Matt Taibbi | CNN's Debate Performance Was Villainous and Shameful

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Matt Taibbi | CNN's Debate Performance Was Villainous and Shameful

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Taibbi writes: "It's elite messaging in numbing quantity, to the point where you feel like screaming, 'We get it!'"

The 24-hour network combines a naked political hit with a cynical ploy for ratings

NN debate moderator Abby Phillip asked Bernie Sanders in the Tuesday debate in Des Moines:

“CNN reported yesterday — and Senator Sanders, Senator Warren confirmed in a statement — that, in 2018, you told her you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?”

Not “did you say that,” but “why did you say that?”

Sanders denied it, then listed the many reasons the story makes no sense: He urged Warren herself to run in 2016, campaigned for a female candidate who won the popular vote by 3 million votes, and has been saying the opposite in public for decades. “There’s a video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States,” he said.

Phillip asked him to clarify: He never said it? “That is correct,” Sanders said. Phillip turned to Warren and deadpanned: “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”

That “when” was as transparent a media “fuck you” as we’ve seen in a presidential debate. It evoked memories of another infamous CNN ambush, when Bernard Shaw in 1988 crotch-kicked Mike Dukakis with a question about whether he’d favor the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife, Kitty.

This time, the whole network tossed the mud. Over a 24-hour period before, during, and after the debate, CNN bid farewell to what remained of its reputation as a nonpolitical actor via a remarkable stretch of factually dubious reporting, bent commentary, and heavy-handed messaging.

The cycle began with a “bombshell” exposé by CNN reporter MJ Lee. Released on the eve of the debate, Lee reported Warren’s claim that Sanders told her a woman couldn’t win in a December 2018 meeting.

Lee treated the story as fact, using constructions such as, “Sanders responded that he did not think a woman could win,” and “the revelation that Sanders expressed skepticism that Warren could win.”

Lee said “the conversation” opened a window into “the role of sexism and gender inequality in politics”: The conversation also illustrates the skepticism among not only American voters but also senior Democratic officials that the country is ready to elect a woman as president …

Although Lee said she based the story on “the accounts of four people,” they were “two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter,” and “two people familiar with the meeting.” There were only two people in the room, Sanders and Warren. Lee’s “four people” actually relied on just one source, Warren.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same construction that’s driven countless other shaky stories in the past, from WMD reports to Russiagate speculations. An unconfirmable hearsay story is conveyed by one source, who gives the reporter the numbers of two or three other people in the office who’ve heard the same tale from the same place. Voilà: A one-source pony is now factual “according to several people familiar with the matter.”

CNN hyped the “feud” between Sanders and Warren the whole day before the debate. “This is a heavyweight match tonight. This is going to be frisky, it’s going to be competitive,” former DNC chair and commentator Terry McAuliffe said. This was the ratings-humping aspect of this gross episode.

On The Lead With Jake Tapper — where the anchor was forced to play devil’s advocate and bring up the “did it even happen?” question — there was scoffing about the senator’s denials. Here’s an exchange between Tapper and Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic strategist:

Jake Tapper: Hilary, let me start with you. The explanation that we heard from the Sanders campaign last night was basically, ‘Look, they got their wires crossed.’… What Senator Sanders was trying to say was Trump will exploit misogyny and sexism and make it difficult for a woman to win.
Hilary Rosen: Yes.
Jake Tapper: He wasn’t saying he doesn’t believe a woman will win.
Hilary Rosen: What they were saying is the little lady misunderstood. [Laughter]

The debate preview show hosted by Anderson Cooper and featuring the likes of McAuliffe, former Clinton comms person Jess McIntosh, and former senior adviser to Barack Obama David Axelrod, was full of hand-wringing about how the Democratic Party is moving too far to the left. Panelists worried aloud about how more “moderate” candidates like Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and Amy Klobuchar (the recipient of obsessive attention within media circles despite a comically consistent absence of real-people support) might get traction through the debate.

