Not Even Fox Cares If Trump Loses On Tuesday

 

Mike Venable has served as Betsy de Kos' chief of staff at the Department of Education, deputy finance director for the RNC, and chief of staff for the Michigan Republican Party. Yesterday he wrote an OpEd for the Detroit News urging fellow Republicans to vote against Trump on Tuesday, which he isn't doing either. "For the good of the party I have supported my entire life, but more importantly, for the sake of the country I love," he wrote, "I implore all patriotic Republicans to join me... Trump thrives on purposely sowing strife and discord. I have seen it up close and in person. He does so at the expense of the nation’s interests, the health and prosperity of our fellow citizens, alliances forged through generations of sacrifice, and the personal safety of public servants."

The Republican Party has allowed Trump to mortgage its soul, devolving into nothing more than a morally bankrupt conduit to propagate the president’s politics of division and destruction.

I ask my fellow Republicans: Is this honestly who we are? Are the Pyrrhic victories worth it?

...Trump lacks even a modicum of the character the Founders recognized as requisite for the proper functioning of our self-governing Republic.

So, yes, I am tired. But I am not “tired of winning,” as you claimed I would be, Mr. President. I am tired of the division, discord, chaos, vitriol and hate. I am tired of your failure and refusal to lead.

Our party can-- and must-- do better. America deserves nothing less from us.

How will Fox News handle a Trump defeat. Washington Post reporter Jeremy Barr wrote that most of them-- starting with Murdoch-- don't much care. "Behind-the-scenes staffers at the Fox News Media networks," he wrote, "say that most people who work on the news side of the company are not pulling for either Trump or Biden. Rather, they’re just exhausted from covering Trump’s frenetic first term... [Murdoch] fully expects that Biden will win-- and frankly isn’t too bothered by that... [H]e is resigned to a Trump loss in November. And he has complained that the president’s current low polling numbers are due to repeated 'unforced errors' that could have been avoided if he had followed Murdoch’s advice about how to weather the coronavirus pandemic, according to associates who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

The network’s current lineup is a reflection of the Trump presidency, with opinion hosts such as Hannity, Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro, who have leveraged their personal relationships with the president for ratings success; and a morning show, Fox & Friends, that has become Trump’s go-to venue. On shows such as The Five, Trump skeptics such as Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld have quieted their reservations and embraced their roles as critics of Trump’s critics; while the network’s finance-focused cousin, Fox Business Network, has catapulted Trump allies Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo to greater prominence through exclusive interviews with administration officials and Trump himself.

If Biden wins, that access disappears. Yet Murdoch has always considered Fox News’s original underdog status to be its strength. And while he valued the White House access, he is ready to welcome a new inhabitant-- partly because it may give Fox the central role in the Republican Party that it occupied before Trump co-opted the party.

“Fox thrives when it is in the opposition because they have a real-time bad guy to beat up on,” said Jonathan Klein, a former president of CNN. “A Biden win would be great for Fox’s business.”

One Murdoch executive envisions the Fox prime-time lineup emerging as “the standard-bearer of the resistance” under a Biden administration. And former Fox executives point to the network’s role in championing the tea party movement in the Obama years as a model for how the network could find a way forward should Trump lose in November.

“If anything, I think they will be more successful,” said Sean Graf, who worked at Fox for the news division’s well-regarded research staff before leaving in January 2020. “There’s going to be an audience for Biden controversy.” And few envision viewers abandoning Fox for lower-rated rivals such as the conservative upstarts One America News or Newsmax.

The greater risk for Fox News, as exists for all cable news outlets post-Trump, is that with the frenetic atmosphere of the Trump administration gone, viewers will be less likely to tune in altogether. Conservative media typically operates better when it is attacking rather than defending-- but Trump broke that model because of the media’s addiction to his every tweet and scandal. Biden may also be an exception.

“He’s so boring and engenders so little enthusiasm on both sides of the political spectrum that it’s going to be hard to find narratives to program against him,” said one veteran conservative media executive.

“It’s hard to imagine Joe Biden’s occasional gaffes and stammering to somehow be more evil than the idea that Trump has completely ripped off the American people with his tax fraud,” said Carl Cameron, who logged 22 years at the network before leaving to create his own progressive news aggregator.

Hannity, who has prospered from the president’s eagerness to appear on his show, may be the Fox pundit facing the most awkward pivot from a Trump presidency. He signed a new contract earlier this year but suggested in an August interview that he’s already thinking about when to leave the network. “I’ve kind of made a pledge to myself that I don’t want to push it to the very end,” he said.

But Fox veterans say that news-side stars, such as Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, would fare far better, having cultivated relationships with Democrats. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer just appeared on Wallace’s Fox News Sunday, where the Democrat blamed Trump for rhetoric that encouraged a failed attempt to kidnap her.

Lachlan Murdoch has expressed confidence that a Biden presidency would not hurt the company’s bottom line. “We’ve grown ratings in multiple administrations, from both political parties,” he said at a conference in September. Indeed, Fox News has been the No. 1 cable news network since 2002.

One of the biggest question marks hanging over Fox News if Trump leaves the White House is: Where will he go?

Before his 2016 win, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, explored the possibility of launching a Trump-focused media enterprise. One way or another, Trump is almost certain to attempt to maintain some kind of a media presence when he leaves office, so Fox probably will have to contend with him-- whether it's as a contributor on its own airwaves or a competitor.

The elder Murdoch has stopped speaking as frequently as he once did with Trump, but his associates say that those conversations probably will pick up again after Nov. 3, when Trump will either be a second-term president or a free agent on the media circuit.

“Maybe Rupert can just back the truck up and pay Trump to appear on Fox’s air at will,” Klein said. “Trump might prefer that to the rigors of having to actually run an actual business.”

The Trump Dynasty Will Be Just Like The 1,000 Year Reich

I'm totally enjoying season 2 of HBO hit, Succession, the Jesse Armstrong series created around the Roy family, sho some fans say is loosely based on the Murdoch family and others argue is loosely based on the Trump family-- but really combines both. The video up top was the first season's trailer and the one below is the second season trailer:





Yesterday's McKay Coppins feature for the Atlantic, The Heir, will give a big boost to the Successor fans who swear the Roys and based on the Trumps. So far I don't recall having heard about the Roys' origin story, but, of course, the Trump's is notorious: "The empire," wrote Coppins, "begins with a brothel. It stands, sturdy and square, at the heart of a gold-rush boomtown in northwest British Columbia... Curtained-off 'private boxes' line the wall opposite the bar, inside of which are beds, and women, and scales to weigh gold powder, the preferred method of payment for services rendered. Word of the restaurant’s off-menu accommodations spreads fast. 'Respectable women' are advised by the Yukon Sun to avoid the place, as they are 'liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings.' But among lonely prospectors, the Arctic Restaurant is a hit. Before long, Friedrich is boasting, with a hereditary penchant for hyperbole, that his establishment serves more than 3,000 meals a day."

