Month: June 2023

Paul Kane of the Washington Post takes a look at some of the fault lines in the Senate Republican Caucus with respect to making endorsements for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. Of particular interest to him is the fact that only John Thune and Mike Rounds, both of South Dakota, have so far endorsed the candidacy of their colleague, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. As Kane notes, neither of the South Dakotans are up for reelection in 2024, so they have no immediate concern about losing a primary to a Trump-friendly challenger. In Thune’s case, he rescinded his endorsement of Trump way back in 2016 after the Access Hollywood tape came out of Trump boasting about grabbing women by the pussy. But he and Rounds are hardly alone in opposing a second term for the disgraced ex-president. In fact, only ten Senate Republicans have endorsed the orange shitgibbon and admiration for Scott in the caucus runs deep and wide.

Reticence to endorse Scott is explained in a variety of ways. For one thing, Scott hasn’t really made an aggressive ask. Perhaps this is because Senate Republicans from leader Mitch McConnell on down are not popular with the base, especially when compared to Trump. The sense that their endorsement won’t actually do much of anything to help Scott, and in the case of some senators like Mitt Romney may actually be a “kiss of death,” is another factor. The primary reason, however, is that senators don’t want to invite the direct wrath of Trump. They may believe Tim Scott is a good and honorable man who would be a strong general election candidate and a competent president, but they’re not willing to openly take his side.

Sen. Rounds thinks this might be a mistake and that Scott could actually benefit from a show of support.

Rounds still believes that endorsements can matter, especially for such a little-known figure like Scott. If enough senators get behind him and introduce him to their state’s voters, it might change things.

“The more of us who say we know him, we know him personally, and we think he would be a great president, maybe that starts to turn it to where more people actually take the time to look at him,” Rounds said.

Kane also points to an interesting contrast. The two North Dakota senators have endorsed the governor of their state, Doug Burgum, who just formally announced his candidacy last Wednesday. Yet Lindsey Graham chose not to endorse Scott, his South Carolina partner in the Senate, and went with Trump again: “I just jumped in the deep end of the pool with Trump because I think he deserves another shot,” Graham said.

We know this is a lie. There is simply no way that Graham sincerely believes that Trump deserves another shot. And since it’s customary to endorse candidates from your home state, you’d expect Graham to opt for either Scott or former Gov. Nikki Haley. This is especially true because Graham gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the Senate after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

“Trump and I, we had a hell of a journey,” Graham said on the Senate floor Wednesday night after lawmakers reconvened following the violent uprising at the Capitol from Trump supporters earlier in the day. “I hate it being this way. Oh my god I hate it … but today all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. I tried to be helpful.”

Yet a few weeks later he was down at Mar-a-Lago golfing with Trump like nothing had happened. He has at times explained his strong support of Trump as an effort to steer his foreign policy, but that explanation doesn’t work anymore. Scott, like Graham, is a strong critic of Vladimir Putin and supporter of Ukraine. Trump is more likely to land in prison than ever again have the chance to set our nation’s foreign policies. It just seems like Graham is in some kind of hostage situation, like he’s being blackmailed into backing Trump. Whatever the explanation, it goes beyond the basic fear of Trump that is widespread among Republican senators.

Personally, I think Scott would be one of the stronger possible Republican candidates in a matchup against Biden, but that’s more about the overall weakness of the field than a statement of Scott’s natural skills and appeal. The things that make him appealing are also things that Republican voters don’t seem to want. He’s black. He’s kind and respectful, and has good relationships with Democrats. He has a firm grip of policy and knows how to legislate. He has a lot of good attributes, but he’s not near the top of any owning-the-libs list.

If he could truly reshape the Republican Party in his image, it would be a positive development for the country, but I don’t think it will work out that way. I think he will pander too much to the worst instincts of the party in an effort to win, and he neither win nor retain his integrity.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the Cape May, New Jersey scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have begun to address that interesting architecture. Note the turrets, lower roof and siding. The sky has recieved a preliminary layer of paint.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

Mike Pence seems to be cautiously ramping up his criticism of Donald Trump. Asked if he would promise to pardon Trump if he is miraculously elected president in 2024, Pence refused. I find this modestly encouraging simply from the standpoint of wanting to see even small signs of decency from the political right. But why does it feel like pulling teeth to get a Republican to admit that the disgraced ex-president has committed crimes and deserves to do significant prison time?