A consistent question was whether Warren would “engage” Sanders on the “women can’t win” story, or whether someone else like Klobuchar might:

Gloria Borger: In the fight between, you know, between Warren and Sanders over gender and whether he told her that a woman couldn’t win, I don’t think they’re going to engage on that tonight. That took place —
Anderson Cooper: Governor McAuliffe was out here earlier saying that he thinks they may not engage on it, but that Senator Klobuchar …
David Axelrod: Yes, I think that’s right. I think that’s right.

Sanders wasn’t always mentioned by name in exchanges about the party’s unfortunate extremist drift, but we know who Axelrod was talking about when he suggested that Klobuchar or Buttigieg might say, “We can talk about Medicare for All. But here on planet Earth …”

Of course, there were times when Sanders was mentioned, like when Dana Bash offered this gibberishy mouthful about the “commander-in-chief test”:

Do [voters] want a Bernie Sanders anti-interventionist, or do they want somebody who has experience and who has — as I’m sure you will hear behind us — voted for things like the Iraq war and maybe has made other decisions that he doesn’t regret and has been a leader on national security, but also has some that he does?

CNN factory-produces these banal meanderings, worrying over the chances of establishment candidates and how they might overcome the irrational urges of the electorate (“It’s head or heart,” as Bash put it). It’s elite messaging in numbing quantity, to the point where you feel like screaming, “We get it!”

This continued during the debate, with the chryon featuring questions like, “How will [Sanders] avoid bankrupting the country?” Or: “Does Sanders owe voters an explanation of how much his health plan will cost them and the country?”

After Phillip pulled the “When Sanders said that horrible thing we can’t prove happened, how did you feel?” trick with Warren, she moved to Klobuchar, who by coincidence was the person panelists predicted might “go for the jugular” over this story: “Senator Klobuchar,” Phillip said, “What do you say to people who say a woman can’t win the election?” Again, the sleazy construction of the question presupposed that someone actually did say it.

I wondered online how long it would take for someone after the debate to declare Klobuchar the winner. It turned out to be the very first comment on Anderson Cooper’s wrap-up show, from Gloria Borger: “Well, I think that Amy Klobuchar tried her hardest to distinguish herself as a pragmatist who can tell the rest of the Democrats to get real.”

Then McIntosh said this: I think what Bernie forgot was that this isn’t a he said/she said story. This is a reported-out story that CNN was part of breaking. So, to have him just flat-out say no, I think wasn’t — wasn’t nearly enough to address that for the women watching.

Poor Anderson Cooper was forced to intercede and point out that it literally is a he said/she said story (and not remotely “reported out,” I might add). Soon after, Bash said it was an “out-of-the-park moment” for Warren, adding that the story was a litmus test for gender solidarity:

And so she is trying to use that moment and explain why, not just a woman, but her as the woman in that position, should be really seriously considered. And it was a clever way of doing it because she also brought in the other woman on the stage, almost — a sister in solidarity. 

Rounding out the cycle of completely predictable messaging, Van Jones said, “There was a banana peel sent out there for Bernie to step on when he came with his comments about women. I think Bernie stepped on it and slid around.” He concluded, “[Warren] knocked that moment out of the park.”

After the debate, Trump fans online were in full schadenfreude mode, crowing about how “the left” finally understood that CNN really is fake news. Overall, #CNNisgarbage trended and #fuckCNN wasn’t far behind.

If the network doesn’t see trouble in this, it’s delusional. Voters on both sides of the aisle have changed since the Bernard Shaw days. They pay more attention to media manipulations, and it doesn’t get much more manipulative than punching above the facts to advance transparent political narratives, which is a new and accepted habit in the commercial news landscape.

We’ll find out in Iowa and New Hampshire what Democratic Party voters believe about that Warren-Sanders meeting, but that grimy story pales in comparison to the bigger picture: Episodes like this are why people hate the media.

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Hyde and Parnas. (image: The Daily Beast)

Lev Parnas: Mike Pence Canceled Ukraine Visit in Quid Pro Quo
Betsy Swan, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "'It was never about corruption,' Parnas told Rachel Maddow. 'It was strictly about Burisma, which includes Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.'"
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Supporters hold up their hats during a rally held by President Trump on March 15, 2017 in Nashville, Tenn. (photo: Andrea Morales/Getty Images)

Wealthy Donors Now Allowed to Give Over Half a Million Dollars Each to Support Trump's Reelection
Michelle Ye Hee Lee, The Washington Post
Lee writes: "Donors to President Trump's reelection are now permitted to give nearly $600,000 per year, boosting the president's ability to raise money from wealthy supporters months before the general election contest begins in earnest."

Under an agreement announced Wednesday by Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, a single donor can give as much as $580,600 this year to support Trump’s reelection — higher than the committee’s previous caps on contributions.

That means the Republican National Committee’s biggest contributors could end up having shelled out as much as $1.6 million to support Trump’s 2020 reelection over the course of the four-year election cycle, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Trump has raised and spent more money than his predecessors, and this change is expected to give him a further fundraising advantage. Trump entered 2020 with nearly $200 million in cash, party officials said — a huge war chest that outstrips the resources of his Democratic opponents as they head into primary contests.

It is the latest example of the dramatically expanding fundraising power of national party committees, made possible through pivotal legal changes in 2014 that loosened restrictions on individual contributions. While a person can give a maximum of $5,600 to Trump’s campaign committee, a donor can legally give 103 times more in support of Trump’s reelection through the new joint fundraising arrangement.

Trump Victory, which had been raising money for Trump 2020 and the RNC, was able to raise the top giving level by signing up 22 state parties to raise money together, which allows the committee to raise its contribution cap. The number of state parties supported through Trump Victory could expand, raising the possibility that the maximum contribution could grow even larger.

Both major political parties have taken advantage of this maneuver. Hillary Clinton was the first presidential candidate to establish a joint fundraising committee when she was a front-runner in the 2016 Democratic primaries, collecting up to $356,100 per year per donor for her White House bid, with the Democratic National Committee and 32 state parties. Trump and the RNC then set up their own joint effort, Trump Victory, asking donors for as much as $449,400 in 2016.

These joint committees have allowed presidential candidates to collect massive sums from their party’s top donors. The Hillary Victory Fund raised $530 million in 2015 and 2016, federal filings show. Trump Victory raised $108 million in the 2016 election cycle.

“With this agreement, the RNC, Trump campaign, and state parties will continue our massive fundraising advantage which allows for the largest data-driven ground game in Party history,” Mandi Merritt, an RNC spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Try as they may, Democrats can’t compete.”

The new agreement highlights the GOP’s efforts to boost Trump’s reelection war chest with an infusion of big donations — a shift from Trump’s first run for president, when he criticized opponents for relying on the help of rich contributors.

Trump also is supported by a second joint fundraising group, Trump Make America Great Again Committee. The committee can receive as much as $360,600 per donor per year but is typically used to raise smaller donations.

Trump’s reelection campaign, the RNC and the two joint fundraising committees together have already scooped up a staggering $463 million in 2019, party officials said. In comparison, then-President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party raised roughly $220 million in 2011, the year before Obama’s reelection.

On Wednesday, former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle was announced as the national chair of Trump Victory’s Finance Committee — an effort to draw on Guilfoyle’s star power to recruit a national network of well-connected fundraisers to bring in large checks to the committee.

“The ability to accept the mega MAGA check is another nail in the eventual Democratic nominee’s coffin — and it’s a big nail,” said Dan Eberhart, a prominent Trump donor. “When the Democrats finally settle on a nominee in July, the lucky candidate is going to be nipping at the heels of a giant mastiff.”

The Democratic National Committee has been raising money through a joint fundraising committee as well, soliciting an even higher maximum check of $865,000 per year to raise money for the Democratic Party and the 50 state parties and the Democratic Party of the District of Columbia. But because there is no nominee yet, none of the current Democratic candidates can benefit from that fundraising.

The Democratic presidential field together has outraised pro-Trump committees in 2019, which Democratic strategists say is a sign of mounting financial support that will coalesce for the eventual nominee. But much of the money raised by the candidates so far is likely to be spent by the time the nominee is chosen, leaving the nominee and the party needing to ramp up fundraising efforts quickly after the convention.

The DNC raised $28 million in the final three months of 2019, officials said Tuesday. Between the DNC and the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund, the party raised $95 million for 2019, officials said Tuesday — which they said was greater than the annual total in 2015 when the party held the White House.

The official fundraising figures from both parties will be made public by the Federal Election Commission on Jan. 31.

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Both houses of Virginia's legislature voted to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, but the ERA's future is uncertain: Its original deadline elapsed decades ago. Here, an ERA supporter reacts to a Virginia Senate committee's vote to advance the ERA amendment last week. (photo: Steve Helber/AP)

Virginia Ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment, Decades After the Deadline
Bill Chappell, NPR
Chappell writes: "Virginia became the pivotal 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment after its Senate and House of Delegates voted Wednesday to approve the change to the U.S. Constitution."
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Pastor Franz Gerber of Praise Chapel Community church on 2 January 2019 in Crandon, Wisconsin. (photo: Lauren Justice/The Guardian)

Where Christian Evangelicals Worship Trump More Than Jesus
Chris McGreal, Guardian UK
McGreal writes: "Pastor Franz Gerber is worried that so many members of his congregation appear to idolize Donald Trump more than they worship Jesus."
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A home on the Hopi Nation that has had to transition from coal to wood for heating. (photo: Melissa Sevigny/Knau)

Coal Mine's Closure Leaves Hopi, Navajo Homes Without Heat This Winter

Melissa Sevigny, KNAU

Sevigny writes: "For decades tribal members relied on Kayenta coal to heat their homes, and now it's their first winter without reliable or affordable fuel."

he Kayenta coal mine in northeastern Arizona shut down last year, along with the power plant it supplied. Coal from that mine used to light up Las Vegas and Los Angeles and supply the electricity to pump water to Phoenix and Tucson. Those cities have been able to turn to other sources of energy. Not so on the Hopi and Navajo Nations. For decades tribal members relied on Kayenta coal to heat their homes, and now it’s their first winter without reliable or affordable fuel. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports on what Hopi community leaders call a devastating crisis.

The Kayenta Mine is a 2 hour drive from Monica Nuvasma’s home in Shongopovi on Second Mesa. Before the mine closed she used to go there to collect coal for her grandmother. She recalls waiting in line for 10 hours, “and when we got to the entrance the mine had closed by 3 o’clock. There were many families who were leaving before midnight the day before just to be parked in line.”

But Nuvamsa says the drive was worth it. Two or three truckloads of coal could warm a house all winter. “Coal economically works better because it burns longer, you don’t need as much in order to heat your home,” she says.”

Losing coal has led to a public health crisis on the Hopi Nation. There are few other options for heating homes. Propane and space heaters are expensive, and many houses don’t have electricity. Trees are scarce; the nearest places to buy or cut wood are hours away by car.

Nuvasma says, “I think that that’s a really difficult thing for most people to grasp, when they just turn their thermostat or push a button, and they get the heating.”

One nonprofit, Red Feather Development Group, is trying to ease the hardship created by Kayenta’s closure. The group runs workshops on alternative heating options, and hires contractors to weatherize houses so they hold the heat better. Joe Seidenberg, the executive director, says, “There are people that are living with extreme housing disparities, with major holes in their roofs, with cardboard windows, that… are at a real risk for freezing to death.”

Seidenberg says Red Feather installed 5 solar powered furnaces and weatherized or made repairs on 91 homes last year on Hopi and Navajo. But the group is limited by funding and has a long waitlist. Kayenta’s closure affects 9,000 people on Hopi and 170,000 on Navajo.

“It is truly an injustice that this is happening in the United States of America,” Seidenberg says.

One of Red Feather’s customers is Chelsea Sekakuku. Contractors add insulation and fix broken windows in her 80-year-old stone house in Kykotsmovi Village on Third Mesa. Sekakuku burns wood in her coal stove now. “I’m having to get up twice a night to check the fire, make sure it’s still going. I’m having to chop wood beforehand, in the morning, in the evening.”

It takes Sekakuku and her three children a full day to gather a truckload of wood, which only lasts one week. “It’s just a lot of physical work,” she says. “And not everyone is able to afford wood, but it’s a necessity now.”

Melissa Alcala is the community service administrator for the Village of Tewa on First Mesa. She started a new program this winter in response to Kayenta’s closure to get regular deliveries of wood from the White Mountain Apache Timber Company.

