For the Record: A Very Sad Thing, supplement

 

Chris Cillizza, CNN opinionist, covered the Trump interview with Hugh Hewitt that we dealt with as a Literary Corner piece. He covered more of the story than I did, but did a shockingly bad job of it:

Cillizza is baffled in part because he's an idiot who doesn't do his homework. For example, the story of the Trump-Baradar phone call isn't news; it was well reported at the time, first by the Taliban, then State Department, then Trump himself. https://t.co/bWuvaLRkqF

— Wiggles of Weimar (@Yastreblyansky) August 28, 2021

If Chris Ran the Circus

 

The Spotted Atrocious.

The Most Chris Cillizza Thing Ever:

If you ever held any hope that the House select committee on the January 6 US Capitol riot might produce a report that would help us understand what happened in the lead-up to that day and, in so doing, provide us avenues to keeping it from happening again, you should give up on those hopes now.

The reason? Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision Wednesday to reject two of the five nominees -- Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana -- put forward by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to serve on the panel.

Absolutely! How could be possibly come to understand what happened in the lead-up to January 6 without Gym Jordan flapping his arms, barking like a dog, and running back and forth on the tabletops? We completely depend on Gym Jordan and Jim Banks for our ability to understand virtually anything!

Wait, who is Jim Banks? He's somebody who's gone from backing the Mueller investigation during his first term

Cillizza's New Fashion Sense

Drawing by Red Cheeks Factory.

Re Chris Cillizza's essay, "Donald Trump is producing the greatest reality show ever", and the outraged response from Soledad O'Brien, formerly of CNN:

This terrible analysis by @CillizzaCNN is in part why people hate the media. https://t.co/xxRcAspyC1

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) March 7, 2018

It's not accurate. It's not funny. It's not clever. It's not analysis. It's facile. It shows an actual lack of understanding of reality tv (can't believe I'm typing that). It's mediocre. It's a time when viewers need to understand what's going on at the highest levels of govt.

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) March 7, 2018

I'm kind of baffled by the audience members talking about how O'Brien has "destroyed" or "totally owned" Cillizza in this argument—unless she's speaking in defense of the reality show industry, seriously maligned by a comparison to an operation as ill-scripted, aesthetically disastrous, and unprofitable as the Trump White House seems to be.

Personally I think this is the best writing I've ever seen from Cillizza, with that signature breathlessness, but really well observed and tight:

Timing is everything, isn't it?

Image via IN.

Leon Wolf just used the word “pivot” in the context of Trump. (Managing editor of The Blaze)

— Karoli (@Karoli) August 22, 2017

That was on MSNBC, before Trump's speech even began.

New York Times came out shortly after it ended, trying to get out ahead of the narrative by not only calling the pivot in the speech ("his best speech" apparently meaning "the one with the fewest words composed by Donald J. Trump") and the counterpivot we should be expecting sometime today.

POTUS gave his best speech as POTUS. He's given extremely few of these types of speeches. And he has a campaign rally tomorrow. Soooo...

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 22, 2017

But the most scorching hot take of all, I think, came from Chris Cillizza at CNN: the speech was great because it was only "ostensibly" about Afghanistan, it was really about Charlottesville:

President Donald Trump used a speech ostensibly focused on his decision about the future of America's role in Afghanistan to issue a call for unity and healing in the United States, a clear attempt to patch over the damage caused by his repeated unwillingness to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis following their violent protests in Charlottesville.

He just wasn't telling us how many troops he was sending to Virginia. I guess it depends on how much cooperation we get from North Carolina and Maryland.

Best thing is, that explains what happened last week in the Charlottesville speech: he was talking about Afghanistan!

"It's been going on for a long time... Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, it's been going on for a long time.... Egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, on many sides."

Like poor old Robert Mugabe, he just got the speeches switched.

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.