One reason is spelled out by Jason Willick in a piece for the Washington Post. Willick’s overall point is that Trump has become so dependent on a pardon that he can’t afford to sabotage the eventual Republican nominee, assuming it’s not him. This means he can’t run a spoiler third-party campaign, and he pretty much has to do his best to rally his supporters to the cause of the Republican Party in 2024. This is supposed to be a silver lining for a GOP that is otherwise pretty despondent about Trump’s legal travails and their potential to drag down the ticket.

The party is already having difficulty recruiting congressional candidates because people are reluctant to run for office on a ticket with Trump. But it’s really more complicated than just not wanting to be tarred by association or anticipating that it will be a bad election season for the Republicans. When Trump won the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016, he began a rapid transformation of the party from a corporate party to a small donor-driven populist one. Trump’s base consists of many supporters, including former Democrats or simply disengaged voters, who are loyal to him personally rather than to the GOP and its traditional principles. This would be a positive for the party if it was simply addition, but he lost many independent and moderate Republicans in the bargain. Not only did Trump lose the popular vote in 2016 but the Republicans did poorly in the next two federal election cycles.

The result is that the party is weaker today than it was before Trump, but it’s also dependent on his supporters to even maintain the status quo. Without them, they’d have to win back the independents and moderates they’ve lost, and they can’t do that unless a new standard bearer emerges who breaks from Trumpism. Yet, this is almost impossible because the people remaining in the party to vote in primaries are strongly in favor of Trumpism. They certainly don’t want to see their champion imprisoned, and they expect any Republican president to immediately free him if he is behind bars.

This is why Pence deserves some credit for his reluctance to make that promise, but it’s also why he has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the nomination. As for the other candidates, anyone who wants a chance to win the nomination has to contend with the same conundrum. How can you win the support of Trumpists if you’re not willing to support Trump in his legal fights? And even if you manage to pull off that feat, how can you win a general election if Trump’s supporters are somewhere between unenthusiastic and outright hostile?

It’s a bit of a death spiral. Trump is killing the party but they’re dead meat without him.

As Willick points out, Trump is dying too, and the GOP is his only lifeline. Previously, there was a real concern that the party couldn’t afford to turn Trump into an enemy, but now that he needs a pardon he doesn’t have the luxury of turning his back. His first goal is to win the nomination and the presidency, but his fallback is to get all his competitors for the nomination to promise to pardon him.

You can see how he and the party are tied at the hip, but he’s in the worse position of the two. His personal freedom is on the line and his freedom of maneuver is all but eliminated. As his legal woes mount, it might become more viable for the other candidates to suggest that perhaps he doesn’t deserve a pardon. After all, that’s not a promise the eventual Republican nominee wants to take into the general election.

 

I’m willing to give Charles Lane credit for defending the decision to change the name of Ft. Bragg to Ft. Liberty but I think he’s wrong to argue that it’s not an example of political correctness. In fact, I can’t think of a more fitting term. This wouldn’t be hard to see if we hadn’t all but ceded the argument that there’s something wrong with political correctness.

Let’s begin with the problem. Here’s how Lane describes it:

For all that, it would be difficult to imagine a less worthy honoree than Fort Liberty’s now former namesake, North Carolina enslaver Braxton Bragg, a West Point graduate who did serve the United States in the Mexican War but later betrayed his country and commanded troops — not very well, by most accounts — for the Confederacy…

…This installation got its original name — Camp Bragg — in the summer of 1918, during the hasty mobilization for World War I, when authorities in Washington thought little of letting Southern White communities attach the names of local Confederate heroes to newly constructed facilities.

The obvious issue is that Braxton Bragg “betrayed his country.” A secondary consideration is that he is broadly believed to have been a shitty general. I don’t think we should honor traitors, obviously, but nor should we honor shitty generals.

But Ft. Bragg is not the only base or piece of military equipment to undergo a name change. The National Defense Authorization Act for 2021 “established a process for removing the Confederate taint from the Civil War winner’s military properties…”

In total, eight military bases qualified. One in Bowling Green, Virginia, was named for Confederate A.P. Hill, who was not a shitty general. It will now be called Ft. Walker in honor of abolitionist Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, “the first woman surgeon in the Civil War, and the only woman awarded the Medal of Honor.”

