Leil Leibovitz: How Virtuous Are the NeverTrump Virtue-Signalers, Really?

Facts not in evidence.

This is a flamethrower of an article. Highly recommended.

Now that [the Russia Hoax that the NeverTrumpers pushed so hard] has been thoroughly investigated and discredited, it seems fair to ask: Is championing a loony and deeply corrosive conspiracy theory proof of anyone’s superior virtue? The fact that these accusations were false implies that the Never Trumpers who made them early and often were among the political pyromaniacs, and are therefore deserving of the very obloquy that they heaped on Trump [for allegedly poisoning public discourse]. And what about people like Carter Page, a blameless ex-Navy officer who was defamed as an agent of a shadowy, ever-expanding conspiracy headquartered in Moscow?

Conspiracy-mongering doesn’t seem like much of a public virtue. Certainly, the Never Trumpers should have known better than to join in the massive publicity campaign around a "dossier" supposedly compiled by a former British intelligence officer rehashing third-hand hearsay and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. You can still find many faults with Donald Trump’s behavior in and out of office, including some cardinal enough perhaps to merit impeachment, without buying in to some moronic ghost story about an orange-hued traitor who seized the highest office in the land with the help of Vladimir Putin’s social media goons. All that should go without saying, especially for people who ostensibly devote their lives to elevating and enriching the tone of our public discourse.

It is therefore particularly strange to find that David French lent his considerable conservative credibility to the Russiagate lunacy....

It is true that French took care to sound unfailingly fair, a lone voice for reason in a political reality inflamed by lunatics left and right. The thing he was being reasonable about, however, was an FBI investigation that emerged out of a blatant politically motivated forgery. Now, it’s perfectly plausible that French was carrying on his arguments in good faith, even when overwhelming evidence to the contrary was always there for a slightly more curious or skeptical journalist to discover. What's disturbing, from the public virtue standpoint, is that French has yet to admit his own failings, which are compounded by his less-than-courageous misrepresentations of what he actually wrote: In his reply to Ahmari, he strongly denied he had promoted the collusion story, a point of view that’s difficult to defend when your byline appears on stories like "There Is Now Evidence That Senior Trump Officials Attempted to Collude with Russia."

French and the other self-appointed guardians of civility, then, should do us all a favor and drop the civic virtue act.

Like I said, read it in full.

The excellent Julie Kelly, Scourge of Cruise Ship Swabbies, also questions David French's recent claims that he was never a propagator of the Hillary-Clinton information operation.

French claimed that he did not promote the Russian election collusion hoax, as Ahmari stated in his piece. That is patently and provably false.

Time and again, French legitimized the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign for alleged collusion with the Kremlin, frequently cobbling together a disparate array of "contacts" and meetings as evidence to justify the probe. He downplayed the political origins of the Steele dossier. He repeatedly and willfully omits key details about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, overlooking the fact that the meeting with Don Jr. included Russian lobbyists who were working with Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson on behalf of a Russian tycoon at the time.

In March 2017, French detailed all the reasons Americans should be suspicious about collusion and even suggested that "we can never really know" whether the Russians helped elect Trump. French ridiculed the "Conspiracy Theory Right" for believing the collusion scheme was based on false premises manufactured by partisan bureaucrats in the Obama Administration to sabotage Trump. "Who needs [Russia Today] when you have got Sean Hannity?" French joked to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd in May 2018.

French outrageously demanded that Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who was exposing the real scandal, resign his post. "If Nunes steps down as chairman, he can quickly transition from part of the problem to part of the solution," he wrote as Democrats seeded a bogus ethics charge against Nunes.

While he criticized the Nunes memo for failing to make the case (it did) on how the FBI misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, French defended a counter memo--now completely discredited--authored by Nunes' nemesis, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) To date, French has not written or tweeted one critical word about Schiff, despite his egregious lies to the American public and to Congress about proof of Russian collusion.

For more than two years, French aided the Left in promoting the now disproven election collusion hoax in order to damage Donald Trump; to say otherwise is simply untrue.

Another read-the-whole-thing recommendation on that.

The NeverTrumpers have a certain NPC script wherein they resort to incoherent spluttering when confronted with their own eager volunteerism in Hillary Clinton's/Sydney Blumenthal's owned-and-operated disinformation.

This idiot exemplifies that NPC script:

A friend sums up the NeverTrumper position on their past support of the Russiagate Conspiracy Theory: We never once endorsed the Russiagate Conspiracy Theory, and oh, by the way, our endorsement of the Russiagate Conspiracy Theory was just and proper and will be vindicated by future historians.

They all do this. Jonah Goldberg and David French repeatedly deny their own activities on behalf of Sydney Blumenthal's conspiracy-mongering, but each and every time a leftist blows false life into the Conspiracy Theory corpse again, they're both on board for a Second Look at the Conspiracy Theory.

And then right back to denying they were ever believers in the conspiracy theory in the first place.

They're good people, though. Very virtuous. Very honest.

Are Apologies and/or Resignations Called For?

posted by Ace of Spades at 02:08 PM

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