Trump's grandfather was a hustler, a crook, a draft dodger and a liar, exactly like Trump. The real estate business attracted him and he did well there. His middle son, Fred-- father of Señor Trumpanzee-- takes over after he dies. "He backslaps his way through Brooklyn’s political machine, cozies up to mobsters. One house in Woodhaven leads to two in Queens Village, then several more in Hollis. When the federal government starts offering loans to Depression-plagued developers, Fred is first in line-- and soon he has an army of shovel-wielding workers digging 450 foundations out of the East Flatbush swampland. As rows of mass-produced “Trump Homes” spread across Brooklyn and Queens, the papers call Fred the Henry Ford of home building. Later, when the scandals start to come out-- the charges of profiteering, and fraud, and banning black tenants-- the papers find other things to call him. Infamy attends each new triumph. By the 1950s, he has built thousands of houses and apartments, and become the kind of landlord Woody Guthrie writes songs about." Here's a recording of the song by Ryan Harvey, Tom Morello and Ani DiFranco:

When the time comes to plan his own succession, Fred turns first to his eldest son and namesake. But Fred Jr. has no feel for the business-- he’s soft and free-spirited, and wants to fly airplanes. Donald is the one with a taste for combat, and to him the great unconquered frontier lies across the East River. Donald sees more than money in Manhattan. He sees fame, status, entrée into elite society-- things the Trumps have never had.

The market on the island is crowded and hostile, but Fred and Donald work closely to plot their invasion. Together, they cook books, fleece investors, and fool one regulator after another. Some of the scion’s schemes pay off. Others prove disastrous. But his signal achievement is forging the Donald Trump persona itself-- that high-flying playboy, that self-made man, that larger-than-life titan the tabloids can’t resist. It’s a creation of both father and son, and it will do more for the family business than any casino or skyscraper.

Today a photo of Fred sits in the Oval Office, looking out on an empire much vaster and more powerful than even he could have imagined. And while the president writes his chapter in history, the next generation waits in the wings, jockeying for position, feuding over status, knowing only one of them can be the heir.

They stood shoulder to shoulder-- Don Jr., Ivanka, Jared, and Eric-- watching the conquest unfold on TV. Ohio was theirs. Then North Carolina and Florida, too. The vaunted midwestern "blue wall" was crumbling on live TV, as ashen-faced pundits muttered about the electoral map. The scene was surreal, and delicious.

While Don and Eric fielded congratulatory text messages, some in the room noticed Ivanka cut through the thick scrum of campaign aides and attach herself to her father’s side. “Did you hear that, Dad?” she asked whenever the TV delivered good news, expertly guarding his attention just as she had since she was a young girl.

Around midnight, the family realized they would need a victory speech. No one had bothered to write one, because Trump wasn’t supposed to win-- at least not electorally. He was supposed to go down in a spectacular blaze of made-for-TV martyrdom that all of them could capitalize on. Ivanka had a book coming out. Don and Eric were working on a line of patriotically themed budget hotels. And preliminary talks were under way to launch a Trump-branded TV network that would turn disgruntled voters into viewers. Now they needed a new plan.

One by one, they retreated from the buzzing hive on the 14th floor of Trump Tower and rode the elevator up to their father’s penthouse. Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller-- sleep-deprived and pulsing with adrenaline-- began punching out a draft for the president-elect to read. But Ivanka took one glance over Miller’s shoulder and concluded that it wouldn’t do. (Someone who read it later summed up the tone as “We won; fuck you.”) The next act of the Trump story was beginning tonight. This was a task for family.

Gathered around the dining-room table with a coterie of aides and allies, Trump’s three oldest children took turns dictating while the speechwriter typed. The final product—- a laundry list of thank yous interspersed with patriotic platitudes—was notable only for its un-Trumpian restraint. With his family lined up behind him onstage, Trump intoned, “I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans.”

The speech was bland and forgettable, but hall-of-fame oratory wasn’t the goal. The remarks were a placeholder, a chance for the family to work out their next moves. “They’re undeniably adaptable,” Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to the president, told me of Trump’s children. “When the family business was real estate, they learned contracts and building approvals and architecture. Then it was television, and they learned that industry. Now, a decade later, they’ve turned around and learned politics.”

But this latest reinvention has set off a power struggle within the first family, one that has played out largely away from public view. The president and his children-- who declined to be interviewed for this story-- have labored to project an image of unity. But over the past several months, I spoke with dozens of people close to the Trumps, including friends, former employees, White House officials, and campaign aides. The succession battle they described is marked by old grievances, petty rivalries-- and deceptively high stakes.

In his brief time on the political stage, Donald Trump has commandeered the national conservative movement, remade the Republican Party in his image, and used his office to confer untold value on the Trump brand. Between their business holdings and their political influence, the Trumps could remain a fixture of American life for generations. The question now dividing the president’s children is not just which one of them will get to take up the mantle when he’s gone-- but how the family will attempt to shape the country in the years ahead.

For a nation founded in revolt against monarchy, the United States excels at preserving its own royalty. Once a name and fortune are made, the machinery of American power churns into gear. Wealth is passed down through trusts. Important jobs flow to unaccomplished heirs. Famous families get mythologized in the media, celebrated in the culture. The result is a ruling class dominated by dynasties-- from the Rockefellers to the Roosevelts, the Mellons to the Murdochs.

Members of these clans tend to justify their privilege by claiming to uphold a tradition of patriotism and public service passed down by their forebears-- a refrain that has echoed especially throughout America’s most durable political dynasty.

The Trumps like to invoke the Kennedys in their own mythmaking. The president has called Melania “our own Jackie O.” Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, whose father reportedly sees himself as a “Jewish Joe Kennedy,” had a framed photo of JFK in his Manhattan office. And close Ivanka watchers have noted that her Instagram feed-- filled with idyllic photos of family life against the backdrop of the White House-- has a certain Camelotian quality.

But if Camelot was always a romantic facade, the Trumps have dropped the ennobling pretense. Like a fun-house-mirror version of the Kennedys, they reel across the national stage swapping the language of duty and sacrifice for that of grievance and quid pro quo. Ask not what your country can do for you, they seem to say; ask what your country can do for the Trumps.

In considering which of his children should carry on his legacy, Trump is now caught between competing visions for the future of the family-- one defined by a desire for elite approval, the other by an instinct for stoking populist rage.

The Trump children grew up surrounded by the trappings of dynasty. Their home was an eponymous skyscraper-- all glass and gold and capital letters-- that doubled as a symbol of their family’s power. Famous surnames can have an enveloping effect on those who carry them, flattening every outside aspiration until the family is all that matters. To young Don, Ivanka, and Eric, the whole world felt as if it could fit within Trump Tower.

From afar, their lives looked like a Richie Rich–style fantasy. They had an entire floor of the triplex penthouse to themselves, with rooms full of toys and big-screen TVs, and nannies and bodyguards attending to their whims. Michael Jackson, their neighbor, stopped by to play video games. Limousines shepherded them around the city.

But within the family their father cultivated a Darwinian dynamic. On ski trips, when they raced down the mountain, Trump would jab at his children with a pole to get ahead of them. His favorite fatherly maxim was “Don’t trust anyone”-- and he liked to test his children by asking whether they trusted him. If they said yes, they were reprimanded. Sibling rivalry flourished. “We were sort of bred to be competitive,” Ivanka said in 2004. “Dad encourages it.” (Tiffany and Barron, born later to different mothers, seem to have been spared from this contest.)

