Ain't Gonna Clap For Maggie's Form No More

Lithograph by Andy Warhol, via Piazzart.

Folks, I think I'm breaking up with Maggie Haberman, at long last, though not for the reasons you might expect, after today's "Mar-a-Lago Memo", in which she puzzles over the question of why Trump was so unwilling to give the White House documents back when the National Archives, and eventually the FBI, demanded them. 

Was it because he found them so darn exciting?

White House aides described how excited he was to show off all the material he had access to, including letters from the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which he routinely waved at visitors, alarming his advisers.

Was it because he figures he's the Emperor, and all that stuff naturally belongs to him?

“From my own experiences with him, which is bolstered by those around him who are speaking in his defense, his actions seem to fit the pattern that as ‘king,’ he and the state are one and the same,” said Mark S. Zaid, a lawyer who frequently handles cases related to national security and security clearances...

LOL, "those who are speaking in his defense" should have a pretty fair idea.

Ain't Gonna Work on Maggie's Form No More

A Twitter friend sent me the following by DM yesterday evening, and I didn't notice it until later:

Does @maggieNYT’s latest change your opinion any?

My opinion of what? I assume she must have posted another obnoxious, defensive tweet, and it's so bad I'll really stop coming to her defense myself, like she's my girlfriend and the scales will fall from my eyes and I'll ask for my ring back.

Look, she's not my girlfriend. I've never met her and it's unlikely I ever will. If I saw her at the smoked fish counter at Barney Greengrass I would pretend, as I always do with celebrities, that I didn't recognize her. I don't want to know her. More important, I really need for people to start distinguishing between the profoundly stupid question, "Is X a Good Person or a Bad Person?" and the important question, "Is a thing that X is doing having a good or useful or pleasing impact or a bad or unhelpful or ugly impact? and what do we need to do about it?

For the Record: We Had All the Information We Needed

 

So Maggie Haberman's aptly titled biography of The Former Guy is about to drop, and they're teasing it, as is the custom, with a sample scabrous anecdote—how Trump clogged White House toilets with the bits of torn-up official documents, as if the cops were knocking and he was getting rid of his stash of coke. So what's got everybody riled up? This new evidence of Trump's knowing, continuous violation of the Presidential Records Act? Hell no, everybody's mad at Maggie for presumably waiting till now to publish the story so she could cash in on it.

Everybody, that is, except some old bloggers:

Maybe there would have been hearings - maybe even an impeachment. But he would have skated, with unanimous or near-unanimous Republican support. So withholding the story had no effective impact.

— Steve M. (@nomoremister) February 10, 2022

Now we know why he was so obsessed with water-saving toilets. It wasn't about flushing shit, it was about flushing criminal evidence pic.twitter.com/dt33u7kroU

— Against Yastronomical Odds (@Yastreblyansky) February 10, 2022

For the Record: Good News for Joe Biden—Why That's Bad News for Joe Biden

Remember that Dana Milbank piece about how unfairly the press treats Biden as opposed to Trump at the beginning of December?

Even the extraordinary news that jobless claims had dropped to the lowest level in 52 years came with a qualifier: “BUT, BUT, BUT … don’t expect [the numbers] to immediately change Americans’ negative perceptions of the economy.”

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman taking it, as she seems to take most things, as a personal attack on her, had a pretty snippy subtweet response, to which I happened to respond myself:

Here’s a perfect example, Maggie pic.twitter.com/GYMTpW9TuW

— Rob Wagner 😷😷🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@wagner_rob) December 4, 2021

You haven't read it very well then. Sorry, I really value your work, but you should have found out that the job numbers were drastically and unprecedentedly underestimated through the summer and had to be hugely revised, and that's why we should be skeptical about November.

— Against Yastronomical Odds (@Yastreblyansky) December 5, 2021

Because all year, if you were reading, the "mainstream media" had been highlighting monthly job numbers coming in under expectations as DISASTERS FOR BIDEN and, in the very same stories, just whispering the fact that the previous month's numbers were much better than originally reported.

For the Record: In Defense of Haberman

Drawing by KAL for The Economist, 11 July 2019.

Collaborative piece by Matt Flegenheim and Maggie Haberman opening caused some howls I thought weren't justified:

Jesus.

For the record, I didn’t think that. With @deanbaquet, as with Trump, I know there is no bottom.

— blue four seasons meme (@TheBlueMeme) November 24, 2020

The headline and lede.

— blue four seasons meme (@TheBlueMeme) November 24, 2020

The people Baquet wants to appease aren’t expected to read past the lede.

