No, that’s not a typo in the subject line.  Today’s post is not about “messenger RNA,” the therapeutic breakthrough at the center of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID vaccines.  In this case, “mRNC” refers to “mouthpieces of the Republic National Committee,” the media sources who, in a swap that would make Faust blush, have abandoned their intellectual integrity in pursuit of being the loudest voice in the right-wing echo chamber.

Addressing this topic was precipitated when a respected friend sent me an article by Neil Patel, co-founder of The Daily Caller, titled, “What the Protests in Cuba Tell Us About the Left’s Agenda for America.”  Let me start by quoting Patel’s own description of his media outlet. It is “an online news outlet, and The Daily Caller News Foundation, a nonprofit that trains journalists, produces fact checks, and does investigative reporting.”  A worthy mission that seems more honored in the breach than the practice.  Here are today’s headlines on The Daily Caller’s home page.

• Rand Paul To Send Letter To DOJ Asking For Criminal Referral Into Dr. Fauci
• Deion Sanders Has Pathetic Reaction After Reporter Addresses Him By His First Name
• U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Gets Humiliated At The Olympics
• Dolly Parton Goes Viral With One Simple Video
• Wednesday Morning Dispatch: Eric Swalwell Embarrasses Himself Yet Again

Based on these news “priorities,” the journalists Patel claims his non-profit trains seem more likely to be the next generation of anchors and  correspondents at TMZ or Entertainment Tonight or InfoWars contributors.  Take the story about the U.S. women’s soccer team by Daily Caller Foundation trained David Hookstead, who writes:

I never cheer against America, but it’s damn hard to cheer for our women’s national soccer team. They’ve spent years protesting and complaining about money, and then they get obliterated to open the Olympics.

If you can’t even show up and win, then why are we putting up with any of the other nonsense?

Yes, the women lost their first Olympic match ending a 44 game winning streak.  Will they still be “humiliated” if they make it out of group play and win the gold medal in what everyone admits will be a less than normal Olympic environment?  Additionally, Patel did not mention the history of income disparity between the men’s and women’s squads or the fact the men’s national team failed to qualify for the Olympics.  So much for fact-checking and thorough investigative reporting.

Which brings me back to Patel’s take on Cuba.  Make no mistake about the dire situation in Cuba, a nation in crisis searching for an identity whose future has been influenced for 70 years by strong personalities ranging from U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista, a military dictator who served as head of the government from 1952-59 to Russian-backed Fidel Castro who led the nation from 1959 to 2008.  Two extremes neither of which have foreshadowed a better life for the Cuban people.

FACT:  The current situation in Cuba represents a difficult foreign policy choice for President Biden not helped by an inconsistent back and forth by his three predecessors.  In 2002, George W. Bush announced “the initiative for a New Cuba.”  In exchange for political and economic reforms, Bush offered to ease restrictions on humanitarian assistance and resume mail service between Cuba and the U.S.  In 2014, following 18 months of secret talks, Barack Obama announced the reestablishment of diplomatic relations.  In response to bipartisan criticism, Obama pointed to a half decade of tension which had served neither the Cuban people nor American national security interests.  To fulfill his desire to undo the Obama legacy, Donald Trump immediately re-imposed travel restrictions and severed diplomatic ties.  To hamstring his successor, on January 11, 2021, Trump re-designated Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and imposed new sanctions.

History may not have the answer to the current crisis, but it does tell us what not to do.

• Support the protesters with armed mercenaries.
• Covert operations to take out the current leadership.
• Create an environment that results in another Mariel boatlift.
• Make Cuba more dependent on Russian assistance in return for Cuba becoming a Kremlin puppet including a Russian military base within 100 miles of the U.S. mainland.

It might be a good time for politicians and journalists to read Graham T. Allison’s analysis of October 1962 titled, “Conceptual Models and The Cuban Missile Crisis” (September 1969/American Political Science Review).  Graham found that the two more traditional models of decision making–the state is a unitary rational actor and there are systems/procedures that produce rational outputs–would have been disastrous.  He posits a third model, based on Miles’ Law, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.”  It requires the reconciliation of different viewpoints (e.g. the hawkish General Curtis LeMay and the more dovish long-time JFK aid Theodore Sorenson).  In contrast to the Bay of Pigs, in which tactical decisions were seen as the purview of the Department of Defense and CIA, Kennedy wanted a team of advisors with very diverse perspectives.  In October 1962 that collective arguably made the difference between peace and nuclear war.

For argument sake, let’s assume Patel is correct when he claims there are Democrat members of Congress who support communism over the aspirations of the Cuban people (although there is no evidence to support this position).  In line with Graham’s third model of decision making, they should have a place at the table as they are the ones who might envision a pathway to resolving the crisis in a way that meets major objectives without backing any stakeholder into a precipitous corner.

But that also assumes Patel actually cares about resolving the crisis in Cuba.  Instead he uses the crisis to reinforce false narratives.  Biden and his followers are anti-capitalists.  The corporate media is a tool of Biden and the left-wing of the Democratic party.  Big Tech is turning us all into socialists. The proof comes when he completely forgets his concerns about Cuba and jumps the shark to take on his real target.

