ABC Treats Kamala’s 21-Year Old Misstatement about Prosecutions as News but Not Trump’s Daily Lies about His Own Crimes
As the mainstream press continues to soil itself like toddlers over Kamala Harris’ interview tonight, I was going to use this CNN piece — suggesting questions about how the VP’s stance on immigration has changed — as an example of the complete collapse of any sense of newsworthiness.
After all, Donald Trump has still never been asked, much less answered, how he plans to fulfill his promise of mass deportations, something that might be impossible without dramatic escalation of police force against both citizens and not. He hasn’t been asked how he’ll pay for it, which would be prohibitively expensive. He hasn’t asked who will do the jobs, such as in agriculture, that keep America’s cost of living relatively low. He hasn’t been asked if he’ll separate families, especially marriages empowered by Obergefell.
Trump hasn’t been asked the most basic questions about one of his only policy promises.
CNN’s Eva McKend has really good questions about immigration policy. In another place and time they’d be totally valid questions!
But given the failure by the entire press corps to ask Trump about a policy promise that would serve as — and assuredly is intended to serve as — a bridge to fascism, it is the height of irresponsibility to waste time on the shifts in Harris’ immigration views, because they don’t matter in the face of Trump’s promises to sic cops on American families in pursuit of brown people.
So that was going to be my exemplar of how completely the press corps has lost any sense of proportionality regarding what counts as news.
Then I read this piece from ABC, which makes a big deal out of the fact that in 2003 — 21 years ago!!! — some Kamala Harris campaign fliers said she prosecuted over a hundred cases, when she should have said she was involved in that many.
But during a debate held in the runup to Election Day 2003 on KGO Radio, Harris’ then-opponent, veteran criminal defense attorney Bill Fazio, accused her of misleading voters about her record as a prosecutor and deputy district attorney in California’s Alameda County.
“How many cases have you tried? Can you tell us how many serious felonies you have tried? Can you tell us one?” Fazio asked Harris, according to audio ABC News obtained of the debate, which also included then-current San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan.
“I’ve tried about 50 cases, Mr. Fazio, and it’s about leadership,” Harris responded.
Fazio then pointed out campaign literature where Harris had been claiming a more extensive prosecutorial record.
“Ms. Harris, why does your information, which is still published, say that you tried hundreds of serious felonies? I think that’s misleading. I think that’s disingenuous. I think that shows that you are incapable of leadership and you’re not to be trusted,” Fazio said. “You continue to put out information which says you have tried hundreds of serious felonies.”
[snip]
Asked this week about Harris’ prosecutorial experience before she became district attorney, a spokesperson for Harris’ presidential campaign used slightly different language to describe her record — saying she was “involved in” hundreds of cases.
This is insane!! Having prosecuted 50 felonies is a lot, for an entire career! To make a stink about this 21-year old misstatement would be unbelievable on its face.
But it is just contemptible, given the amount of lies Donald Trump tells about his own crimes that ABC lets go unmentioned.
Just as one example, check out how ABC covered Donald Trump’s August 8 Mar-a-Lago presser. In that presser, Trump seems to have falsely claimed he did oversee a peaceful transfer of power (the only lie NYT called out in its coverage of this presser). He lied about the four people who were killed that day. He lied about his role in sending his mob to the Capitol. He lied about what those mobsters chanting “Hang Mike Pence” were seeking to do. He lied about how Jan6 defendants are being treated. [All emphasis here and elsewhere my own.]
QUESTION: Mr. President, you were – you just said that it was a peaceful transfer of power last time when you left office. You didn’t (inaudible) …
TRUMP: What – what’s your question?
QUESTION: My question is you can’t (inaudible) the last time it was a peaceful transfer of power when you left office?
The second one (ph) …
TRUMP: No, I think the people that – if you look at January 6th, which a lot of people aren’t talking about very much, I think those people were treated very harshly when you compare them to other things that took place in this country where a lot of people were killed. Nobody was killed on January 6th.
