Convict Donald Trump With Fake News

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick lies in honor, in Washington

Gee, does this bother anyone out there who hates Donald Trump or who voted for Joe Biden?

If your answer is no, I’m disgusted with you. You’re beyond help, hope, or rehabilitation.

The farce of a Senate trial the nation just endured was predicated on emotion rather than law, logic, fact, language or evidence. Prime among the emotions weaponized was hatred of former President Trump (in the trial: hatred of then-President Trump was all the Democratic House needed for its evidence-free, investigation-free “snap impeachment” (credit: Prof Turley.) At the trial, House managers alluded to Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick being “killed’ in the riot, the intended implication being that President Trump was responsible for his death. Nancy Pelosi made certain that Sicknick’s body lay in the Capitol Rotunda, one of only five civilians so honored. All the better to show the nation that the President had blood on his hands. right, Nancy? The AP wrote on February 2,

Slain U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick lay in honor in the building he died defending, allowing colleagues and the lawmakers he protected to pay their respects and to remember the violent attack on Congress that took his life.

That’s false on its face, but it is the mythology the public and the Senators were fed in the weeks and days following the House impeachment. Here’s CBS: “‘Hero’: Lawmakers honor officer killed in US Capitol riot.”

Continue reading →

Post Impeachment Trial Fiasco Ethics Notes

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

How’s that unity and no divisive rhetoric theme working out for you, Democrats? Joe? Both Senator Schumer and Nancy Pelosi insulted the Republican Senators who voted against conviction in their post-acquittal remarks. What happened to respecting good faith disagreement among colleagues? When Bill Clinton, who had, unlike President Trump, committed impeachable crimes, was acquitted by a straight partisan vote, no Republican leaders impugned the judgement or “morality” of the Democrats who chose to ignore a President of the United States engaging in conduct that would get any lawyer in the country disbarred for lack of trustworthiness, honesty and integrity. Comity, you know. Respect. Professionalism.

***

And so it begins...Senator Lindsay Graham suggested that a GOP majority in the House might well decide to adopt the precedent set by the Democrats and impeach, for example, Kamala Harris. Talking to Chris Wallace on Fox New, he mused.

“If you use this model, I don’t know how Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if the Republicans take over the House. Because she actually bailed out rioters and one of the rioters went back to the streets and broke somebody’s head open. So we’ve opened Pandora’s Box here and I’m sad for the country.”​

Tit for tat! Revenge! Who could have predicted that?

***

Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Trump Defense Lawyer Michael van der Veen

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

michael-van-der-veen-730x0

I have had dreams that I was in a position to tell a TV news anchor exactly how biased, unethical and destructive his or her profession has become. So far, I have not had that opportunity, but the fact that Donald Trump’s defense attorney in the just completed Senate “trial,” a victory for his client, did have such an opportunity and took full advantage of it marks him as an Ethics Hero.

President Trump’s attorney, Michael van der Veen, appeared on CBS News and was asked by Lana Zak about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (obnoxious and gratuitous) comments after Trump’s acquittal, specifically whether he was surprised at McConnell’s venom. “I’m not surprised to hear a politician say anything at all. No,” the lawyer replied. Zak then attempted to discredit van der Veen and his defense—he’s Trump’s lawyer, so her job is to discredit him—asking a “when did you stop beating your wife” question,

“Throughout the trial you denied that President Trump had a role in inciting the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. You argued first of all that there was no insurrection, but during your closing arguments you seemingly admitted that there was, in fact, an insurrection, using that word, saying that that was not up for debate. What role did the former President play —“

The lawyer cut her off and metaphorically slapped her in the face with a mackerel, saying,

Continue reading →

One Acquittal, Three Quotes, Four Reactions

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Trump acquitted

Former President Trump was acquitted in the second impeachment trial stemming from the Democrats’ relentless effort to remove him from office after his shocking election in 2016. In both efforts, the two-thirds super-majority necessary to convict was always impossible, because unlike previous impeachment efforts, these involved no crimes, and were not bi-partisan . They were exercises in pure partisan warfare, despite the contrary intent of the Founders and the flood of exaggerated rhetoric from Trump’s enemies who had presumed he needed to be impeached from the moment he was elected.

The sudden vote yesterday came as a surprise, as the Senate had just voted to allow witnesses in the “trial,” and that would have extended the fiasco considerably. I assume, without knowing, that the Democratic leadership finally figured out that its plot wasn’t working, and that it was time for the party to cut its losses. They might still be considerable. I hope they are considerable. This has wounded the nation badly, and the party that has blathered on about accountability needs some, and hard.

Republican Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania voted guilty along with every Democrat. Interestingly, only two of the seven have a law degree, which may partially explain why they think a guilty verdict is defensible (it’s not.) The two lawyers, Romney and Murkowski, are barely Republicans and have been consistently anti-Trump. The fact that not a single Democrat had the integrity to buck the party’s mandate and oppose such a damaging precedent and such a dubious impeachment tells us all we need to know about the state of the current Democratic Party.

Now, three quotes following the vote:

Quote #1: From law professor and blogger Glenn Reynolds:

Continue reading →

Regarding The Trump Defense “Fight” Montage

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

As readers here know, I have not watched a second of the “impeachment” (it is no longer an impeachment) “trial” (it does not comport with the Constitution’s prescription for a Senate trial of a President because I have an unruly sock drawer. There was never a chance that President Trump would be convicted of the manufactured charges rammed through the House when he was in office, and the effort to convict a private citizen or construct a Bill of Attainder to prevent a private citizen from running for office are unconstitutional. If either or both were successful, which is impossible, they would be over-turned by a conservative Supreme Court whose Chief Justice has already signaled his contempt for the partisan exercise by refusing to participate in it. (I hear Roberts’ sock drawer is immaculate).

I’ve read many articles over the last week speculating on what the Democrats are trying to accomplish. Here’s one from yesterday. It’s been pretty clear to me, though incredibly and damningly not the Trump Deranged, that what they are accomplishing is embarrassing and disgracing themselves, their party and the nation; weakening the Constitution and ensuring similar behavior from Republicans in retaliation; exacerbating dangerous division and cynicism among the public, and generally continuing their despicable series of plots over the last four years to reverse the results of the 20i6 election no matter what harm it does to our institutions.

Bias, as the Ethics Alarms motto goes, makes you stupid, and the impeachment charade/fiasco/debacle/ farce/shit-show—you pick your favorite—and hate, as Richard Nixon realized too late, will destroy you. The “trial” is an abject lesson in both truths.

I didn’t watch the any of the trial, but I could not resist watching the video above, not that any of it was a surprise or should have been to any Americans who were paying attention, as in, for example, actually reading the text of Trump’s speech to the protesters. There was no “incitement” in his words, and no one could have been convicted on such evidence, as many objective authorities have pointed out, and many biased professionals have denied, to their eternal shame. Inciting a riot is a crime of intent, and outside of some amateur mind-reading, no intent has been proven or could be. The “case” against Trump—there is no case—has been based on the the “resistance”;s news media allies ludicrously re-casting a riot, a minor one compared to those we have seen over the last decade, almost entirely from the Democratic base with official approval, as an “insurrection,” which it was not. This has been repeated daily since January 6, as if repetition makes it so. It wasn’t even an attempted insurrection, because even the dimmest bulb among the small minority of angry Trump supporters who actually stormed the Capitol could have thought for a millisecond that a couple hundred fools, dummies and clowns had a prayer of overcoming the government or even slowing it down.

Continue reading →