Must-Read by Matt Taibbi

And another by Lee Smith

I am busy working on my next piece but in the meantime, though I’m sure most of you have seen it, don’t miss this great piece by Matt Taibbi on Racket:

Open Letter to the Columbia Journalism Review, on the Atrocious New York Times

“There is no fact anywhere to support the idea that recent Russiagate releases are an attempt to “distract supporters who are angry about its broken promise to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.” It’s merely something that sounds right to Times readers, probably because it’s been a talking point hammered by Democratic Party politicians like Arizona’s Mark Kelly (“I think they do not want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein”), Connecticut’s Jim Himes (“A transparent effort to distract from… refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files”), even a spokesperson for former President Barack Obama, Patrick Rodenbush (“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction”). Since when is it good practice for a paper like the Times to present partisan talking points as facts?”

The New York Times has made it abundantly clear that they’re running cover for the Obama administration and their reporters who won Pulitzers for getting a big story like this wrong. What are they gonna do, apologize? Admit they were wrong and that they suck at their jobs and that they’re being blown out by independent reporters? Nah, they’ll cuddle up inside their insulated bunker like everyone else on the Left and wait for the “bad people” to go away.

Meanwhile, don’t miss this great piece by Lee Smith:

From the piece:

Naturally, those with the most to lose, like former Barack Obama officials implicated in the biggest political scandal in U.S. history, and the media that served as their willing accomplices, are playing to block. And the instrument they’ve chosen to protect themselves is another anti-Trump conspiracy theory, this one holding that the administration is hiding information about Jeffrey Epstein to protect Trump from being implicated in his crimes. Call it Epsteingate.

Once you can see the strings, you can’t unsee them. They need Epsteingate to both weaken the MAGA base (they hope) and give their followers a sturdy bone to chew on. They demand more attacks against Trump, and here we have one. It doesn’t matter that they’ve had the story for how many years now? They’re tossing another shiny object into the churn.

Smith also rightly calls out those in MAGA who have been too quick to jump on this pile-on in hopes of bringing down Trump, like, why? If that isn’t the biggest punch to the face in political history, I don’t know what is. I could not go along with it because to me it looked like the same mass delusions of the Left I was mandated to believe in — yeah, no.

I expected more from Steve Bannon, especially a guy who is also linked with Epstein and knows that the Democrats will come for him next, maybe even MAGA. Or perhaps going so public on it protects him. I don’t know, but I can’t go along with a willful punch to the face. I can’t do it.

He closes with this:

What’s most vicious about Epsteingate is that it targets Trump supporters from inside the MAGA tent and demands they distrust the president they elected and forget everything they learned during the course of the anti-Trump operation that started with Russiagate. That is, it demands they distrust themselves. Now, just when there’s reason to be optimistic that those responsible for hunting Trump, his aides, and supporters will finally be held accountable, wolves in MAGA skin suits are running a version of Russiagate to replicate the efforts of the original Russiagate conspirators they’re protecting—and for the same reason: to get Trump.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.