But I think that the people of January 6th were treated very unfairly. And they – where – they were there to complain not through me. They were there to complain about an election. And, you know, it’s very interesting. The biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken to, and I said peacefully and patriotically, which nobody wants to say, but I said peacefully and patriotically.
Trump made a misleading crack meant to suggest that Arthur Engoron undervalued Mar-a-Lago.
TRUMP: It’s a hard room because it’s very big, if you don’t …
(LAUGHTER)
… this is worth $18 million.
Trump lied that the prosecutions against him — all of them — are politically motivated. He lied that “they” have weaponized government against him. He lied that the Florida case, in which he was investigated for the same crime as Joe Biden, was weaponized. He falsely claimed that the NY cases are controlled by DOJ.
TRUMP: Because other people have done far bigger things in see a ban [ph] and sure, it’s politically motivated. I think it’s a horrible thing they did. Look, they’ve weaponized government against me. Look at the Florida case. It was a totally weaponized case. All of these cases.
By the way, the New York cases are totally controlled out of the Department of Justice. They sent their top person to the various places. They went to the AG’s office, got that one going. Then he went to the DA’s office, got that one going, ran through it.
No, no, this is all politics, and it’s a disgrace. Never happened in this country. It’s very common that it happens, but not in our country. It happens in banana republics and third-world countries, and that’s what we’re becoming.
Trump claimed he wouldn’t have wanted to put Hillary in jail when, on his orders, DOJ investigated the Clinton Foundation for the entirety of his term and then John Durham tried to trump up conspiracy charges against her (and did bring a frivolous case against her campaign lawyer). Trump also lied about calming, rather than stoking, the “Lock her up” chants at rallies. Trump lied about what files Hillary destroyed after receiving a subpoena (and who destroyed them).
TRUMP: I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to talk about it. I think it’s a tragic story, if you want to know the truth. And I felt that with Hillary Clinton, too. You know, with Hillary Clinton, I could have done things to her that would have made your head spin. I thought it was a very bad thing, take the wife of a President of the United States and put her in jail. And then I see the way they treat me. That’s the way it goes.
But I was very protective of her. Nobody would understand that, but I was. I think my people understand it. They used to say “lock her up, lock her up,” and I’d say “just relax, please.” We won the election. I think it would be very – I think – I think it would have been horrible for our country if I – and we had her between the hammering of all of the files.
And don’t forget, she got a subpoena from the United States Congress, and then after getting the subpoena, she destroyed everything that she was supposed to get. I – I – I could – it – I didn’t think – I thought it was so bad to take her and put her in jail, the wife of a President of the United States. And then when it’s my turn, nobody thinks that way. I thought it was a very terrible thing. And she did a lot of very bad things. I’ll tell you what, she was – she was pretty evil.
But in terms of the country and in terms of unifying the country, bringing it back, to have taken her and to have put her in jail – and I think you know the things as well as I do. They were some pretty bad acts that she did.
Depending on how you count, that’s around twelve lies in one hour-long press conference. They’re proof of Trump’s abuse of the presidency, his refusal to cooperate with an investigation like Joe Biden had, his lifelong habits of fraud, and his assault on democracy.
And these are only the lies about his own (and his eponymous corporation’s) crimes! They don’t include the lies about abortion or gun laws and shootings, other lies about the law he told in that presser.
And yet ABC covered none of those lies, focusing instead on Trump’s false claims about crowd size.
Crowd size.
These aren’t the only lies about justice Trump routinely tells. He routinely lies that he “won” the documents case, that he was declared innocent or that Biden was only not prosecuted because he was too old. They don’t include the lies Trump has told about the Hunter Biden case, the Russian investigation, his actual actions in the Ukraine impeachment. Trump continues to lie about whether he sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll. He lies about his Administration’s jailing of Michael Cohen to shut him up.
Then there are Trump’s renewed false claims, in the last day, about the superseding indictment against him.
Trump lies all the time. He lies about the cases against him, about his own crime. He lies with a goal: to present rule of law as a personal grievance. Those lies go to his core unfitness to be President.
And yet, aside from some good reporting (particularly from Katherine Faulders) on these crimes, ABC never bothers to fact check Donald Trump’s lies about rule of law, not even his own prosecutions.
