Archive for the ‘6 January Select Committee’ Category

The Roger Ailes Road To Shame And Infamy, Twenty-Five Years In The Making

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023

In 1996, trying to replicate the success that made him a billionaire in Britain, Rupert Murdoch hit the US airwaves with Fox News Channel. The news and political commentary network operated under the umbrella of the Fox Entertainment Group, the film and television division of Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox (formerly News Corporation). Murdoch hired Roger Ailes to run the new  network as CEO. Ailes had been a senior Republican consultant and strategist during the presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, a campaign in which he and Lee Atwater came up with the Willy Horton ad that doomed the candidacy of Mike Dukakis.

When he was dying of inoperable brain cancer, Atwater apologized to Dukakis for the “naked cruelty” of the Horton ad; Ailes never did.

Ailes lasted at Fox for 20 years, until in 2016 Murdoch forced him to resign in disgrace after several female Fox employees, including on-air hosts Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Andrea Tantaros, accused him of sexual harassment. Murdoch and Ailes’s accusers eventually settled all the cases for about $45 million. Ailes, himself, walked away with a severance package of $45 million. Crime pays.

Ten months after leaving Fox, Ailes, a hemophiliac, died from injuries he suffered in a fall at his home.

During his 20 years as CEO, it was Roger Ailes who set Fox News on the highly successful road of right wing, conservative “opinion reporting” by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, et al. Ailes and Fox attracted a base of fiercely loyal viewers for whom Fox became the one and only place to hear their truth, regardless of what the real truth was. Fox’s news division reported actual news with a conservative slant, but it was the prime time opinion shows with their hyperventilated hyperbole and outright lies that propelled Fox’s ratings.

A television network makes money in a number of ways, but the two primary ones are through licensing fees cable operators pay to carry the channel and through advertising. Licensing fees are based on multi-year contracts, but advertising rates are determined by viewership, the market where the ads will appear, the time of day they’ll run, and how often, with viewership being the most important. What an advertiser pays will be based on how many thousands of people will see the ad. It’s called Cost Per Mille, or CPM. Viewership determines ratings, and ratings determine what a network can charge for an ad. For 20 consecutive years, under Roger Ailes’s leadership, Fox News Channel outscored all its rivals in viewership, which led to huge profits for the Murdoch family and big paydays for its on-air personalities.

All of that became threatened with the presidential election of 2020, the election Donald Trump lost by more than seven million votes.

Four years following the Ailes departure, the road he built led to a single moment a whisker after midnight on election night when all the fecal matter in the Fox television universe thwacked into the giant whirring instrument sitting in the middle of the company’s New York City headquarters. For that was the moment Chris Stirewalt, Fox News’s digital politics editor, polling chief Dana Blanton and analyst Arnon Mishkin called Arizona, and its 11 electoral votes, for Joe Biden. That was the moment everyone in Trump-world began to think something might be very wrong.

Stirewalt later testified before the House Special Committee Investigating the January 6th Insurrection. In his testimony he took great pride in calling Arizona for Biden. “We were able to beat the competition,” he said with a broad smile.

For beating the competition, Fox fired Stirewalt in what it labeled “a company-wide restructuring.” Bill Sammon, a longtime Fox News executive who was also involved in the Arizona call was forced to resign as the network cleaned house.

At that singular moment when Stirewalt and the Fox Digital Election Team gave Biden Arizona, the Fox election desk team came to a fork in the Roger Ailes Road. On one side, a trail led to announcing the unfortunate result, bemoaning how terrible they thought it was that their favorite had lost in Arizona, and then moving on. The other trail, the one that bore to the right, the far right, led to disputing the results in all the states Trump eventually lost, fabricating conspiracies to account for the losses, hosting whack-a-doodle theorists in prime time to vividly detail the fake conspiracies, thoroughly and publicly agreeing with all the nuttiness, while privately calling it “insane” and “crazy”—and blaming everything on Dominion Voting Systems, a company that provided voting technology machines to 28 states during the 2020 election, including swing states Wisconsin and Georgia. The conspiracy accusations, made with almost biblical certainty by Trump election advisors Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell claimed the Dominion machines had been “rigged” to falsify votes so Biden could win.

Remarkably, that was the road Fox took. Three months later, on 26 March 2021, Dominion Voting Systems Corporation sued Fox News Network, LLC, for $1.6 billion. This, after another voting technology company, Smartmatic, which provided its technology to one county in America, Los Angeles County, had already sued Fox, Powell, Giuliani, and others for $2.7 billion.

Last week, after significant Discovery, Dominion filed its Brief in Support of its Motion for Summary Judgment. It’s damning in how it shows Fox’s political commentators saying one thing on-air and the opposite privately to each other.

Before he resigned in the “company-wide restructuring” that purged Stirewalt, Managing Editor of the Washington , D.C. Bureau Bill Sammon said, “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”

When Stirewalt and his independent crew called the Arizona race, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity were angry and concerned, texting each other, as well as Fox executives, that the network was in danger of losing those fiercely loyal viewers who would feel betrayed by the Arizona call. Losing those viewers would lead to diminished ratings, which would impact profits, which would jeopardize big paydays for them.

They were right. After the Arizona call, viewers immediately began to pound Fox on social media for betraying President Trump. They headed for the Fox door and the Fox far-right competition, Newsmax and OAN. By January, 2021, Fox viewership had dropped 20% and CNN’s had soared. But by the following June, the viewers had returned to the nest as Fox fed them what they wanted to hear. From April to June, Fox averaged 1.2 million viewers per day, far ahead of MSNBC (847,000) and CNN (654,000). In primetime, it was even further ahead (2.2 million viewers to MSNBC’s 1.5 million and CNN’s 914,000).

In hindsight, Fox executives and on-air talent believed that, while Arizona had been truly lost to Trump, most of the danger would have been avoided had Fox waited until other networks called it and then gotten in line at the rear. As it happened, Biden won Arizona by 11,000 votes, but other networks did not make their own calls until eight days had passed. Eight days of terror for Fox. It was during those eight days that the conspiracy nutjobs took their seats of honor at the Fox dinner table.

Three days after the election, Maria Bartiromo interviewed Sydney Powell on Fox Business. Powell claimed Dominion created a secret “algorithm to calculate the votes they would need to flip. And they used the computers to flip those votes from Biden to—I mean, from Trump to Biden.” Bartiromo agreed with her. And it was Powell who told Lou Dobbs on his show that Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems conspired with Venezuela’s communist leadership, ditto with Cuba, and “likely” China to create software to fix the election for Joe Biden against Donald Trump.

Night after night, for nearly two months, the hosts on the opinion side of Fox News fed the conspiracy dragon. Not one of them ever said publicly the conspiracy theories were “crazy” or “insane,” but that is exactly what some of them said to each other, as the Dominion Brief makes crystal clear.

Pirro, Bartiromo and especially Lou Dobbs, who had been with Fox since Day 1, repeatedly repeated the lies. Dobbs was the highest-rated host on Fox Business. He often doubled his lead-in’s ratings. But 24 hours after he and Fox were named in the $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, Murdoch fired him. Fox News’s official reason for canceling Dobbs’ show —”a post-election programing adjustment”—is a nice way of saying they had to throw some high-rated somebody over the side.

The Dominion Brief says the company tried an eye-popping 3,600 times without success to get Fox to retract the nonsense.

The Fox defense is the same one Sydney Powell made when Dominion sued her individually: No reasonable person would be expected to believe this stuff.

Except people did, reasonable or not, and the Roger Ailes road, the one he started building 25 years earlier, ended with five dead and 140 injured at the January 6th Insurrection, a day of national shame and infamy, unrivaled since the Civil War.

 

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The Final (We Think) Public Hearing Of The Committee To Investigate the Insurrection Of January 6th

Thursday, October 13th, 2022

Today, the House Committee to Investigate the Insurrection of January 6th held what is perhaps its final public Hearing. There were no witnesses, unless you count the plethora on video. The Committee summarized its months of investigation and presented new evidence gleamed from the Secret Service. It also showed never before seen video of House and Senate leaders calling for help from Secret Service, National Guard, Metropolitan Police, Capitol Police and whoever else was thought to have enough firepower to overwhelm the Capitol invaders and allow Congress to get back to its constitutionally required work of certifying the Electoral College’s election of Joe Biden to the Presidency.

But the highlight of the Hearing was its end, which will be debated for many days and weeks to come. Congresswoman Liz Cheney proposed a resolution to subpoena and depose former President Donald John Trump. The resolution was adopted unanimously on a voice vote.

The Committee reported that over the course of its investigation 30 people have refused to testify, invoking their 5th Amendment self-incrimination rights. It is hard to imagine Donald trump not being the 31st. Nevertheless, it made for good theater.

For me, the important new revelations the Hearing produced concerned the Secret Service and how much its leadership knew about the storm that was coming on 6 January and how it did nothing about it.

In July, we learned officers of the Secret Service erased text messages from 5 and 6 January 2021, shortly after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general requested them as part of its investigation into the agency’s response to the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari wrote in a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees, ultimately passed on to the House January 6th Committee, that, although his office had been notified that texts were erased as part of a device replacement program, the wiping of the devices occurred after a request for electronic communications.

“First, the Department notified us that many U.S. Secret Service text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, were erased as part of a device-replacement program. The USSS erased those text messages after OIG requested records of electronic communications from the USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6,” Cuffari wrote in the letter.

After Cuffari’s letter, the Secret Service, which the Committee reported had been uncooperative until then, began to cooperate. Consequently, the Secret Service sent more than a million communications to the Committee, which it has been sifting through ever since. Today, the Committee made public numerous emails and other messages between Secret Service agents and leadership.