The American left is pushing a truly radical policy vision through the Biden administration. It is attempting to expand the government by trillions of dollars more than any time in history. Its vision includes government involvement in many new areas of American life.

In other words, the Cuban crisis was just one more beard to disguise Patel’s true passion, once again promoting an RNC talking point, Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda is a radical, anti-capitalism plot.  Let me remind Patel and other “journalists” of his ilk, owning the libs solves nothing.  Which is what makes him a certified, clinically tested mRNC.

POSTSCRIPT

Patel names names.  Five to be exact.  And generalizes these five individuals represent the Democratic leadership, 314 members of Congress and 82 million voters who made Biden the 46th president.  I wonder what his response would be if I reminded him of the dozen or more 2020 congressional candidates who embraced QAnon.  Would he agree these 12 plus advocates of debunked conspiracy theories are representative of the entire GOP?

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

The title of today’s post is also the name of a Peter Allen song featured in Bob Fosse’s semi-autobiographical film “All That Jazz,” starring Roy Scheider and Ann Reinking.  This week, I had a sense of déjà vu when MSNBC, the Washington Post and New York Times admitted they erred when each reported the FBI and CIA had informed Rudy Giuliani and One American News Network (OAN) they had been targeted by Russia to spread disinformation about Joe Biden and Ukraine interference in the 2016 election.

Why?  The song and accompanying dance sequence are a visual representation of how knowledge is passed down from one generation to the next.  Reinking wants to show Fosse’s cinematic alter-ego Joe Dideon how she taught his daughter dance steps she had originally learned from Dideon.  It must have been a moment of great pride and satisfaction when Fosse watched how he ensured, through Reinking and his on-screen daughter (Erzebet Foldi), the Fosse-style of dance would continue long after he was gone.

Some things should not be passed from generation to generation.  Avoiding the mistakes of our predecessors, regardless of the profession or situation, is the advantage of learning from the past experiences of others.  The three media outlets that blew the Giuliani/OAN story should have known better.  It has been less than 50 years since two reporters made the same blunder which almost negated their otherwise stellar example of investigative journalism.

The year was 1973.  The reporters were Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.  The story was Watergate.  Their mistake involved misrepresenting information from a source about H. R. Haldeman’s role in crimes committed during the 1972 presidential election.  This one error could have derailed the paper’s Watergate investigation and all the solid reporting the two neophyte reporters had done.

Using anonymous sources is risky business.  Not only because you can never be sure of their motivation or to whom they may be loyal.  The process of vetting sources is more an art than a science.  The potentially fatal error by Woodstein (as Post editor Ben Bradlee referred to them) involved confirmation by a second source that Hugh Sloan, Jr., treasurer of the Committee to Re-elect the President, had fingered Haldeman, Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, as overseeing the direct tricks campaign which included the Watergate break-in and controlling the slush fund that financed the operation.

As well documented in their book All the President’s Men, that second source did not meet in person with either of the reporters and insisted the information be passed in a way it could never be traced back to him or he could be charged with a violation of the law which prohibits leaking grand jury testimony.  Think of it as the James Bond equivalent of the childhood game “Telephone.”  Anyone who has every participated in the game knows the original message seldom, if ever, remains intact as it moves down the chain of players.

The lesson from this episode in the downfall of a president is that two things can be true at the same time.  To prove this point, I will draw on the script from the film version of Woodstein’s book.  After the Post runs a story with the headline “Testimony Ties Top Nixon Aide to Secret Fund,” the White House pounces on Bradlee and his paper with evidence the story is flawed.  Bradlee demands Woodstein find out exactly how this could have happened.  When they meet Bradlee at his home, Bernstein explains:

I finally got through to Sloan–it was all a misunderstanding that we had: he would have told the Grand Jury about Haldeman, he was ready to, only nobody on the Grand Jury asked him the goddamn question.

To which Woodward adds, “So I guess you could say that we screwed up, but we weren’t wrong.”

Which brings us back to Giuliani and OAN.  We know the three news outlets screwed up as they have publicly admitted as much.  But were they wrong.  The formal retraction reads as follows.

Correction: An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation. That version also said the FBI had provided a similar warning to Rudolph W. Giuliani, which he has since disputed. This version has been corrected to remove assertions that OAN and Giuliani received the warnings.

Let’s be clear.  The only “correction” is that OAN and Giuliani did not receive the warnings.  The factual distortion during this real game of “Telephone” was that the subjects of an investigation had been warned.  Like Woodstein, Post reporters Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris and Tom Hamberger (Nakaharberger?) screwed up, but the story could still largely be true.  The FBI may have had evidence that Giuliani and OAN were “the target of a Russian influence operation.”  There must be some truth in the story or the FBI could not convince a federal judge to approve a search warrant for Giuliani’s home and office.  Furthermore, it begs the question, “If the FBI was prepared to share this information with Giuliani and OAN, who stopped them and why?”  One hopes Nakashima, et. al., will stay on the story as did Woodstein.