It is the height of irresponsibility to adopt this double standard — to ignore Trump’s corruption of rule of law while chasing a campaign exaggeration made two decades ago. It was bad enough that the press corps sits there, docilely, as Trump corrupts rule of law every time he opens his mouth. But to then try to make a campaign issue about whether Kamala Harris was involved in or prosecuted 50 cases decades ago?
ABC claims that Kamala Harris made misstatements. But their own failure to report on Trump’s false claims is a far, far greater misrepresentation of the truth, and it’s a misrepresentation of the truth they repeat every day.
CNN’s interview airs at 9:00 p.m. ET (2:00 a.m. Ireland local time).
You may wish to read CNN’s advance coverage before watching the interview:
Don’t forget what CNN considers THE most important question of the evening…
Will Kamala Harris appoint a Republican to her cabinet in the name of bipartisanship?
When have ANY of the MSM outlets asked Donald Trump (or any Repub candidate) a similar question?
The president and her reports hire people to get the job done. They are also responsible for training the current and next generation of American leaders in every field of government service.
The GOP is defunct. It’s a Trump cult. It’s members are not interested in serving any interests but Trump’s and their own. There’s no reason for Harris’s team to hire any of them. It would be an own goal.
“Trump has still never been asked, much less answered, how he plans to fulfill his promise of mass deportations”
Another question I’d like to see him asked, along those same lines, is “Why do we have an illegal immigration problem at all? You were President for four years. In 2016 you said you would Build a Wall, have Mexico pay for it, and end illegal immigration. You had four years to do so. If we do still have problems at the border, isn’t that largely your failure?”
Excellent point. I have been asking the same questions Marcy asks above, since Stephen Miller came up with his wet dream of imprisoning all brown people. How much is this going to cost? How do you plan to transport 10 million people? There aren’t enough rail cars to move that many people? What is the casualty estimate? How many will die? How many will be injured or maimed? Do these lunatics think 10 million people are going to lay down their work tools, punch out at work and willingly get on a train to God-knows-where, without a fight? Count on massive bloodshed, were it to come to this. Trump should be asked these questions point blank and not allow him to escape without answering.
They won’t bother to answer your questions though you can be certain they have a solution in mind.
I’ve mentioned it on DailyKos; the cheap solution will be that Trump’s deportation police will carry a skin tone card around, and if your skin tone is too dark, you’re illegal.
Oh I don’t think their solution would be limited to skin color.
We’ll end up divided like plain-belly sneetches and sneetches with stars on thars.
That is how fascism tends to go… But I suspect it’ll be skin color to start with the Big Trump Illegal Roundup.
The press can restart with the role Peter Thiel’s Palantir played during the first Trump administration fiascos.
And in Gaza.
As with the 2020 COVID-19 response, the bar for getting paid will be low. The psychological “victories” for targeted hate, high.
This might be a better, and more current link, than the second one above.
The NY Times’ lead piece right now on the Arlington Cemetery assault is an “analysis” by Jonathan Weisman spinning it as a strategic move by Trump’s campaign. He broadcasts the views of GOP consultants and writes off documented cases – including by his own colleagues – of Trump’s known disgraceful actions toward veterans as merely “accusations.”
They’re furious that this story may legitimately have legs, and they’re trying to manufacture a narrative that it’s nothing more than a standard issue campaign maneuver, instead of a gross assault on centuries of tradition from US leaders.
“Analysis” is the word the NY Times editors use to rationalize running poorly sourced opinion section pieces under the guise of being objective news. And Weisman is the dolt who angrily dismissed John Lewis as not being a true Southerner, because of course in his opinion hundreds of years of roots in the South don’t count if someone is, well, you know.
Donald Trump abused his visit to Arlington – hallowed ground he avoided while president – for personal and electoral gain, and apparently broke the law doing it. That’s the lede, as is that Mr. Bonespurs has consistently done such things throughout his career.
