Tweetstorm

Ari Fleischer was White House Press Secretary the last time before this one when we had an actual adult running the executive branch, that is, George Bush. These days, according to his Twitter profile, he "runs a communications company whose clients are sports organizations, athletes & corporations."

In other words, he's firmly ensconced in the private sector and is not leveraging his political contacts as a public policy leech or throwing his influence around in some Beltway lobbying firm. This makes me happy.

Anyway, he tweeted out his thoughts on Susan Rice's perfidious behavior and the MSM's reaction to it, which I thought I'd share with you all. It's 12-part "tweetstorm" starting with:

1/ About Susan Rice: The President's National Security Advisor has authority to request unmasking of American names from intell agencies.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 4, 2017

I copied and pasted just the text from the succeeding tweets in this chain to save space:

2/ But in this instance, I am stunned by the lack of curiosity most media have shown about the facts and circumstances present here.

3/ This is a good example of media giving soft coverage to President Obama while they're hard on the GOP in general & Trump in particular.

4/ Bear in mind, Rice is the official who praised Bowe Bergdahl for his "honorable service" & claimed he was captured "on the battlefield."

5/ She also said two weeks ago in a TV interview that she didn't know anything about the unmasking.

6/ I would have thought the media would ask tough questions. There is no reason this should be a FOX News and conservative press issue only.

7/ If I were a reporter, I would want to know why Rice sought the unmasking. The FBI is investigating possible Trump collision, not the WH.

8/ How often did she ask? What reasons did she give? (Each request is tracked and catalogued in writing by the NSA. A procedure exists.)

9/ The info would have been provided ONLY to her as the requester. It is highly classified. Did she share it? With whom? Why?

10/ If she shared it with anyone, why did she do so? What did they do with it? Did they give it to the media or tell media about it?

11/ One of the reasons we live in a polarized era is because too many reporters look the other way at issues like this. Bias is real.

And finally:

12/ It's not too late. The press knows how to dig and get answers. I hope they do so.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 4, 2017

Fleischer is right: the Susan Rice story is an excellent example of that particular specie of liberal bias characterized by the yuuge amounts of investigative resources devoted to political scandals that may hurt conservatives/Republicans, while scant attention is paid to scandals that go against Democrats.

Not that Democratic scandals go unreported. But, as in the case of Hillary's sloppy and felonious handling of classified e-mails, the scandals have to be loud and persistent before the MSM rouses itself from its slumbers to take notice. And when it does, even in the most desultory fashion, that's when the other side starts whining and crying about media bias and how the MSM is on the side of the Republicans. Seriously. The kook fringe left actually believes that the NY Times is conservatively biased.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Recapping the laughably bad CBS 60 Minutes piece on 'Fake News' by the laughable hack journalist Scott Pelley which was really nothing more than a hit piece on bloggers who daily expose CBS and other MSM outlets for the partisan goon squads that they are, John Hinderaker at Powerlineblog observed:

Pretty much everyone understands that left-wing journalists are promoting a liberal agenda via daily attacks on the Trump administration and Republicans generally. That doesn’t mean that their attacks are ineffective; despite being heavily discounted, the daily headlines undoubtedly take a toll. And a few people still take outlets like 60 Minutes seriously. Why, I can’t imagine. I didn’t expect, at the end of 2004, that a 60 Minutes personality would someday demand to know a guest’s “standard of proof.” 60 Minutes has never had any standard of proof at all.

So, if Mr. Fleischer thinks that the MSM is going to sober up and start reporting the news honestly, I'm afraid he'll be in for a very long wait.

posted by OregonMuse at 11:33 AM

| Access Comments