Maybe some people in Virginia don’t like having a base in their state named after an abolitionist. That’s just too bad, because Virginia was on the losing side of the Civil War. It’s politically incorrect to have military bases there named after losers who fought for the cause of slavery. The same is true in North Carolina, which is why Ft. Bragg will now be known as Ft. Liberty.

It was stupid to allow the South to honor their Confederate heroes on federal property but that mistake has been rectified. And it’s upsetting Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence.

[Gold Star mother, Patti C. Elliott] suggested labeling the base, home to the elite 82nd Airborne Division, after the cause for which her 21-year-old son, Spec. Daniel “Lucas” Elliott, gave his life in Iraq on July 15, 2011: “Liberty.”

Her idea persuaded the special commission that Congress had established to rename the bases, and earlier this month, Fort Bragg officially became Fort Liberty. The base commander, Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, recounted Patti Elliott’s role at a brief ceremony to mark the change.

And yet this outcome is unsatisfactory to Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, who, in separate speeches to the North Carolina Republican convention on June 9, branded the name change “political correctness” and promised to undo it if elected.

My response is that they’re damn right that it’s politically incorrect to name shit after shitbag traitors. The correct thing to do is to name stuff after people whose example we want to honor and emulate. This all gets decided politically and it’s either done poorly or it’s done well.

There’s no reason to apologize for being correct, nor for having the political power to do things well, so we just have no make sure DeSantis and Pence don’t get a sniff of power.

I can’t decide if it’s generous or cruel to compare former New Jersey governor Chris Christie to Henning von Tresckow, but I see them as having at least a few things in common. Christie, as the New York Times reports, has recently launched a bid for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination and “has positioned himself as the person most willing to attack both Mr. [Donald] Trump, his former friend turned adversary.”  His campaign is being widely described in the press as a kamikaze mission because it is considered self-sacrificing and suicidal for a GOP politician to forcefully attack the twice-impeached, twice-indicted ex-president.

Henning von Tresckow (1901-1944) was the chief of staff of Nazi Germany’s 2nd Army on the Eastern Front and he blew his own head off with a grenade when he realized that his plot to kill Adolf Hitler had failed. His suicide came one day after a bomb exploded in a conference room at the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair), Hitler’s first Eastern Front military headquarters in World War II. Hitler has injured and his eardrums were perforated, but he survived. Tresckow’s gruesome method of suicide was an effort to disguise his guilt and protect his co-conspirators by making it look like he’d been killed by partisans.

Right before he took that decision he made the following statement to his friend and adjutant, Fabian von Schlabrendorff.

“The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in few hours’ time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if only ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope for our sake God will not destroy Germany. No one among us can complain about dying, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus. A man’s moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give his life in defense of his convictions.”

Here I need to pause to explain that the shirt of Nessus is a reference to the death of Heracles, the famous Ancient Greek hero. Heracles killed a centaur named Nessus with a poison arrow, but before Nessus died he convinced Heracles’ wife that his blood could be used as a potion to assure her husband’s faithfulness. She put some of the centaur’s blood on a shirt or tunic that she then gifted to Heracles. When he put it on, the poisoned blood began to cook him alive. To escape the pain, he threw himself on a funeral pyre.

The analogy here is that those who served in the German armed forces under Hitler had essentially poisoned themselves and could not escape terrible consequences. Of course, this idea is coupled here with the story of God’s destruction of Sodom as described in the Book of Genesis. As Tresckow noted, God offered to spare Sodom if Lot could find 10 honorable men living there, but this proved impossible. In Tresckow’s mind, it was essential that the same fate not meet Germany, and his plot to kill Hitler was worth trying even if success was unlikely so that God and posterity would know that honorable Germans did exist and did try to stop the atrocities.

As you might imagine, a German general couldn’t serve on the Eastern Front without having something to do with those atrocities. In Tresckow’s case, he signed the infamous Heuaktion order which authorized the abduction 40,000 to 50,000 Polish and Ukrainian children aged 10 to 14 for transport to Germany where they were employed as slaves. Perhaps he felt it was necessary to issue such orders to assure he remained in a position to work on Hilter’s assassination which he already been plotting for some time, but he knew he was beyond full redemption.
 