To hide his crime – he knew the rules as president, his staff were informed about the rules before and after they arrived – Trump’s staff invented the claim that the Arlington administrator who asked them to abide by the rules was “mentally ill.” That’s defamation and adds another gross violation of the rules to the endless chain of them Trump carries around with him like Marley’s ghost.
To circle back to MW’s point about how asymetrical coverage of the campaigns can be, the press is fixating on trivia out of GOP oppo research like Walz once issuing a flier mentioning an honor from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce instead of the *Junior* Chamber of Commerce.
Meanwhile Vance lied about the Trump campaign not issuing a campaign ad with footage from Arlington Cemetery, when of course they dropped one today.
But what’s happening with outlets like the Times is they are taking denials out of the Trump camp as the controlling fact, as though he deserves any benefit of the doubt when denies the suckers and losers statements that John Kelly has confirmed. Vance and Trump on Arlington Cemetery will be treated as insignificant because they lie in their denials, while trivia on Harris and Walz gets ridiculous scrutiny.
News portals or bottlenecks, like Xitter, are making it hard to disseminate reporting that does challenge Trump’s behavior and lies. Even the venerable, milquetoast NPR, it seems, is being censored by Elmo’s Xitter.
Apparently, if a Xitter user clicks on a link to an NPR story about the Arlington fiasco, they receive a stern warning that the link may be “spammy” or “unsafe.” Not a normal preface to an NPR story. I wonder how Trump is accounting for what’s become a litany of campaign aid from Elmo.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-arlington-scandal-npr-x/
Unsurprisingly, that Arlington staffer reasonably fears retaliation from Trump’s staff and supporters. If Trump wins, her name will be on the list and her job will go.
Trump is addicted to creating an aura of intimidation, to keep at bay prosecutors, creditors, competitors, regulators, and those engaged in due diligence. Or, it used to. In a Fascist state, it’s essential to generate the self-censorship people learn to engage in to keep them employed and out of trouble. Writ large, it helps create compliance, chaos, and accountability-free rule.
https://www.salon.com/2024/08/29/woman-reported-sickening-arlington-incident-fears-retaliation-from-his-supporters/
I will guarantee that one of the things deliberately buried by the editors at big outlets is reporting on threats against their reporters, and what, if anything, management is doing to protect reporters and encourage them to go after the difficult stories.
You know that every time Trump blasts a reporter by name, like he’s done recently with Jon Karl, there are serious and credible threats. When editors deal with it in the background only for their own reporters, and have a general policy of silence for the reporting community as a whole, it has a warping effect on coverage. And it leaves audiences in the dark about what’s going on.
Complicity at the top levels in the name of objectivity is helping to ruin their coverage.
Donald Trump will do anything to grab a headline, including violating the rules, the law, and the rights of families whose loved ones are buried at Arlington. He gets off on it.The press, however, should not let him get away with it. And it’s not Harris//Walz’s job to do it for them.
There is a well-defined story here, and a well-defined pattern of behavior behind it. His endless lies; his lifelong abuse of rules and the law; his abuse of the leadership, and rank and file of the military; his disdain for awards for bravery, sacrifice, and meritorious service (as opposed to his self-awarded golf trophies). The stream of acolytes, like Steven Cheung and Stephen Miller, who help him get away with it. It shouldn’t be hard to build a good story, if one were wanted.
All of that is appalling.
I hope that the official concerned is somewhat comforted by the statement issued by the Army which is reproduced here
https://x.com/DanLamothe/status/1829172400589812210
It is extraordinary that the Army was put in this position by Trump and has pushed back.
It is typical of Trump and his thuggish crew that a fiasco like this has occurred. No doubt they thought the wreath laying would be an opportunity to turn the tables on negative coverage he has received for denegrating the military. But they couldn’t help but be themselves and crassly overstep boundaries of decency and respect. And when called out for it respond with bullying, lies and manipulation.
MAGAts won’t care, but everyone else should see, but for main stream media downplaying the controversy.
And then Chris LaCivita counters the Army pushback by claiming they’re “hacks”.
We’re supposed to ignore the fact all the persons who’ve spoken to the media in defense of Trump at Arlington have been campaign personnel.