Being half-right when it comes to journalism is not good enough.  In fact, being 99 percent right is too low a standard. I suggest the managing editors of the Post put up the following sign in the “bullpen,” where row upon row of reporters do their research and draft their stories.

You’ve done worse than let Haldeman slip away, you’ve got people feeling sorry for him.  I didn’t think that was possible.

~Deep Throat/All the President’s Men

Remind each reporter to substitute the name of the subject of their own investigations for Haldeman’s.

And if they order it from Amazon in the next 9 hours and 24 minutes, it will be there by Wednesday. Right, Jeff?

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Today’s post is another stroll down Memory Lane on Dr. ESP’s own “way back machine” (with apologies to Jay Ward, who created “Peabody’s Improbable History”).  This time the triggering event was the March 1 passing of businessman, civil rights activist and Bill Clinton advisor Vernon Jordan.

During Clinton’s second term, Jordan took on the additional role of “presidential fixer” when White House staff expressed concern a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky was spending too much time with the president.  In April 1996, Lewinsky was reassigned to work at the Pentagon although sexual encounters with Clinton continued through March 1997.  When Lewinsky left her Pentagon job in December 1997, Jordan was tasked with finding new employment for her, preferably in New York City.

On January 12, 1998, Linda Tripp turns over recordings of conversations she had with Lewinsky about the Clinton relationship to Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who then receives permission from Attorney General Janet Reno to expand his investigation.  Re-enter Vernon Jordan who had been unsuccessful in finding new employment for Lewinsky and was in regular contact with Clinton about the still “under the radar” federal investigation.

So, you may ask, why is this post listed under “media” and what does the title “Beholding a Drudge” have to do with it?  On January 16, 1998, Tripp invites Lewinsky to meet her at the bar at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City (across from Reagan National Airport).   Upon her arrival, Lewinsky is met by FBI agents who take her to an upstairs room, offer her immunity and question her about the Clinton affair and her potential obstruction of justice when she coached Tripp to submit a false affidavit about other alleged Clinton sexual encounters.

As “luck” would have it, a little known political gossip columnist Matt Drudge is tipped off about the FBI intervention and breaks the story on January 19 via the on-line Drudge Report, a news aggregation service he started in 1995.  Why and for whom was this lucky?  In a most bizarre and perverse turn of events, in my opinion, Matt Drudge may have been single-handedly responsible for saving Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Immediately following Drudge’s exposé, which included a charge that Newsweek reporter Mike Isikoff had the story but his editor chose not to run it, Jordan terminated all communications with Lewinsky.  Why is this significant?  Jordan had been a “trusted mentor” to whom Lewinsky turned for guidance in navigating the potential public relations and legal firestorm if her affair became public knowledge.  Imagine Jordan was unaware Lewinsky had accepted an immunity deal in return for her cooperation in the Starr investigation.  Might her cooperation agreement have included recording future conservations between Lewinsky and Jordan and subsequent conversations between Jordan and Clinton?

If you think a Republican-led Congress had an impeachment field day over a perjury charge predicated on the meaning of the word “is,” imagine if there was evidence of further obstruction of justice including attempted witness tampering after the FBI’s involvement.  Democrats would have been in the same position as Republicans last month when they had to defend the indefensible.  As well they should have been.

Sadly, the story does not end there.  Even without further evidence of wrongdoing, I was among the minority of Democrats who believed then, and still believes, Clinton should have resigned.  Not because of the over-hyped perjury charge.  Rather due to his liability as a potential national security threat (can you say “kompromat”) and his setting a new precedent for reckless “presidential behavior.”  In hindsight, one has to consider the possibility Drudge’s premature outing of the initial FBI encounter with Lewinsky may have also resulted in Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

While Republican defense of Trump under the premise “what aboutism” is often unfounded, in this case, there is reasonable justification.  How could Democrats give Clinton a pass and attack Trump for being a sexual predator?  How was Trump’s response to his accusers any different from Hillary Clinton’s claim on the “Today Show” that Lewinsky was a pawn in “a vast right-wing conspiracy” against her husband. (Ironically, the January 27, 1998 interview was conducted by Matt Lauer.)  Or do we conveniently forget New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd “slut shamed” (before the phrase became part of our vocabulary) Lewinsky, calling her “a ditzy, predatory White House intern?”

Is this twisted tale just one more example of the “butterfly effect?”  Did the 1995 flashing of an intern’s thong in the Oval Office set the stage for the election of a reality TV host two decades later?  Does this make Matt Drudge an unwitting asset of MAGA World who has since fallen out of favor with the movement’s leader? Or is this a morality tale with no heroes?   Or as Carl Jung would suggest, a series of unrelated events which become a synchronistic narrative?

Or, was Vernon Jordan’s passing just one more opportunity for a blogger in search of a topic to consume one more morning while waiting for his second Pfizer vaccine dose to fully kick in?

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP