Relay and amplification

I haven’t written here in a while, primarily due to the impeachment hearings taking up huge chunks of my time, but also due to focusing my writing efforts on my fiction work.

So I thought I’d take an example from Fox News where they relay and amplify Trump campaign messages instead of behaving like actual journalists, even on their “news” shows—in this case, “Fox and Friends First”.

You can see the video on the Fox News site. I tried to embed their video, but their terrible video player autoplays with no apparent way to disable it.

The framing of the piece is the “significant concerns” around FISA process, and not how the IG report completely debunks the paranoid conspiracy theory that Trump and his surrogates have been pushing for years that the FBI was out to get him, because they wanted Hillary to win or because they wanted to remove Trump when he got into office.

The IG report found that there was no political bias in efforts to surveil the President’s 2016 campaign (which, to be fair, the Fox piece leads with). It literally includes a text message from one FBI supervisory special agent (SSA) saying he “was so elated by the election”, comparing election coverage to “watching a Superbowl [sic] comeback”. When asked to clarify (this is from a footnote on page 339 of the IG report):

The SSA explained this comment to the OIG by saying that he “fully expected Hillary Clinton to walk away with the election. But as the returns [came] in…it was just energizing to me to see…[because] I didn't want a criminal to be in the White House.”

Brought in to react to the report was not an independent legal adviser, not even someone from the Heritage Foundation or even bizarre flex-shot-posting conspiracy theorist Tom Fitton, but a Trump 2020 campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis, someone whose bias should be assumed for very obvious reasons.

Let’s pick through Ms Ellis’ words:

This is absolutely chilling, and this should shock the conscience of every American. The Democrats of course are going to try to minimize this in the main-stream media—

After making a brief characterization of the report, she does not explain or elaborate on her position, but instead immediately jumps to dismiss contrary positions and to continue the long trend of dismissing the main-stream media.

—but make no mistake Rob and Jillian, this is absolutely an abuse of authority, just as the Democrats are doing with the impeachment process, just like they did with the Mueller Report. This is yet another instance where we’re seeing that the Democrats and the Obama FBI have manipulated a power of the FISA court for a purpose that was completely unlawful. To spy on American citizens, and an opposition campaign.

She then conflates the FBI actions here with Democrats actions relating to impeachment, and goes even further in implying that “the Democrats” (a political party, rather than individual actors in the FBI who may or may not have particular political afficiliats) have been somehow involved in making FISA court applications.

The implications of this would be truly terrifying, but the report finds the exact opposite:

What worries me more are the effects of Ellis’ position (which mirrors that of the Republican Party as a whole) to continue to “other” political opponents of the President, and to dismiss actions against the President as wholly politically motivated.

So when you look at the intended purpose of the FISA court, this is not it, and so we have a report that absolutely says, with clarity, that the FISA court process was abused, and that there were substantial inaccuracies in order to obtain those warrants, and in order to spy on American citizens. That is absolutely intolerable, and should never happen in the United States of America.

I am in agreement with with Ellis here. The FISA process was abused. I would go further and say that FISA has always been open to abuse. However there was no sign of political bias here.

Rob Schmitt chimes in:

You know the report—and this is what Comey was talking about, feeling vindicated—said that there was no grand conspiracy against the president here, but here’s Attorney General Bill Barr, and then John Durham, who’s doing his own investigation—we’re going to put these both up. “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.” And then John Durham comes out—and we haven’t really heard anything from him: “Based on the evidence collected to date […] we advised we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” So, Durham read at least some part of this thing, and immediately came out with a statement. What’d you make of that?

Instead of any real interrogation of their guest, Schmitt instead provides additional context from other friendly sources. One of these sources, Barr, has demonstrated repeatedly that he is not an objective arbiter of fact.

In fact, Schmitt’s entire framing is to raise something his guest would likely disagree with, and then dismiss it himself, before asking her to comment.

Ellis again:

Absolutely, and I was really happy to see that both Durham and Barr came out very strongly with this. And we have to put this in context. The Horowitz report for the Inspector General basically reads like an HR report. There are certain protocols that he’s looking at that differ between what Durham and Attorney General Bill Barr can do. So, looking forward, there’s going to be an investigation of what other abuse of process has occurred, because we know now that at least in this instance the FISA court was abused, and that should beg the question of how many other times have we seen this abuse that we don’t yet know about. And so, as Durham is going to release his report, as the AG comes out, then that’s really the next question is ‘where does this go from here?’ This is absolutely not over at all.

Ellis here points to other ongoing investigations, seeming to expect more favorable revelations in future. Jillian Mele says:

Well right, and Jenna, you know, Democrats are likely going to say something along the lines of “Well, Republicans are now going to be hanging on what Durham has to say”, but, in fairness, Durham does have a scope that’s more broad, and has more investigative powers.

Mele here repeats Schmitt’s trick of raising a possibly contrary view—in this case one that describes exactly what Ellis was doing—and then dismissing that view herself.

Ellis closes with this:

Absolutely, and he also has the handcuffs, so let’s—let’s not forget that the IG is also—again—is a lot more Human Resources-related as far as the internal protocols of the FBI and the DOJ, and this isn’t—his purview is not as expansive, and it’s not as criminal related in terms of actually coming out with charges, and the other things that both Durham and the attorney general can do. So again, this is far from over, and I think that the Democrats are trying to just minimize it in the media, but really what the American people should be very concerned about, bottom-line, is that this was an abuse of process, and we definitely need justice.

This is a somewhat confused end statement, as it seems like it’s a mishmash of points without any real clarity to any of them. But it’s live TV, she was running out of time, and it was about a thousand percent clearer than anything her boss has said, so I think she should get a bit of a pass here.

The handcuffs line is a bit dark, though. One of the major ideas in the Trump sphere is that many people have committed and/or are continuing to commit treason, often as part of some convoluted conspiracy theory, but sometimes merely by virtue of not being a toady for Trump. There are fantasies about locking up these people. Trump himself shared an image of some people, including his own deputy attorney general, locked behind bars. The handcuffs line echoes this.

So that’s it. That is the extent of their conversation about the IG report. I expect very little of televised news, and less of Fox, but this took me aback. Even with my low expectations, I would have assumed the barest of interrogation. Literally the only question is a chummy “What do you think of that?”

The purpose of such clips can only be seen as relay and amplification of messages of the GOP. That some people cannot see this speaks to the effectiveness of propaganda, generally.