For Trump’s three oldest kids, the defining drama of their childhoods came in 1990, when he left their mother for Marla Maples, moving out of the penthouse amid a tabloid feeding frenzy. Eric, then 6, was too young to fully grasp what was happening, but his siblings understood, and they reacted in different ways. Don, who was 12, lashed out at his father-- “How can you say you love us?” he reportedly spat during an argument-- and refused to talk to him for a year. Eight-year-old Ivanka was afraid of what she might lose in the divorce. “Does it mean I’m not going to be Ivanka Trump anymore?” she asked, tearfully.

In the years that followed, Don seemed to define himself in opposition to his father. Trump loved golf, so Don stayed off the links. Trump was a teetotaler, so Don drank heavily. In his college fraternity, he developed a reputation for blacking out. “He was drinking himself into a really dark place,” said one former fraternity brother, who recalled Don breaking down in tears at a party as he talked about his father. “He hated what his dad did to his mom. For a while, he didn’t even want people to know his last name.” (A spokesperson for Don said: “This is fiction.”)

Ivanka, meanwhile, worked to stay close with her father. She stopped by his office every day after the divorce, and when she was at boarding school she called home often-- seeking his advice, and asking questions about the family business. Later, Ivanka would recall with pride how her dad interrupted important meetings to talk to her: “He’d always take my call.”

On June 16, 2016 Ivanka strode across a dais in the atrium of Trump Tower and beamed out at the crowd. “Welcome, everybody,” she said, a glint of amusement in her voice. “Today, I have the honor of introducing a man who needs no introduction.”

That Donald Trump had chosen Ivanka to feature so prominently at his campaign kickoff seemed natural. He’d been grooming her for years to take over the family empire. She was the golden child-- beautiful, telegenic, and in possession of that most important family trait: a compulsive image-consciousness.

According to an aide who helped launch Trump’s presidential bid, Ivanka was the one child for whom he voiced concern while he was deciding whether to run. “I know they’re gonna go after me for the women,” Trump told the aide. “The problem is, they’re gonna go after Ivanka, too, for the ex-boyfriends.” His daughter’s romantic history included a succession of problematic exes-- from Lance Armstrong to James “Bingo” Gubelmann, a D‑list film producer who would later be arrested on cocaine charges with Maroon 5’s bassist.

Ivanka had a brand to protect, something Trump understood. She’d been tending to her image since she was a teenager—carefully evolving the Ivanka persona from party-girl socialite to lean-in lifestyle guru. She had her own fashion line and a flagship boutique in SoHo. Alongside Jared-- another real-estate scion-- she had wedged herself into Upper East Side society, earning invites to exclusive charity functions and a cameo on Gossip Girl.

Ivanka may not have thought her father could win the presidency, but she chose to treat the campaign as a brand-enhancement vehicle. She posed for glossy magazines, and sat for soft-focus interviews on Good Morning America. After speaking at the Republican National Convention, she served her Twitter followers a link to the pink sheath dress she’d worn onstage and encouraged them to “shop Ivanka’s look.” The dress sold out within 24 hours, a sign of the broader strategy’s success: In the first half of 2016, Fast Company reported, net sales at her clothing line were up nearly $12 million.

Navigating the campaign this way required finesse. Ivanka kept her distance from the uncouth rallies in places like Reno, Nevada, and Toledo, Ohio. While Trump riled up the country with Muslim-ban proposals and Mexican-rapist panics, she perched herself on a higher plane, where she just wanted to talk about the issues that really mattered to her, like affordable child care and the gender pay gap. Campaign staffers grumbled that Ivanka’s policy preferences were more closely aligned with Aspen weekenders than Rust Belt voters. “People started to realize this wasn’t about Trump’s vision,” one former aide told me. “It was about Ivanka’s ability to feel comfortable in her New York circle.”

But few were willing to challenge her. Rumors swirled that a state-level staffer had been fired after displeasing Ivanka. True or not-- a spokesperson for Ivanka declined to comment-- the story reinforced an impression that the candidate’s favorite child was untouchable. “It all felt very Tudor,” said the former aide. “Aside from whispers in the bathroom, nobody would dare say anything bad about Ivanka. It was the kind of thing that would get you tarred and feathered.”

While Ivanka soaked up the spotlight, Don was consigned to the margins of the campaign. The two had long been a study in contrasts. Where she whispered, he shouted; where she was careful, he was reckless. Unlike Ivanka-- who couldn’t wait to follow her dad into real estate-- Don had taken a more leisurely path to the family business after college, bartending and bumming around Colorado for a year and a half while his father seethed.

With his slicked-back hair and pin-striped suits, Don had carried a certain fratty energy into adulthood that periodically got him into trouble. (In 2002, Page Six reported that he got a beer stein to the head at a New York comedy club after some patrons thought he was “reacting too enthusiastically to [Chris Rock’s] ethnic humor.”) He spent weekdays working at the Trump Organization, where he developed a millionaire’s belief in low taxes, and weekends in the wilderness with his hunting buddies, where he gained an appreciation for gun rights. As a result, Don came to conservatism years before the rest of his family.

Yet when Don offered to help his father’s campaign, many of the tasks he received had a whiff of condescension. Trump had always been embarrassed by his son’s hunting, especially after photos emerged in 2012 of Don posing with the severed tail of an elephant he’d slain in Zimbabwe. But now that the candidate was wooing rural Republicans, he was happy to let Don put on that goofy orange vest and shoot at stuff for the cameras. “You can finally do something for me,” Trump told Don, according to a former aide.

Don had long ago come to understand that Ivanka was his father’s favorite. “Daddy’s little girl!” he liked to joke. But making peace with her husband’s status in the family was harder. Ever since Ivanka had married Jared, Don had been made to watch as this effete, soft-spoken interloper cozied up to his dad. “The brothers thought Jared was a yes-man,” said a former Trump adviser. “Don, especially, looked at him as very suspect.”

But Ivanka and Jared’s real power was rooted in Trump’s aspirations for the family. The couple stood as avatars for the elite respectability he’d spent his life futilely chasing. They belonged to a world that had long excluded him, dined in penthouses where he’d been derided as a nouveau riche rube. Cultivated and urbane, they embodied the high-class, patrician ideal he so desperately wanted the Trump name to evoke.

Don-- the screwup, the blowhard, the hunter-- didn’t stand a chance. [People peg Roman Roy-- the clownish character played by Kieran Culkin in Succession-- as a take-off on Don, Jr.]

Tensions between Don and Jared sharpened in the spring of 2016, as it became clear that Trump was going to fire his campaign manager. With Corey Lewandowski on the way out, Don and Jared each began vying for larger roles in the campaign, according to two Republican operatives who worked for Trump.

People close to the candidate knew he would never entrust his campaign to his son-- Don’s chances of taking the reins were “less than zero,” a former adviser told me. But Don seemed like the last one to realize it. He hustled to prove that he was up to the task, swapping texts and emails with anyone who said they could help his dad’s candidacy. It was during this period that Don set up a meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton. “The Trump Tower meeting was Don’s move to take over the campaign,” a former aide told me. “He was trying to show his father he was competent.” (The spokesperson for Don said: “More fiction.”)

The full extent of the mess Don was making wouldn’t be clear for another year. But even in the moment, the meeting was a bust. The Russians rambled about adoption policy, Jared emailed his assistant looking for an excuse to leave, and no useful intel was produced. Don had wasted everybody’s time.