Workers chop the timber into small sizes called Soh’so wood, the Hopi word for grandmother. Alcala explains, “We cut them up into Soh’so woods, so they’re not heavy to lift. We want to make it as easy as possible for elders to keep warm.”

The village sells the wood for $240 a cord, but Alcala says elders get a supply for free, “because some of them are burning their clothes now. They’re burning weeds … It kills me to not be able to help. However I only service this village.”

Some Hopi blame the tribal government for not preparing better for Kayenta’s closure. But Vice Chairman Clark Tenakhongva says the U.S. government bears responsibility for forcing Hopi to mine coal that made the Southwest’s cities flourish, while the reservation remains in poverty. The Hopi Nation lost 80 percent of its tribal budget when coal royalties ceased.

Tenakhongva says, “I’m just hoping, just hoping, that we do not lose anybody throughout this season to any kind of exposure.” He says this winter many must choose between eating and keeping warm.

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Berbak-Sembilang biosphere reserve in South Sumatra. (photo: UNESCO)

Two Islands Vanish, Four More May Soon Sink, Walhi Blames Environmental Problems
Yulia Savitri, The Jakarta Post
Savitri writes: "Two small islands in South Sumatra have disappeared as a result of rising sea levels driven by climate change, while four other islands are already on the brink of vanishing, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) has claimed."

The province’s Betet Island and Gundul Island ─ which technically fell under the administration of Banyuasin regency ─ have submerged, currently sitting 1 meter and 3 meters below sea level, respectively, according to Walhi data.

“These islands were uninhabited. One of the islands, Betet, is a part of Berbak-Sembilang National Park,” Walhi South Sumatra executive director Hairul Sobri said on Tuesday.

Should there be no significant efforts to address the ever-rising oceans, four other islands in the area with elevations of less than 4 meters above sea level could follow suit and disappear sooner or later, Hairul said.

The four are Burung Island, the elevation of which is currently at sea level; Kalong Island and Salah Namo Island, both of which are currently 2 meters above sea level; and Kramat Island, which is 3 meters above sea level.

According to Walhi, there are currently 23 small islands located off the eastern coast of South Sumatra’s Banyuasin. Some of the islands are uninhabited, while some ─ including Salah Namo Island ─ have people living on them.

Climate change-driven rising sea levels, which come with further warming of the earth, particularly threaten archipelagic countries like Indonesia, where millions of people currently live in low-lying coastal areas spread across some 17,000 islands.

Syahrul, head of the neighborhood unit in Salah Namo Island, said that they already knew that the rising seas could submerge their island.

People who lived in the island have moved their houses tens of meters away from their original place where their houses were first built, he said.

Syahrul said most residents moved to the island in 1970 to have a better life by planting rice and becoming fishermen. Back in 1990 there were large fields in front of people’s houses where they could exercise and children could play together, but things are different now.

“There is no field in front of our houses. Many of the people have also moved from here,” he said.

Head of Berbak-Sembilang National Park Area II, Affan Absori, confirmed separately that Betet Island had gone underwater and that the island had experienced sinking for some time.

Berbak-Sembilang National Park, which was declared a world biosphere reserve in 2018 by UNESCO, is home to mangrove areas as well as being rich flora and fauna, including the Sumatran tiger and kingfisher birds.

“It has sunk because the seal level has risen and because of the tsunami. But there is no significant disruption for the animals [in the national park],” Affan told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

According to Walhi, a tropical country like Indonesia is more vulnerable to the effect of global warming, especially in South Sumatra where people depended a lot on coal, oil and natural gas, thus contributing to emissions of greenhouse gases.

Other factors that have caused the sinking include dependence on chemical fertilizers in the agricultural sector, which causes land subsidence and drainage basin damage, as well as excessive groundwater extraction for industry, Hairul said.

Although South Sumatra has 1.2 million hectares of peatland ─ which functions as a natural carbon sink and absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere ─ amounting to some 15 percent of land area, development activities, land conversion and forest fires have caused the peatlands to dry up and become damaged.

South Sumatra Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) recorded that of the 361,889-ha area burned by land and forest fires in 2019, 60 percent comprised peat ecosystems. (hol)

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