The office of the vice-presidency may not be worth a bucket of warm piss, as James Garner famously said, but at least it’s interesting. Garner also noted that the office is “a no man’s land somewhere between the legislative and executive branch.” This is a result of the vice-president’s constitutional role as president of the Senate, and we’ve recently seen these dual roles adjudicated in the courts. This came about as a result of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s (ultimately successful) efforts to compel Mike Pence to testify about the events surrounding the January 6, 2021 coup attempt. Pence argued that he could not be compelled to testify by Biden’s executive branch about duties he carried out in his legislative role as the president of the Senate. The case was heard by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, and Boasberg kind of split the baby. He agreed with Pence that he had some protection from the legislative Speech and Debate clause, but only in his narrow role of overseeing the actual counting of the Electoral College votes. More importantly, he found that Pence’s executive privilege claims failed because he had been asked to commit a crime.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg’s 19-page opinion — which the judge partially unsealed Friday at the urging of media organizations — cleared the way for special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors to question the former vice president about his conversations with a wide array of figures who leaned on him to reject Biden’s electors, possibly including Donald Trump.

“The bottom line is that conversations exhorting Pence to reject electors on January 6th are not protected,” Boasberg wrote in the ruling, dated March 27, adding, “There is no dispute in this case that Pence lacked the authority to reject certified electoral votes.”

Obviously there were some people willing to argue that Pence did have the authority to reject Biden’s victory, but once the issue landed in court there was no one willing to make that argument. As a matter of law, every time Donald Trump or anyone else asked Pence to launch a coup, they were engaging in a criminal conspiracy. It might be difficult to identify which statute was violated, but there is “no dispute” that it was an unlawful plan, and if it weren’t about the commission of a crime, then the judge could not have ruled as he did.

In any case, it’s worth noting that the question of whether Pence had the authority to overturn the election has been formally decided.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting a new painting. It is a Cape May, New Jerser scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below. The photo was taken from out hotel room at the Inn of Cape May. The Inn was built during the late Victorian period.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

I started my sketch using my usual grind, duplicating the grid I made over a copy of the photo itself. Over this I added some preliminary paint.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

Longtime readers know this place has a lily pad theme because its original mascot was a frog in handcuffs, a nod to Ambassador Joe Wilson’s fervent desire to see Karl Rove “frog-marched out of the White House” for vindictively and recklessly exposing his wife as an undercover CIA officer. It was highly gratifying that the now departed Wilson became an admirer of my work and requested a meeting in person. In any case, from the very outset of my writing career, I’ve been focused on seeing political criminals get what’s coming to them, and it’s usually a long, frustrating process that often ends in disappointment.

Nothing has taken longer and required more patience than federal indictments against Donald J. Trump. For a long time, I doubted they would ever come. That changed on January 6, 2021. Since the failed coup attempt, I’ve actually been bullish on Trump getting charged and convicted of federal crimes, and somewhat optimistic that he will die in prison, which is certainly what he deserves for what he’s done to America, its culture and institutions. I’d really love to see him frog-marched into custody, but I suspect respect for the office of the presidency will preclude that kind of rough treatment. That’s possibly the right decision.

In any case, now that he’s facing seven separate charges and an unknown number of counts in the classified documents case, the Feds should confiscate his passport and keep a close eye on his private jet because it’s a risk he’ll fly it Moscow where he can rest assured that he won’t live out the rest of his life behind bars. He really has no defense, and little realistic chance of an acquittal, mainly because he has already testified against himself. There’s a tape recording of him clearly showing “highly confidential” military plans to attack Iran to a couple of ghostwriters for his former chief of staff Mark Meadow’s book, The Chief’s Chief.

“Well, with [Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Mark] Milley — uh, let me see that, I’ll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t that amazing? I have a big pile of papers; this thing just came up,” Trump said, according to the person familiar with the transcript. “Look. This was him. They presented me this — this is off the record, but — they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. … This wasn’t done by me, this was him. All sorts of stuff — pages long, look. Wait a minute, let’s see here. I just found, isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. … This was done by the military and given to me.”