Jared and Ivanka took a savvier approach to consolidating power, cultivating the new campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, as an ally. By the fall, Jared was traveling virtually full-time with Trump on his private plane, while Don was sent to stump in far-flung states no one else had time for. “I just wake up in the morning and go to whatever city they tell me to,” Don complained during one trip, according to a travel companion. “Jared’s the smart one. He has it all figured out.”

But Don discovered that he had a knack for campaigning. Bounding into county fairs and hunting expos in boots and blue jeans, he dazzled crowds with his knowledge of duck blinds and fly-fishing-- sounding more like a Trump voter than a Trump. He thrived in the shouty, testosterone-soaked realm of #MAGA Twitter, where his provocations routinely went viral. Don’s habit of amplifying memes from the right-wing fever swamps generated controversy. (One infamous tweet compared Syrian refugees to poisonous Skittles; another featured the alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog.) But it also helped turn him into a kind of Breitbartian folk hero. “He’s one of the bros,” Mike Cernovich, a popular far-right social-media personality, told me. “He has a classically masculine personality, and you don’t feel like he’s a snob. He really likes the meme culture-- it’s not fake for him.”

Don may have lost the inside game to Jared and Ivanka, but he was building a grassroots base of his own. When fans began calling on him to run for mayor of New York City-- and Don responded with a bit too much enthusiasm-- his father quickly shut it down. “Don’s not going to run for mayor,” he said in an interview with Sean Hannity. But Trump couldn’t put an end to his son’s political career that easily. By the end of the election, Don’s budding #MAGA stardom was undeniable-- and he had no intention of walking away. “Going back to doing deals is boring,” he reportedly told a gathering of gun enthusiasts. “The politics bug bit me.”

With the election over and the presidency in hand, the Trumps got to work doing what they did with any new asset: figuring out how to sell it. Their initial cash grabs were clumsy and relatively small-scale. When the soon-to-be first family was profiled by 60 Minutes, Ivanka’s jewelry line blasted out a “Style Alert” advertising the $10,800 bracelet she’d worn on air. When Trump met with the prime minister of Japan, Ivanka-- who was pursuing a licensing deal with a Japanese apparel conglomerate-- sat in on the meeting. As ProPublica would later reveal, she also helped ensure that a portion of her father’s inauguration budget was spent at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

Eric and Don-- tasked with running the Trump Organization while their father was away-- looked for their own angles. They doubled the membership fee at Mar-a-Lago, which was already being described as the “winter White House,” and pushed forward on the development of their down-market hotel chain, American Idea. Working with a pair of Mississippi businessmen they’d met on the campaign trail, the Trumps planned a series of red-state budget hotels stuffed with star-spangled tchotchkes and decorative Americana, such as vintage Coca-Cola machines in the lobbies. Eric in particular welcomed the challenge of running the family business. He’d always been the one most interested in construction and architecture, and many in the company assumed that he would take over day-to-day operations when his father retired. Now that he had a chance to prove himself, Eric planned to exploit every opportunity. “The stars have aligned,” he proclaimed. “Our brand is the hottest it has ever been.”

Jared, meanwhile, was busy attending to his own brand. When the December 20, 2016, issue of Forbes hit newsstands, the cover featured Trump’s favored son-in-law-- his arms folded, his lapels peaked, his hair a perfect coif-- grinning triumphantly above a headline that seemed tailored to torment Don and Eric: “this guy got trump elected.” Inside, readers were introduced to a heretofore unfamiliar version of Jared: the visionary strategist who had run the Trump campaign like a “stealth Silicon Valley startup.”

The brazen credit-grabbing rankled people who’d worked on the campaign. “He never sacrificed or risked a thing,” a former staffer complained. “Then, after the win, he came in to grab the spoils and anoint himself grand pooh-bah. It was gross.” Don and Eric were similarly vexed, according to people close to the family.

Jared had wasted little time in wielding his influence. Just days after the election, he’d persuaded Trump to fire Chris Christie as the head of the transition team. Christie had been the federal prosecutor responsible for putting Jared’s father behind bars a decade earlier, and the dismissal was widely interpreted as an act of vengeance. But the shake-up also gave Jared a strategic advantage, allowing him to exert control over hiring for the new administration.

Don was not happy with this arrangement. More than once, according to aides familiar with the process, he would recommend someone for a job only to have Jared intervene and insist that personnel decisions be run through him. Worse, Jared seemed intent on staffing the Trump White House like it was a charter jet to Davos. He recruited Gary Cohn, a Goldman Sachs executive and registered Democrat, to serve as the president’s chief economic adviser. He lobbied for Steven Mnuchin, a hedge-funder cum Hollywood producer, to be named Treasury secretary. Don managed to usher a handful of loyalists into his father’s administration-- but Jared and Ivanka ended up with many more.

People close to Trump speculated about what Jared was hoping to get out of all this. Some thought he was simply seizing the chance to fill his Rolodex with world leaders and Wall Street titans. Others would later point to a sweetheart deal his family cut with a Qatari investment firm as evidence that Jared’s involvement in foreign policy had a profit motive. (A spokesman for Jared denied this.)

Whatever the reason, the couple’s headlong dive into politics proved difficult to reconcile with Ivanka’s brand. As the inauguration approached, she found herself under siege on the Upper East Side. A horde of New York artists-- including some whose work she personally collected-- gathered outside a downtown building where she kept an apartment to protest her role in Trump’s “fascist” agenda. Activists launched a viral Instagram campaign juxtaposing her glamour shots with appeals from frightened constituents: “Dear Ivanka, I’ve been raped and I need to have an abortion”; “Dear Ivanka, I’m afraid of the swastikas spray painted on my park.”

This struck Ivanka as profoundly unfair. She-- the author of a forthcoming book on women in the workplace and frequent participant in female-empowerment luncheons-- was a misogynist? She-- a convert to orthodox Judaism and supporter of numerous respected Jewish charities-- was an anti-Semite? What did these people expect her to do, disown her father?

But as much as the attacks bothered Ivanka, they also made something clear: The White House wasn’t going to boost her lifestyle business-- if anything, the coming years would politicize it beyond repair. To take advantage of this moment, she would need to think bigger. Fortunately for Ivanka, A‑list celebrities and thought leaders were now flocking to her. Leonardo DiCaprio, Sheryl Sandberg, Anne-Marie Slaughter-- all of them wanted a spot on her calendar. She didn’t need to sell handbags or luxury condos to command the attention of America’s elite. Her proximity to the Oval Office was enough.

The week before Trump entered the White House, Ivanka announced that she was taking a leave of absence from the Trump Organization and her fashion line. The seat of the family empire wasn’t in Manhattan anymore. It was in Washington-- and that’s where she and Jared would be.

...The presidential agenda Ivanka envisioned was one her former Manhattan neighbors would approve of. With her help, Trump would enact a paid-family-leave program and reform the criminal-justice system. He would update the nation’s infrastructure, and preserve LGBTQ rights. Republican, Democrat, these were just labels. Once fair-minded people saw what her father had accomplished-- what the Trumps had accomplished-- the family’s legacy would be secure.