Trump can’t even be bothered to produce a non-campaign staffer to defend his alleged non-campaign appearance.
80 year-old Viet Nam vet here. In our outfit, higher ranking chargers, who put others at risk before themselves, got a simple message: When you really need help, don’t expect it.
Yes, its similar to Jan 6, when the campaign was told by NPS that they couldn’t hold a rally near Congress when its in session. Yet he still told followers to head over to the Capitol. I have no doubt that ANC made the rules clear to them. But they, as always, believe they are above the rules /law
I’m curious as to what entity would investigate and prosecute the federal law(s) broken. Hopefully not the FEC.
Donald Trump is abusive.
One hopes that Harris and Walz have been briefed on a list of the press conference lies to turn in CNN and ABC and whomever else’s faces. “Did you not have a representative at Mar-a-Lago for on August 8th? When TFG said that no one died on January 6th, despite several Capitol Police Officers being murdered by the mob, did your representative call out the lie?” Whomever is doing the interview won’t say, “Of course not, we support TFG and are good little doggies” but will probably not be well-prepared for the question. “That wasn’t me, just someone else who works for my employer and is a very serious journalist like me, using the same standards and ethics.”
Very interesting. Redirect questions to the debate hosts to call out Trump’s bullshit, while hopefully precluding Trump from interrupting. I’d like to see that.
Pretty sure Joe Biden tried that technique with Lester Holt, who indeed struggled with the response… And then NBC spend the next few days talking about how the President was too “combative”…
Prosecuting 50 felonies for a career is not a lot in state court. For example, best practices guideines in the state where I work indicate full time public defenders can handle 150 felony cases a year.
If anyone wasn’t previously sure that public defenders are overworked and underpaid, that last comment confirms it!
Prosecution and defense counsel have very different jobs. The workload also depends on the seriousness of the felonies. One hundred fifty felony cases may sound reasonable – I doubt many PD think so. But if you plead out over 95% of them, your workload is rather different than if you take the same number to trial. I understood Harris’s number to be cases taken to trial.
That’s less than 14 hours per case, on average, for a standard year of labor. Two days minus breaks/lunches if being an attorney was comparable to shift work, which of course it is not.
My assumption is that private criminal defense attorneys spend a lot more than 14 hours per case, on average.
What are the assumptions you’re making? Because Deputy DAs do a lot more than just trials.
The org chart for the LA County DA’s office:
https://da.lacounty.gov/about/organizational-chart
In a small sense, this could be off-topic, but in a larger sense of image vs. reality and what types of topics news organizations choose to pursue…
Again today, the republican candidate is speaking in front of a small crowd of workers (a better organized backdrop than previously, with their hard hats and safety vets) of a Great Lakes state industrial business. But that business is private-equity owned, and that private-equity owner has ties to a NYC/Palm Beach scion.
The scion: Ogden Phipps The Vanity Fair archive includes a 1986 feature by Dominick Dunne “The Women of Palm Beach” that manages to reference the Phipps, the Kennedys, the at the time newly-purchased Mar-A-Lago, Leslie Wexner (-> Epstein) and overt anti-Semitism.
The private-equity firm:
Major news organizations do not know how to deal with an ex president who lies all the time. They call those false statement, give me a fucking break. Literally if he is talking he is lying.
The Judicial Branch as well does not know how to deal with an ex president who literally is a one man crime wave. The Judicial Branch has failed America by not rendering a verdict in 4 years for trying to over turn an election. If it were not for state courts and civil suits TFG would not be touched by the rule of law. Literally the conservative members of the SC had to fabricate out of whole cloth, laws of immunity, that do not exist in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or the Declaration Independence with either “Textualist or Originalist” interpretations of those documents or any writings of that period discussing those documents. What a ruse the SC has become.
TFG is a Nation Security risk and should be treated as such, he should have been incarcerated until all the missing documents are accounted for and recovered. Be damned his violent MAGA stooges.
Back when BMAZ was moderating he asked me if I was prepared for what would happen if TFG was incarcerated, my response was yes, but I am not prepared for what happens if they don’t incarcerate him. I think we now should see the latter option is much more fraught with damage to our republic than if he were in an orange jumpsuit than where we stand now.