I believe that recording will one day rank with the most famous recorded excerpt from Watergate:

Mr. Nixon repeatedly discussed different methods by which as much as $1 million could be paid to the burglars without the payments being traced to the White House. The purpose of such payments, in the President’s own words, would be “to keep the cap on the bottle,” to “buy time,” to “tough it through.”

“How much money do you need?” the President asked [White House counsel John] Dean early in the March 21 conversation, according to the transcript.

“I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next two years,” Dean replied.

“We could get that,” the President continued. “On the money, if you need the money you could get that. You could get a million dollars. You could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten. It is not easy, but it could be done. But the question is who the hell would handle it? Any ideas on that?”

When that 1973 recording became public, Nixon’s presidency was finished and he resigned in August 1974. If he hadn’t been preemptively pardoned by his successor, President Gerald Ford, his “million dollars in cash” obstruction of justice would have almost certainly have led to a conviction in court. The best Nixon could have hoped for is that a supportive juror would ignore the evidence, refuse to convict and cause a mistrial. And that’s the same situation Trump finds himself in now.

His chances of finding a MAGA “la, la, la, I can’t hear you” juror are enhanced a bit by the fact that the trial will be held in the Southern District of Florida rather than in Washington, DC, but Trump will still be operating on a wing and a prayer because his guilt is not in the remotest doubt. I don’t even think a sympathetic judge can help him much on the merits.

And, of course, this is the minor federal case against the twice-impeached ex-president. He still has to answer for attempting a coup, and that case, when it comes, will be heard in the District of Columbia.

But I am already an expert on patience, having waited 18 years since the launch of this blog to see this kind of justice. It’s gratifying to say the least.

Greetings everyone!

It’s still midweek somewhere. I thought I would drop a video from right around 1980 (give or take) by Flying Lizards, who have a very unusual take on an old R&B tune from the late 1950s:

From what I recall, this was something of a minor hit for the band. They also have a cover of James Brown’s “Sex Machine” that is just insane (and seems like something Art of Noise would have tried):

Enjoy!

Chris Licht’s tenure as the CEO and Chairman of CNN is reportedly over. He was a monumental failure so it’s hard to pick out just one cause of his termination, but the precipitating one was his widely criticized decision to host a Donald Trump town hall meeting in New Hampshire on May 10th. The final blow came when Tim Alberta of The Atlantic published his savage but accurate profile of Licht. Alberta spent seven months on the piece and did several in-person interviews, also enjoying access to a broad range of CNN employees. When it came out the headline was “Inside the Meltdown at CNN,” and it was clear that Licht had made a mistake in agreeing to cooperate. His last significant act as CEO, which came on Monday during the network’s daily editorial meeting, was apologizing to the staff for having anything to do with Alberta.

“I read that article. I found myself thinking, ‘CNN is not about me,’” he told employees. “I should not be in the news unless it’s taking arrows for you.”

“I fully recognize that this news cycle and my role in it have overshadowed the incredible week of reporting we just had and distracted from the work of every single journalist in this organization,” he added. “And for that, I’m sorry.”

His mea culpa didn’t save his job which was in real jeopardy already both because of infinitesimal ratings and the loss of faith from the workforce, particularly after the Trump town hall. He was shit-canned on Wednesday by Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav.

At Semafor, Ben Smith has an interesting perspective on what Licht’s failure represents. He mentions the factors I noted above, but brushes them aside in favor of a take that the era cable news is over and Licht was doomed from the start: “the most obvious explanation is the one that people in media have been saying so long we’ve stopped believing it: Cable news is in a broad, secular decline. Even the best managers and executives won’t be able to reverse that.”

As evidence, Smith notes that both Fox News and MSNBC are also suffering from bad ratings, and it’s probably true that news production and consumption has become so fragmented that the cable news industry will never return to its previous heights. The problem with this analysis is that it doesn’t address the particular factors that led to Licht’s demise. These are spelled out in great detail in Alberta’s piece. His management style fell flat almost the moment he walked in the door determined to denigrate everything his popular predecessor Jeff Zucker had done. He persistently criticized the staff and on-air talent’s work during Zucker’s tenure without adequately explaining what kind of changes would please him. His hiring and firing pattern didn’t logically line up with his mission statement, including most famously his decision to retain the controversial Don Lemon and bank everything on a morning show featuring him.