The first test of Ivanka’s persuasive powers came when White House officials began drafting an executive order focused on expanding protections for religious conservatives. Ivanka, who knew the order would be seen as anti-LGBTQ, enlisted Tim Cook-- the gay Apple CEO, whose respect her father craved-- to lobby Trump against signing it, according to a former White House aide. She also privately reminded her father that Vice President Mike Pence had faced nasty political blowback when he’d stumbled into a religious-freedom culture war as governor of Indiana.

Ivanka’s crusade culminated one night in the president’s private study, where Trump was discussing the issue with a small group of advisers. A former aide who was present at the meeting recalled Pence launching into an impassioned defense of the executive order, only to have Trump cut him off. “Mike, isn’t this the shit that got you in trouble in Indiana?” he snapped. Pence quickly retreated as blood rushed to his face. It was clear to all in the room that Ivanka-- standing quietly in the corner-- had won. When Trump did eventually sign the order, it had been dramatically watered down.

But as time went on, Trump began to tire of Ivanka and Jared’s incessant lobbying. Every time he turned around, they were nagging him about something new-- refugees one day, education the next. It never stopped. Their efforts to change his mind about the Paris climate accord exasperated the president, who took to mocking their arguments when they weren’t around. “They’re New York liberals,” he would say, according to a former White House aide. “Of course that’s what they think.”

...Trump reportedly began telling allies, “Jared hasn’t been so good for me,” and lamenting-- in jest, perhaps, though no one could say for sure-- that Ivanka could have married Tom Brady instead. More than once, the president wished aloud that the couple would move back to New York.

So when, in July of 2017, Don’s ill-conceived Trump Tower meeting with the Russians became public—putting Jared in jeopardy—the couple did what they had to do. Jared released an 11-page statement effectively blaming the radioactive meeting on his brother-in-law while absolving himself. In a gratuitous bit of knife-twisting, he recounted emailing an assistant, “Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting.”

The statement infuriated Don, according to family friends-- not just for the way it threw him under the bus, but for the way it belittled him. But Jared’s maneuver worked on the audience that mattered most.

Watching cable-news coverage of the fiasco from the West Wing, Trump shook his head wearily. “He wasn’t angry at Don,” a former White House official recalled. “It was more like he was resigned to his son’s idiocy.”

“He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” Trump said with a sigh.

Saturday Night Live has a running bit in which which Trump’s two eldest sons appear in tandem, with Don portrayed as the smart, responsible big brother and Eric as a kind of bumbling man-child. In an episode last year, Don answered questions about the Russia investigation while Eric ate Play-Doh. Real-life Don seems to delight in these sketches, and has even publicly volunteered to come on the show to play himself. But within the Trump family, associates say, the brothers’ roles are exactly reversed.

... Everybody who works for Trump learns sooner or later that imitating him will only draw his contempt. The tragedy of Don Jr. is that he seems never to have learned this lesson. As his mother has recalled, Trump resisted when she wanted to name their first son after him: “You can’t do that!” he protested. “What if he’s a loser?” That Don went on to confirm his father’s fear largely by trying to mimic him-- in temperament, style, speech, and career-- points to the unique difficulties of being the president’s namesake.

... But the stump was where Don really shined. Taking the stage to wild applause from riled-up MAGA-heads, he riffed and ranted and cracked jokes about gender identity. To watch Don in these settings was to see a man morphing into his father-- the vocal inflection, the puckered half-smirk, the staccato “Who knows?” punctuating key sentences. It was as though he had studied his dad’s delivery, practicing each tic in the mirror.

By November 2018, Don had appeared at more than 70 campaign events across 17 states-- and powerful Republicans were abuzz. “I could very easily see him entering politics,” Senator Kevin Cramer told me. “I think his future is bright,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Newsmax’s CEO, Chris Ruddy, told me he’d personally encouraged Don to run for office; Sean Hannity called him “a born natural leader.” Senator Rand Paul went so far as to say that Don was one of the best Republican campaigners in the country. “If you can’t get the president,” Paul told me, “he’s a close second.”

Notably, many of these Republicans seemed less enthusiastic about his sister. Cramer, for example, spent 15 minutes in a phone interview gushing to me about Don’s “accessibility” and “irreverence” and gift for “connecting” with voters. But when I asked him about Ivanka, he paused. “She’s a little bit harder to get,” he replied, politely. “Her faith prevents her from traveling on the Sabbath.” Charlie Kirk was similarly careful when we spoke. While all of Trump’s adult children were helpful to the cause, he told me, “I can honestly say that outside of his father, Don is the No. 1 most requested speaker, and he brings the most energy to the conservative base.”

None of this newfound excitement about Don seemed to rub off on the president, however. People close to Trump told me he remained enchanted by the idea of Ivanka as the inheritor of his political legacy. During trips to Mar-a-Lago, he was often heard rhapsodizing about her potential to be the first female president. Don’s political prospects, if they came up at all, were treated as an afterthought. If there was any doubt about which child Trump favored, his Twitter feed told the story: In the first two years of his presidency, he tweeted about Ivanka 16 times, while Don received just four mentions-- all of them about the Trump Tower scandal.

...[A]s Don’s visibility grew, the cold war between him and Ivanka intensified. Now that each had their own teams of allies and advisers, they had grown paranoid that the other’s henchmen were planting damaging stories about them in the press. A few days before the midterms, McClatchy published a story under the headline “Trump Kids on the Campaign Trail: Don Jr. Wows, Ivanka Disappoints.” Ivanka’s camp was enraged, and suspected that Don was behind the story. Later, Don confronted Ivanka over rumors that her team was undermining him in off-the-record conversations with reporters. “Tell your people to stop trashing me to the media,” he said, according to someone familiar with the conversation. (Spokespeople for Don and Ivanka disputed this account and denied that there is a rift between them.)

While his siblings jockeyed for political position, Eric spent most of his days at Trump Tower. Don was still technically on the company’s payroll, but between hunting trips and campaign stops, his presence in the office was irregular at best.

Running the Trump Organization during the Trump presidency had turned out to be more difficult than Eric had imagined. After an initial burst of postelection activity, many of the family’s most ambitious plans collapsed. They were forced to scrap their American Idea hotel chain after ethics concerns were raised. International building projects were delayed amid outcry from watchdog groups. Valuable retail space in Trump Tower sat empty month after month, and socially conscious condo owners called for the Trump name to be scraped off their buildings.

Meanwhile, at Mar-a-Lago, patrons whispered that “the boys” were draining the club of its class with cost-cutting measures after numerous charities canceled functions there. When a rumor went forth that Eric had ordered lower-quality steaks to be served at the restaurant, members erupted in outrage: His father never would have allowed this.

Eric blamed the Trump Organization’s setbacks on partisan politics. “We live in a climate where everything will be used against us,” he told the Washington Post. But within the president’s orbit, there was a growing sense that his sons were driving the company into the ground.

Trump, who’d pledged to recuse himself from business decisions, relied on golf buddies to update him on the company during his weekend trips to Florida. Their reviews seemed to confirm his worst fears. Before launching his campaign, he’d fretted that his kids weren’t ready to take over the business. Now, with Don MIA and Eric flailing, he became preoccupied with what would be left of his company when he returned to it. According to a former White House aide, Trump talked about the issue so often that administration officials worried he would get himself in trouble trying to run the Trump Organization from the Oval Office.