— blue four seasons meme (@TheBlueMeme) November 24, 2020

It's hard for me to imagine how Dean Baquet has any control over this prose at all, let alone a sinister plan of some kind—to achieve what? Lull us into believing that Trump likes some things better than others when he really doesn't?

Literary Corner: They Laughed "Haha" That Was So Funny

Song of Vengeance for George Stephanopoulos

by Donald J. Trump

Excuse me, read the report,
read the conclusion of the report,
just read it. 

Ok, I mean look
you are one that said
Donald Trump is not going to win
and then you smiled when I
got into the race, and you laughed.

You and Maggie Haberman
would laugh ‘haha’ that was so funny
and I will give your deputy chairman
of the DNC credit. 

Because he looked at the two of you
and said, sorry to tell you but
Donald Trump is going to win.

And you laughed because you thought
it was ridiculous and Maggie Haberman
of the New York Times who knows
nothing about me, by the way,
I rarely speak to her, she laughed
and thought it was so funny.

The people that didn’t think it was funny
were the people that voted for me

(Text via ABC)

Little does he know, those were the ones who thought it was really funny. But then they were laughing with him, not at him, at the discomfiture of the libtards.

The non-general in his labyrinth

Update: Thanks for the shoutout, Infidel753!

Screenshot from Jim Henson's Labyrinth, 1986.

A lot of people roll their eyes when journalists like Haberman and Baker file another story about Trump's "increasing isolation"—how much more could it have increased since the last time they wrote it? Is it getting near bottom yet?

WASHINGTON — When President Trump grows frustrated with advisers during meetings, which is not an uncommon occurrence, he sits back in his chair, crosses his arms and scowls. Often he erupts. “Freaking idiots!” he calls his aides. Except he uses a more pungent word than “freaking.”

For two years, Mr. Trump has waged war against his own government, convinced that people around him are fools. Angry that they resist his wishes, uninterested in the details of their briefings, he becomes especially agitated when they tell him he does not have the power to do what he wants, which makes him suspicious that they are secretly undermining him.

Personally, I've long thought such stories were appropriate to the Trump administration, in the same way the protocol trivialities and sly portraiture of the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon were appropriate to the reign of Louis XIV, because that's the kind of administration it is, based on the day-to-day lurches in the emperor's mood and how he bestows his favor. Yesterday he was praising the newly resigned General Mattis for his distinguished service, today somebody's explained to him what the resignation letter said and he's demanding Mattis leave by New Year, instead of sticking it out through February:

Demeritocracy

Gray-green Eminence: Stephen Bannon as depicted on the cover of Time. 2 February 2017, via Flickr.

Actually why is Stephen Bannon important again?

Exclusive: I’ll be interviewing Steve Bannon on @ThisWeekABC Sunday morning. His first live Sunday show interview ever.

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) June 15, 2018

Really?

I started noticing something like a Bannon comeback around a week ago, when he turned up in back-to-back articles in the Times as a crucial window into the Trumpian mind, that hilarious Mark Landler piece on Trump's deep study of the North Korea issue—

“To the president, ‘duck and cover’ and the Cuban missile crisis were formative experiences,” said Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist. “He knows the Korean War hasn’t ended, and he can accomplish what destroyed his idol, General MacArthur.”

And the next day in the latest iteration of the "Trump feels emboldened and is taking over now" theme, by Maggie Haberman and Katie Rogers:

For the Record: Haberman Takes a Stand

So Maggie Haberman got upset with the actor John Cusack, because that's how things are nowadays.

Lie - not falsehood - https://t.co/NFrRbGj5Rk

— John Cusack (@johncusack) May 27, 2018

This is really ruining Say Anything for me. Said with respect for you as an actor. But, I’ll quote a person who knows Trump well who messaged me describing the lack of understanding that ppl have about “how Trump’s ignorance and mendacity interact.” https://t.co/XUEjXFHSdj

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 27, 2018

It is wrecking her enjoyment of a 1989 movie!

.@jack How come this parody account has a blue checkmark? You guys are falling apart. https://t.co/o0UxQwbEP9

— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) May 27, 2018

Or would a real Haberman be arguing that it's false to call Trump a liar because "ignorance and mendacity interact" in his lies? Ignorance and mendacity make something new and different, the way oxygen and hydrogen make water?

— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) May 27, 2018

But what's funniest is the way she doesn't dare to assert the opinion, but cites an anonymous source for it: "According to persons close to the White House, the president's apparent lies actually represent a subtle and nameless previously undiscovered category of non-truth."

— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) May 27, 2018