here have been so many scandals recently at America’s least favorite cable news network CNN that it’s hard to remember them all — they’ve multiplied like the ex-husbands of the Kardashian clan. Who can keep up with all the jokes now? Just take the most recent one: the forced resignation of CNN’s president Jeff Zucker. The first scandal is that not one, but two women were interested in being romantically involved with Jeff Zucker — who could be described, generously, as the least attractive man in the Eastern Seaboard. (I’ve been unable to confirm whether both women were legally blind when they met Zucker.)
The second scandal is that the woman who was romantically linked with Jeff Zucker, Allison Gollust, was not only romantically involved with Zucker for a decade but that the pair were personally involved in PR crisis management for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. This included “calling him to do news segments with his brother Chris Cuomo and even coaching him on what to say during his infamous COVID briefings” according to the New York Post.
Why was the top executive of a cable news network coaching an elected official? Perhaps because his girlfriend had previously been the communications director for Governor Cuomo? Perhaps because Governor Cuomo’s brother hosted a nightly news program for CNN? Perhaps because CNN has always operated as the cable news wing of the Democrat Party under Zucker’s direction? In terms of ethical violations at CNN, we are spoiled for choice.
Let’s not forget the scale of the scandal that Zucker and Gollust were aiding and abetting Andrew Cuomo to escape: he had ordered that COVID patients should be placed into New York nursing homes. (There’s absolutely no reason to do that unless you want to spread the disease to the elderly.) Then Cuomo and his team intentionally withheld nursing home death data during the Trump Administration. In other words, Zucker and Gollust helped Governor Cuomo’s cover-up of COVID-19 nursing home deaths while ostensibly employed by CNN to inform the public of such cover-ups. It’s hard to imagine a more serious ethical breach at a media outlet.
What was the reaction, you ask, of CNN’s staff to Jeff Zucker’s resignation and the serious ethical breaches behind it? They all got together for a staff meeting and defended Zucker of course. (We know this because most of them leaked details to other media outlets like the New York Times.) This might be surprising to anyone who thought people like Brian Stelter and Jake Tapper and Don Lemon were actually journalists and not just a motley crew of misfits that were hired by Zucker over the years. Did anyone really trust these people to give them information anymore? Since CNN has lost 90% of its audience, the answer to that question is a resounding no.
Mark Goldblatt quotes himself from an NR article from 2002:
Elitism, to be sure, is as old as human society. But never in recorded history has a less cerebrally, morally, or spiritually elite Elite looked down their noses at the majority of their countrymen. The minimum requirement for membership in the intelligentsia used to be, well, intelligence. This is no longer the case. Rather, what is now required is the mere sense of your own superiority, the smirky confidence that flows from an undergraduate grasp of history, philosophy, and literature, and which can only be sustained by a maniacal deafness to counterarguments.”
Long-time Federal and State Prosecutor George Parry has some comments on the pre-dawn FBI paramilitary operation mounted last Friday to arrest 66-year-old, wealthy, advisor-to-presidents Roger Stone.
Long ago, as a Special Attorney with the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, I participated in planning and — in a handful of instances — executing arrests of members of La Cosa Nostra and their associates. From personal observation, I early on concluded that, in apprehending mobsters, one of the primary threats to agent safety was the risk of fratricide, i.e., one amped-up, anxious and heavily armed agent accidentally shooting some other amped-up, anxious and heavily armed agent. The FBI, ATF, and other federal agents with whom I was privileged to work shared that concern. For that reason, they planned operations meticulously and kept the number of arresting agents to the absolute minimum in order to reduce the risk of injury or error.
To that end, I opted whenever possible to avoid arrests altogether by having defense counsel surrender their clients at the marshal’s lock up during regular business hours. From the media’s standpoint, the visuals must have been underwhelming. But then, we didn’t much care about meeting the needs of the news media. Having targets surrender was simple, held down down costs, and reduced the risk of harm to one and all.
This is not to say that we never made arrests. Sometimes, we had no choice.
I recall one early morning arrest of a violence-prone mobster. The assigned agents were aware that the target was at a bar with his girlfriend. Since we wanted to take him at his home so that the premises could be searched incident to arrest, the agents parked outside his residence and waited for him to show up.