Lemon stands out because his vociferous criticisms of Donald Trump and his political movement were precisely the things Licht and his boss Zaslav were determined to eliminate. Their research indicated that CNN’s loss of audience was largely attributable to losing Trump-sympathetic viewers. They considered CNN’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic to be one of the chief causes of this, as the network was relentlessly dismissive of vaccine skeptics and anyone who protested against lockdowns and school closings.

Licht was hired to bring these people back into the fold, and the idea was that they’d respond over time to a new kind of coverage that was less editorial in nature and more straight news. In other words, they wanted to reestablish trust, and that had to begin by respecting the opinions of MAGA world. This idea reached its apogee when Licht decided to host a town hall with Trump and fill it with an exclusively Republican audience. The result was a completely predictable disaster.

So, Licht had some personal weaknesses and made some bad decisions that contributed to his failure. A different CEO with the same mission might have engendered more good will, had a bit more success and lasted longer in the job. But we all know that ratings are the name of the game, and irrespective of whether the industry as a whole is doomed, Licht oversaw a catastrophe in this area. In March, when Nielsen found a 61 percent decline in CNN’s ratings, Zaslav too responsibility and aggressively defended Licht’s performance.

Despite the poor ratings, Licht has the support of his boss, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who gave a pep talk to network managers urging them to steer clear of politically oriented commentary and partisanship.

“Ratings be damned,” he said. “Let’s focus on who we are. This is our mission. This is our legacy. And this is our journey together.”

…CNN saw strong ratings under the leadership of Licht’s predecessor, Jeff Zucker, and Zaslav said he recognized that a more partisan approach could bring more viewers and money, but that “it’s not what I came here to do,” according to a transcript of Zaslav’s speech.

You can see an obvious logical tension in Zaslav’s responses here, as everyone knows you cannot long ignore ratings. The theory was that they could improve ratings by avoiding “politically oriented commentary and partisanship,” and as long as that was not proving out everyone’s job was at risk.

The obvious question to ask by March was whether or not the premise was flawed. Maybe they just needed more time. Maybe the problem was in the execution. But you couldn’t just say “ratings be damned, we have a mission and we’re on a journey together.” That’s an ideological project completely unsuitable for a for-profit enterprise with investors.

By focusing on an industry-wide decline, Smith gives Zaslav and Licht a pass on this. It’s one thing to say that cable news ratings are trending down and no amount of good leadership can do anything to reverse it. But we can still look at how networks are preforming relative to each other. CNN has done the worst in the post-Trump era.

Now, there’s an argument that CNN’s attempted transformation is really driven by Zaslav’s right-wing mentor John Malone who is a major investor and sits on the board. Under this theory, the idea is to stamp out CNN’s supposed liberal bias as a way of helping the Republican Party, and ratings be damned. I can’t completely discount this possibility, but I know that major investors generally don’t like to see their money disappear. Whether it’s his first priority or not, I assume Malone wants CNN to get good ratings. And if he truly doesn’t care, the rest of the investors surely do.

For my money, CNN’s ratings are down because the natural audience for politically-themed television is partisan. How many people avidly watch sports without rooting for one team over the other? It’s a small percentage.

Finally, imagine if after losing the Super Bowl in January the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles had stolen the Vince Lombardi Trophy from the Kansas City Chiefs and the police and natural guard had to be called out to get it back by fighting off a mob of Eagles fans who had been convinced the game was rigged. That mob is who Zaslav and Licht sought to respect and win back. They called this a “centrist, just-the-facts bent.”

The plan might have had some minuscule chance of success if Trump had gone away, but far from disappearing he’s the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2024. That means CNN doesn’t have the time and space to gradually drift back to the center as the fever of Trumpism dissipates. Instead, the found themselves hosting a partisan town hall for him, effectively taking the side of the trophy-stealers.

So, what does Licht’s failure represent?

I think it shows that it’s impossible to try to shoot down the middle when one side is fascist without siding with the fascists. I think it shows the limited appeal of “both sides” journalism, particularly in the Age of Trump. I think Zaslav’s whole idea is wrong and doomed. So, I don’t agree with Smith that the story here is about cable news in general. I think this is one of the biggest fuckups in media history, and it’s particular to the people running Warner Bros. Discovery and CNN.