But as the 2020 campaign season entered its early stages, even Eric turned his attention toward politics. His wife, Lara-- a conservative activist from North Carolina-- was an outspoken surrogate for Trump. Eric had been holding back, worried that his father would disapprove; after all, someone needed to mind the shop. But the president encouraged Eric to join his siblings in the fray. There would be plenty of ways to cash in later. This was the family business now.

Watching Trump's children appear on Fox News, one gets the sense that they’re still auditioning for their father’s affection. Ivanka speaks in dulcet tones about how proud, so proud, she is of her dad. Don bashes the “fake-news media” with performative force. Eric, the least camera-ready of the three, clings to talking points, lavishing praise on Trump whenever he gets stuck. (In an interview earlier this year, Eric repeated variations of “He’s the greatest guy in the world” in such reverential tones that even Sean Hannity seemed uncomfortable with the obsequiousness.)

Trump watches these segments from the West Wing and offers a running commentary to whoever is around, according to a former aide. His attitude toward each of his adult children on any given day is shaped by how they are playing on cable news. Ivanka tends to draw rave reviews, while Don’s are more mixed, with the president muttering things like “Why did he say that?” and “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Recently, though, his perspective on his two oldest children seems to have shifted.

In June, Ivanka accompanied her father to Osaka, Japan, for the G20 summit. After the meetings, the French government posted a video clip that showed the president’s daughter standing amid a gaggle of side-eyeing world leaders as she tried awkwardly to force her way into the conversation. The clip went viral, spawning a hashtag-- #UnwantedIvanka-- and a wave of parody Photoshops inserting her into great moments in history: mugging for the camera at the March on Washington, grinning next to Winston Churchill at Yalta. News outlets around the world covered the snub. Pundits called it a damning indictment of Trump’s nepotism, while foreign-policy experts argued that Ivanka’s lack of credibility could harm U.S. diplomacy. A quote from an anonymous Indian diplomat recirculated in the media: “We regard Ivanka Trump the way we do half-wit Saudi princes.”

The episode laid bare the depth of Ivanka’s miscalculation. She had thought when her father took office that the surest path to power and status was to plant herself in the West Wing and mingle with the global elite. But after two and a half years of trying to burnish her credentials as a geopolitical player, Ivanka had become an international punch line. There was, it turned out, no market for a genteel brand of Trumpism.

Don, meanwhile, threw himself into his father’s reelection campaign, while quietly plotting his own future. According to Republicans familiar with the discussions, he considered running for office somewhere in the Mountain West, where his love of guns and hunting could help woo voters. A privately commissioned poll in Montana-- passed around enthusiastically among Don’s inner circle-- showed that 75 percent of the state’s Republicans viewed him favorably. In April, it was announced that Guilfoyle would join the Trump campaign as a senior adviser.

While Don mulled his options, some allies talked him up as a potential chairman of the Republican National Committee. Others suggested he launch a right-wing political outfit that would allow him to hold rallies and bestow endorsements. The word kingmaker started getting tossed around.

Even the president began to appreciate his son’s political value. During a family gathering at the White House, Trump was overheard questioning Don about whether he’d been using the company plane while shirking his day job. A Republican senator in the room intervened to say that without Don’s work on the campaign trail, the party might not have kept its Senate majority. Trump seemed pleased: “I believe it.”

On a steamy June evening, Trump officially launched his bid for reelection with a raucous rally in Orlando. This time, Ivanka and Jared sat in the audience, while Don-- the president’s most skilled warm-up act-- strutted across the stage to fervid applause. Bellowing into the microphone until his voice went ragged, he crowed about “crushing the bastards of ISIS” and made fun of Joe Biden for “groping” women. As he neared the end of his speech, Don lifted his arms in the air as if conducting an orchestra, and the arena erupted in chants of “Four more years!”

In that moment, there was little question what the future of the Trump family would look like. After a century and a half of striving, they had money, and fame, and unparalleled power. But respectability would remain as distant a mirage as it was when Friedrich was chasing it across the Yukon. While no one knew when Donald Trump would exit the White House, it was clear what he would leave behind when he did: an angry, paranoid scrap of the country eager to buy what he was hawking-- and an heir who knew how to keep the con alive.

In this week's episode of Succession, Kendall Roy was given a crucial task, getting Naomi Pierce to agree to the acquisition of the family TV network. They're both coke freaks and he manages the task but wakes up the next morning with crap all over himself and the bedding. He doesn't wash top and merely roles up the sheets and... and what? I can't imagine what he did with them. And what about the mattress?

Should Republican Billionaires Be Picking Democratic Candidates The Way They Already Pick GOP Candidates?

Let's start with some news: Last week, Fox News' James Rupert Murdoch, a British billionaire, put half a million dollars into one of Nancy Jacobson's shady No Labels SuperPACs that aims to fill Congress with candidates from the Republican Wing of the Democratic Party. Their current goal is a smear campaign against Alan Grayson. Most recently, Jacobson pulled off the same filth against Marie Newman in Illinois’ 3rd District House primary, spending $931,600 to spread absolute lies against Newman while bolstering anti-Choice Blue Dog Dan Lipinski.

Jacobson, widely considered one of the most vicious and destructive players in American politics, runs a dark web of 8 of the most pernicious and sleazy SuperPACs in the country, United for Progress, United Together, Forward Not Back, Progress Tomorrow, Patriotic Americans PAC, Citizens for a Strong America, etc, entirely funded by contributions from 5 and 6-figure right wing donors, such as Rupert Murdoch, his son James Murdoch, Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, hedge fund manager Louis Bacon, former Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan Selig and Wheels Inc. executive Jim Frank.

By Friday they had spent $138,401 on mail and digital ads trying to bolster Grayson's worthless right-of-center New Dem opponent, Darren Soto, and attacking Grayson.

This cycle, Jacobson has also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from Republican contributors trying to win Democratic nominations for far right candidates running against progressives. Recently she failed in Pennsylvania, where Susan Wild beat No Labels DINO John Morganelli and she failed in Albuquerque, where Debra Haaland beat the No Labels DINO, Damon Martinez.

Darren Soto is exactly the kind of fake Democrat Jacobson, the Murdochs and other GOP billionaires want to see beat progressives like Grayson. Soto voted to prosecute all abortions as murder and voted to force women who want an abortion to undergo a humiliating procedure called "transvaginal ultrasound." Since being primaried by Grayson he's been apologizing for those votes, saying he "made a mistake." He hasn't apologized for the votes that earned him "A" ratings from the NRA-- twice. And because of those hair-raising votes, the NRA endorsed him. He voted for Trump-sponsored laws 58 times in Congress and both times impeaching Trump came up in Congress, Soto voted NO. The reason No Labels is so enthusiastic about him is because he has said that he is "open-minded" about phasing out Social Security benefits or eliminating them altogether, No Labels' top issue.