“But their own (ABC’s) failure to report on Trump’s false claims is a far, far greater misrepresentation of the truth, and it’s a misrepresentation of the truth they repeat every day.” I agree. How did we get here? Why all the journalism-school failing grades re news investigations and reporting?
A bit of a perfect storm, I think. Lopsided favoritism happens when there’s a collapse in the investigative news business model. I don’t know if one can determine causality, but I know that network TV/mainstream print news used to be possible because it was financed by all sorts of advertisers (“ACME soap suds” paid for print and linear TV ads next to “The Loveboat.” Those suds ads paid for the hard news operations, even though they never appeared next to a story about famine or a bombing).
Today, for-profit news’s sustainability is not only declining against streaming, but Disney owns ABC News, Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN. The days of being an independent cost-center churning out A-level journalism are over. Say what you will about The NYT’s, but their conscious effort to become a lifestyle hub with some news thrown in has kept them in the black while others are defunct.
I looked up Will Steakin’s bio (your ABC reference). God love him, he used to be a photographer at Lifetouch and a specialist at Apple. My people! Today? He has a byline and a living wage gig with a major media outlet. Only a small percentage of journalists make a living wage. I mean it when I say I’m happy for him. He won the lottery in this shifting landscape and I bet a lot of others with big media bylines feel like they won it, too.
Why aren’t journalism 101 questions being asked by these journalists? While it’s easy to see how to do it properly, it’s a different, big knot entirely figuring how to get paid for holding power accountable at the same time your entertainment bosses work business and legislative deals.
We get told ad nauseum that if you deliver an inferior product, someone will bring a better one and cut you out of the market. So when we see multiple news organizations failing in the same way, and not only that but declining to call out their rivals as an opportunity to corner a market, we should start being very suspicious that this isn’t a bug, but a feature
Look-See
Say, it’s only the 4th Estate
Failing by an editor’s plea
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If they believed look-see
Yes, if only a can-do try
Spanning over a corrupt spree
Would set aside the make-believe
And then believed look-see
With hand in glove
It’s a honky tonk parade
With hand in glove
It’s a melody played in a penny arcade
It’s a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If they believed look-see
It’s phony, it’s plain to see
How better it would be
If they believed look-see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQF-zKFNamg
“Ella Fitzgerald – It’s Only A Paper Moon – 1967-03-26 – New York, NY (Live – SBD – Best Ever)”
Deputy DAs mostly get people to take deals. There are also more than a few of them. (Alameda County is not that small!)
I was born in Alameda County. Moved early on but still kept up with people. It’s surreal that she’s under attack as soft and a weak record. I have multiple contacts who claim she was too aggressive. Even one….very extreme friend who may not vote for her because she was so effective at putting people behind bars.
Not only did she misstate the number of felonies she prosecuted, but she (gasp!), omitted a summer job at McDonald’s from her resume. The Free Beacon will get to the bottom of this!
https://x.com/peterjhasson/status/1829105024393252971
As to “who will do the jobs, such as in agriculture”, didn’t he answer that without being asked at the NABJ Convention?
With Michael Cohen, Trump and Barr did things to him that should make everybody’s head spin.
After being released to home confinement due to covid, they were nice enough to put him back in jail, in solitary confinement, for daring to say he would write a tell-all book on Trump.
flexghost on Mastodon has a thread of clips from this evening’s interview.
https://mstdn.social/@[email protected]/113048321514883246
The idiot questions the minions of the billionaire press ask will not influence people to change their minds. At most they discourage turnout. That hurts Dems. Rs have no compunction about defending the demented old criminal or voting to inflict him on us and the rest of the world.
Absolutely none of this is relevant to this election. In another year, against a plausible candidate, they might be of at least academic interest, or act as indicators of the quality of thought. This year? No. Trump is not a plausible candidate to anyone except Qrazy people, racists, and nihilists. Oh, and a dwindling group of people who think he’s a Vessel Of The Almighty. Sister Josella would slap them up the side of their heads.