Around 6:00 A.M., the target arrived and went inside with his girlfriend. Two FBI agents (the total number needed to take down this dangerous felon and conduct the search) knocked on the door. A split second later, the target stepped outside, slammed the door behind him, and announced, “Okay, let’s go.â€
By this tactic, he had cleverly defeated our plan to search his residence.
Despite the target’s extensive criminal record, one of the agents said to him, “Vinnie [not his real name], if you promise to behave, I won’t put you in cuffs.†The violent felon smiled and said, “Deal.†Thus, he was transported without handcuffs or incident to the federal building where he was processed.
That’s how the old Hoover era FBI rolled.
But today, with the example of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI’s recent daring dawn raid and arrest of serial false declarant Roger Stone, it is apparent that my ancient generation of federal law enforcement had it all wrong. Team Mueller’s use of 29 agents plus CNN video support elements were confronted with a challenging tactical problem. Despite the fact that Stone has no prior criminal record, he is nevertheless 66 years old. This is an age when people are sometimes cranky and disagreeable. Obviously, those 29 agents were necessary to establish tactical dominance and to quickly subdue this lawless false declarant. Hopefully, the overwhelming show of force prevented Stone from making any further false declarations during the course of his arrest.
And, equally important, the visuals of the assault broadcast by the CNN tactical elements undoubtedly will serve as a deterrent to others who may harbor thoughts of uttering untruths sworn or otherwise.
All of which leads me to shake my wooly gray head and wonder aloud if any of these two-fisted crime fighters who took down the cunning and dangerous Roger Stone are in any way embarrassed by their participation in this vaudeville act.
I mean, come on! 29 agents? Seriously? Once upon a time, you could have invaded a small country with that much firepower much less arrest a white haired gadfly who allegedly lied to the authorities. Is the wimp quotient really that high in today’s FBI?
Or was there some other reason for this televised silliness? Could it be that Mueller and his team of Hillary Clinton acolytes are trying to fool us with their comedy act? Is this ridiculous armed raid supposed to distract us from the humiliating fact that the Team Mueller elephant has once again given birth to a mouse? Is this an act of misdirection calculated to obscure the fact that Mueller’s Hillary Clinton fan club seems incapable of bringing nothing but process crime indictments devoid of any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion?
There was obviously no justification whatsoever for that pre-dawn raid, which was clearly a flagrant abuse of power and authority intended to cow and humiliate the arrested ally of a political adversary.
Donald Trump is President of the United States, and he should tolerate neither this kind of official misconduct nor a Special Counsel and a Federal Police Agency waging war against himself and his Administration under color of the Law.
Trump should pardon Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Mannafort, and everybody else on Mueller’s list of indictments, fire Mueller, announce that he is firing everyone currently employed by the FBI and CIA, abolishing those two current agencies, and creating a new replacement of the latter Intelligence Service. There never should have been a Federal United States Secret Police in the first place. Trump should then announce a new investigation aimed at prosecuting people misusing offices and laws of the United States to attack an elected president for treason.
CNN is shocked, shocked at what Roy Moore said, back in 2009:
Roy Moore in 2009: ‘Only thing I know that the Islamic faith has done in this country is 9/11’
Republican nominee for US Senate in Alabama Roy Moore said in a 2009 speech that the only thing that Muslims had done in the United States was the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Moore, a hard-right conservative who beat out establishment candidate Luther Strange in the Republican primary, is now facing Democrat Doug Jones in a special election set for December 12.
The former Alabama chief justice has in the past made a series of controversial remarks about Islam, including earlier this year calling it a “false religion.”
A new, exclusive CNN investigative report revealed Thursday that millions of American voters may have potentially colluded with the Trump campaign to elect Donald Trump as President of the United States.
While Russia has been accused of interfering in the election, the breaking report indicates that the collusion may have extended to a significant portion of the U.S. population—“as many as 60 million citizens, and possibly even more.â€
“The conspiracy goes much deeper than anyone expected,†Jake Tapper said on his news segment The Politics Lead.