Meanwhile, Soto is one of Congress' most corrupt Democrats, well known for partying with lobbyists, spending taxpayer money and campaign money illegally on personal items for himself and his wife. He has even accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign support from Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her charter school allies. Generally speaking he's been a big waste of a solidly blue seat in Congress, accomplishing nothing for anyone... but himself. That compares badly with Grayson's record:

During a debate with Grayson last week, Soto claimed "to be a great champion of women’s rights," a lie Grayson directly challenged, bringing up the specifics of Soto's shameful voting record. Soto had no answer... except to say he regrets those votes. He doesn't regret them enough to turn down the help he's getting now from the anti-Choice extremists who are flooding central Florida with lies against Grayson and nonsensical assertions of Soto's grandeur.

Blue America members have been helping Grayson with his election campaigns since 2006. And he's never let us down-- always one of the 2 or 3 best members of Congress and living up to his promises. He needs us again now. The primary is August 28 and he really needs to get on the air and respond to the lies Jacobson and Murdock are flooding TV and radio with. Please consider contributing what you can by clicking on the Blue America 2018 congressional elections thermometer on the right. As of yesterday another dark money PAC had bought ads on one of the big Spanish language radio stations-- one ad every hour until election day! That's called brain-washing. It's what fascists do; it's what Republicans do. Republican billionaires know their party is going to lose control of Congress in November. So they are working to defeat progressives and make certain friendly conservative DINOs become the nominees of the Democratic Party. We can't let this happen. It's our party, not theirs.

Are You Going To Miss Bill O'Reilly?

Tucker Carlson will be the new Bill O'Reilly who was fired by the Murdoch's today after a 21 year run of molesting women and spreading ugly right-wing propaganda. According to the NY Times "his abrupt and embarrassing ouster ends his two-decade reign as one of the most popular and influential commentators in television. 'After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel,' 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, said in a statement... [M]ore than 50 advertisers had abandoned his show, and women’s rights groups had called for his ouster. Inside the company, women expressed outrage and questioned whether top executives were serious about maintaining a culture based on 'trust and respect,' as they had promised last summer when another sexual harassment scandal forced the ouster of Roger E. Ailes as chairman of Fox News."

And it ain't over yet:

The most unsettling feeling among some at Fox News, however, is that Wednesday’s events are only the beginning. “There’s more to come,” one Fox News insider told me, suggesting that there are more women with stories of harassment who have not come forward publicly. This estimation was affirmed by two people who heard such stories directly. Others are equally concerned about the attention that is being drawn to 21st Century Fox’s handling of the allegations by women inside the company.




As Brian Williams takes his medicine at NBC, do Fox Noisemakers ever wonder what could happen to them if their outfit became a news network?

It's official -- Lester Holt's got the Nightly News anchor job.

"I'm sorry. I said things that weren't true. I let down my NBC colleagues and our viewers, and I'm determined to earn back their trust. I will greatly miss working with the team on Nightly News, but I know the broadcast will be in excellent hands with Lester Holt as anchor. I will support him 100% as he has always supported me. I am grateful for the chance to return to covering the news. My new role will allow me to focus on important issues and events in our country and around the world, and I look forward to it."

-- a statement by Brian Williams released today by NBC News

by Ken

I know it's like putting two and two together and getting the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but I read the news from NBC News high command concerning the future of suspended ex-Nightly News anchor Brian Williams with my head still infused with my colleague Gaius Publius's report earlier today on the demotion of Fox Noise supremo Roger Ailes in the new order that takes hold at 21st Century Fox on July 1, with Mini-Murdochs James 'n' Lachlan Murdoch taking over operations and Big Roger reporting to them instead of Dear Old Dad. (You should read GP's account if only for the hilarious unmasking of Roger's attempt to suppress this fact, which went as far as forcing on-air people to read a statement in which he had inserted a lie.)

And so I couldn't help wondering if any of the Fox Noisemakers are having momentary flashes of what could happen to them come July 1, in the admittedly improbable event that James 'n' Lachlan should get it in their heads to convert Fox Noise from a 24/7 propaganda mill to something resembling an actual news operation. What would happen to them if News Corp scalphunters were to subject their video records to the kind of scrutiny that NBC's applied to come up with those 11 specimens of Brian Williams' highly stretchy view of reality?

To back up, the mighty moguls of NBC News, no doubt closely watched if not kibbitzed by their nervous corporate superiors, have decided that Brian can stay at NBC, ruling that while his 11 on-air exaggerated claims disqualify him for the anchor chair at NBC's Nightly News, they're no problem over at MSNBC, where he will now anchor special reports.

Here's the start of Washington Post media maven Paul Farhi's report:

NBC News made it official Thursday afternoon: the network will bring back suspended anchor Brian Williams, but he will no longer be the face of “NBC Nightly News.”

Instead, Williams will become an anchor of news reports at MSNBC, the network’s cable news channel, NBC said.

Williams was suspended by the network for six months in February for a series of exaggerated statements he made in TV appearances over the years, particularly his tale of coming under rocket attack during the early days of the Iraq War in 2003.

Lester Holt, who has substituted for Williams during his suspension, will be his permanent successor, NBC said.

Williams’s continued employment at NBC has been in doubt since numerous instances of embellishment by the anchor came to light in media accounts. In an internal review of his work, NBC found at least 11 instances in which he gave distorted accounts of his reporting exploits, damaging his credibility as a journalist. The network compiled a video of his statements, a damning document that was critical in his removal as anchor of the program he has been the face of for more than a decade.

Williams’s sudden fall brought down the most popular news figure on television; with Williams in the anchor chair, “Nightly News” led the audience ratings among network newscasts for more than five years.

With Williams on hiatus and Holt as anchor, NBC’s streak ended in late March when ABC’s “World News Tonight” briefly surged ahead in the Nielsen ratings. However, Holt — the first African American to anchor a network newscast solo — has kept NBC competitive with ABC, a major factor in NBC’s decision to keep Holt. . . .

NOW, AS TO THE FOX NOISEMAKERS --

I'm not saying it's likely to happen, just that it maybe could, and the TV mini-world isn't known as one of the world's stablest. Isn't it possible that people who have found their way into employment at the Noise Machine may have at least fleeting moments when this new version of reality makes them wonder.

Take Sean Hannity. (Please.) Is it possible that our Sean has already put himself in the professional hands of a mental-health practitioner who will be preparted to attest, if and when the time comes, that Sean can't be held liable for transgressions against the truth on the medical ground that he is developmentally incapable of distinguishing between truth and fiction?

And what of poor Bill O'Reilly, the man who confidently wields Jesus's loofah? Why, poor Billo is probably lucky if he can keep his whopper count down to 11 for a single broadcast. Yes, Billo loves to proclaim that he's a "journalist." I know, I know. But I think of this as being like the suburban householder who has only one joke, which he tells at each and every neighborhood barbecue, feeling no need to try to come up with a second as long as the first always gets a laugh. Billo proclaims, "I am a journalist," and brings the house down every time.

The there's the whole corps of muddle-brained Noisemaking ideologues (please don't ask me their names; I can't tell them apart) who make their living pooping on the truth. Not to mention all those pretty-haired boys and girls whose only connection to the news is the "News" that presumably appears on their paychecks in the jocular corporate name "Fox News." Probably nobody has even told them that the "news" is supposed to be as close as you can get to being true.

Do those folks have dark moments when they fantasize the "11 whoppers and you're out" ax descending on them? Of course, the 11 whoppers only get you exiled to cable, where they already are. But still . . . .

#

Update: Dr. Evil And Mini-Me Go To Parliament

-by Noah

“These actions do not live up to the standards that we aspire to.”
                                               - James Murdoch, son of Rupert, Parliament July 19th.

Kinda brings new meaning to the phrase “If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a pie!” Of course, the media are giving way too much coverage to the pie incident when there are deeper, more important issues at play in the Murdoch scandal. The Murdochs are damn lucky the guy didn’t have a machete or a black belt in some sort of deadly up close and personal martial art.

“I do not accept ultimate responsibility.”
                                             -Rupert Murdoch, Fascist Crank, Parliament July 19th.

Rupert Murdoch actually used the words “shocked and appalled” in yesterday’s testimony before Parliament in London! You can’t make this stuff up! There was also plenty of use of the usual dodges: “on-going investigation,” “I have no knowledge of that.” “I didn’t know.” Here they say “I don’t recall.” It was a whole day of weaseling. It was like Rupert Murdoch was auditioning for the part of Sgt. Schultz (“I know nothing. I see nothing.”) in a 2011 remake of Hogan’s Heroes. Here you had a man who is literally a kingmaker, a man who runs a multi-billion dollar empire that not only promotes certain candidates into office around the world for paybacks in the form of waivers to communications laws that allow him to expand his business and build his ever-expanding power, it strives and conspires to control those candidates once they are in office, even going so far as to place Murdoch people in important positions around them, whether it’s press flaks like David Cameron’s Andy Coulson, or, here, Bush’s Tony Snow. Police? Hell, you can just buy them.
 
Such a person would, by necessity, have to have his wits about him, wouldn’t he? Rupert says he runs the place but he doesn’t know what’s going on. Yet, his former editors, such as CNN’s Piers Morgan say they were in touch with Rupert on a weekly basis. That’s hardly being distant or being buffered by layers of management. Murdoch’s appearance yesterday was a textbook illustration of a conniver wanting it both ways. Out of one side of his jowly old mouth he says he doesn’t know what’s going on and puts on the doddering old geezer routine, while out of the other side he says he shouldn’t resign because he’s the best guy to fix what’s wrong.
 
I have to go back to the mobster comparison again. It was a classic example of the old mobster feigning illness in court in order to engender sympathy and get a better deal. In New York, we had a local godfather named Vinny “the chin” Gigante. He ran an empire, too. At one time, he was the most powerful crime boss in America. Yet, he went around his neighborhood in his pajamas and bathrobe, muttering to himself, in order to pretend he was just some crazy old coot. When he got before the judges as an old man, he really poured it on. He knew nothing. He played it to the hilt. Before he died, he admitted it was all an act, but, for 10 years, he was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. All the while, he ran his empire. Same deal with what we saw yesterday.
 
What a farce. First of all, the Murdochs were not even under oath. They could say anything or nothing, with impunity. James Murdoch talked about standards yet paid off someone with a million pounds. Standards? No wonder FOX “News” is the way it is.
 
Here’s some typical dialogue from yesterday’s dog and pony show, English-style, with Labor MP Watson questioning Rupert Murdoch-

Watson: “You’ve repeatedly stated that news Corp. has a zero tolerancetowards wrong doing by employees. Is that right?”
  
Rupert Murdoch: “Yes.”
 
Watson: "In October 2010, did you still believe it to be true when you said 'Let me be clear: We will vigorously pursue the truth and we will not tolerate wrongdoing'?"   
 
Rupert Murdoch: “Yes.”
 
Watson: “So, if you were not lying then, somebody lied to you. Who was it?”
 
Rupert Murdoch: “I don’t know. That’s what the police are investigating, and we are helping them with.”

 
Yeah right. He doesn’t remember. He was lied to but he doesn’t really pay all that much attention to the day to day. He doesn’t know. If someone lied to me, I’d know who it was. This same approach probably kept Rupert from getting expelled from school back around 70 years ago. Someone else is responsible! Not me! Round up the usual suspects! Put my most expensive cops on the case! Here’s more-

Watson: “Can I take you back to 2003? Are you aware that in March of that year, Rebekah Brooks gave evidence to this Committee admitting paying police?”
        
Rupert Murdoch: “I am now aware of that. I was not aware at the time. I am also aware that she amended that considerably, very quickly afterwards.”
 
Watson: "I think that she amended it seven or eight years afterwards.”
 
Rupert Murdoch: “Oh, I’m sorry.”
 
Watson: "Did you or anyone else at your organization investigate this at the time?”
 
Rupert Murdoch: “No.”

 
No one at News Corp. saw any need to investigate bribing police for information. Must be those standards that James Murdoch mentioned. There’s plenty more in the Parliament’s own transcript of the hearings.

Watson goes on to question Murdoch about a very high profile 2006 case involving the hacked voicemails and blackmail that we have been hearing about. The case resulted in admonishments from the judge, and received widespread media attention, yet Murdoch would have Watson and the rest of us believe that he, the great media baron knew nothing. More importantly, his company, which espoused a policy of “zero tolerance” for such wrongdoing didn’t draw his attention to it. Zero tolerance apparently has a whole different meaning in the land of News Corp.
 
I’ll give the British Parliament credit for a couple of things, although neither of them makes up for not putting such creeps as the Murdochs and their minions such as former News Of The Word editor Rebekah Brooks, who was questioned after the Murdochs, under oath. One was the intelligence of the questioning. The other is that, unlike hearings in our House or Senate, there was no grandstanding or self-aggrandizement on the part of the politicians.
 
It’s clear from yesterday’s testimony, that the Murdochs are buffering themselves from the wrongdoing that obviously never bothered them. The presented a picture of being detached or removed from things that were obviously company policy. Someone will be taking the fall, but they don’t intend for it to be them. Which employee or ex-employee will they sell down the river? Right now, you can put your money on Rebekah Brooks but, stay tuned
 
Sean Hoare, aka, the dead journalist, may have been the best or even only guy who could connect Murdoch and the Cameron government together in great detail. In my previous post, I raised the supposition of how would it look if Haldeman or Hunt had turned up dead at the beginning of the Watergate Scandal. While that would have set off quite a conflagration, perhaps I should have asked what would have happened if Woodward and Bernstein had been found face down in the Potomac.
 
The Murdochs and, no doubt, their man at No. 10 Downing Street once thought that just shutting down the News Of The World would make this whole thing go away, but it didn’t. Then a body turned up, the top two cops in Scotland Yard suddenly resigned over the police for sale issue, and Rebekah Brooks got arrested while police were retrieving her personal computer, phone and files from the garbage. The whole scandal leads to the question of how does a citizen deal with a legal system that is so corrupted by the money of the uber-powerful that it is in itself lawless; a legal system where more and more police and judges can be bought, given offers and orders that they can’t refuse. This is what will continue to happen as governments give waivers and tax breaks to the few uber-wealthy, the lords. Money equals power. That we are entering a state of complete lawlessness may very well be what the Repugs here, and their corporate overlords like Murdoch have been aiming for all along. It’s obvious. It’s certainly the logical end result of their policies. We are going medieval; merry olde England. Lords and serfs. Laws only written for the lords. If that’s the case and the law both there and here becomes even more of a farcical joke than it already is, then here’s my fantasy on how to deal with people like Murdoch, if only in my dark dreams.