The Committee reported that by 5 and 6 January the Secret Service knew many protesters were coming to Washington DC for Trump’s speech on the Ellipse and a march to the Capitol afterwards. The speech was scheduled for mid-day on the 6th. By 5 January, the Secret Service knew many had come armed with rifles, handguns, bullet-proof vests and helmets, and that they were talking about a “firestorm” at the Capitol. Nevertheless, the Secret Service never alerted other agencies to the situation, which was inexorably building to a crescendo in plain sight, a keg of dynamite whose fuse Trump lit on the Ellipse during his speech.

One has to wonder about the Secret Service in all of this. Is it possible we have a few bad apples floating near the top of the barrel?  One has to wonder.

Following his speech, Trump demanded to go to the Capitol with the rioters, but his security detail would not allow it. The Committee reported the Secret Service detail had to “scramble to get him to back down.” Agents reported he was “furious” about this. Against his will, his security detail brought him back to the White House, where aides reported him walking the corridor outside the Oval Office “fuming” and “raging.”

At 1:19 pm, the Secret Service Operations Center reported, “hundreds of Trump supporters stormed through metal barricades at the back of the capitol building about 1:00 pm Wednesday, running past security guards and breaking fences.”

At 1:20 pm, aides told a back-in-the-Oval Trump about the storming of the Capitol. He retired to his dining room to watch it on the Fox News channel.

At 3:25 pm, Secret Service agents at the White House were told (we don’t know by whom) Trump would be moving to the Capitol “in about two hours.” At 5:00 pm, agents were told to stand down, “We are not doing an OTR (off the record) to (the Capitol).

The Committee reported today that “every single one” of the White House staff who had knowledge of the situation confirmed, “Trump was in the dining room watching on TV.” Trump has denied this on his Truth Social media network.

The Committee spent the first third of today’s Hearing showing how every one of Trump’s own appointed officials and aides had repeatedly told him he had lost the election, that Biden had won, and there was absolutely no evidence to the contrary. He refused to accept these facts—universally delivered by his own people from Attorney General Barr on down. Sixty-two lawsuits had come to nothing. There was no hope he had prevailed. Yet, still he persisted.

I can’t help wondering about his refusal to accept facts given to him over and over again. Isn’t that Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity? Barr likened it to playing whack-a-mole. Whenever he told Trump some weird accusation had proved false, he was given another weirder one to investigate.

Yet, the Committee reported today, in the quieter moments in the White House, following all the lawsuits and the crazy accusations, Trump was heard by some staff to admit he’d lost. “Can you believe I lost to fucking Joe Biden?”

Many babies and toddlers cry, whine, scream and throw things when something they really want is denied them. But eventually they figure out it’s not happening and accept it, then go on to something else. But not Donald Trump, at least publicly—to this day.

I’ve heard many people say these Hearings and this Committee are a colossal waste of time. The storming of the Capitol happened, yes people died, but it’s over. Time to move on, put it in the rear view mirror.

That’s probably true if you look at all this as if its simply one arrow whizzing past a slim crack in a door. But if you open the door and look wide, you might see the insurrection as but one part of a slow-moving, but continuing process directed by some powerful people to turn our government into autocracy. They won’t admit it, but, as many smart people have said, including Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, who said it to me, “If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, odds are it’s a duck.”

 

 

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The Select Committee Peels More Of The Insurrection Onion

Thursday, June 16th, 2022

Today, the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 Attack held its fourth Hearing, third in the last week, and, although I thought there wouldn’t be much to learn, I was wrong.

To review what we all know: Donald Trump refused to admit he’d lost the 2020 presidential election. His aides in the White Housed and Justice Department knew he’d lost and tried to tell him so, to no avail. He wouldn’t listen to them. A cabal of Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and John Eastman, fawning sycophants all, fed him lies too numerous to list, all of which he passed on to his Attorney General Bill Barr, which drove Barr absolutely crazy. Barr testified he felt as if he were playing “whack-a-mole.” Sixty-two law suits; none going anywhere. Pressuring state officials, all of whom stood up to him and refused to budge.

So far, as the Republican National Committee tweeted after last week’s Hearing: All. Old. News. (Super patriots them).

But in today’s Hearing we learned the extent of pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to violate the law. And we learned it from members of Pence’s team, insiders close to the VP.

We also learned Dr. John Eastman led the campaign to get Pence to singlehandedly declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election, and he was relentless in his efforts.

Eastman wrote the now famous memo enumerating six ways Trump could slide to a second term. His basic argument revolved around the Constitution’s 12th Amendment and the Electoral Counting Act of 1887.

The 12th Amendment reads in part:

The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President…

In 1887, in response to the tortured 1876 election where a number of states sent more than one set of electors, congress passed the Electoral Counting Act. The Act aims to minimize congressional involvement in election disputes, instead placing primary responsibility to resolve disputes on the states. If a state follows the “safe harbor” standards laid out by the Act and the state’s governor properly submits one set of electoral votes, the Act asserts this “final determination shall govern.” Since 1887, this is the way it’s been done.

Every four years, on 6 January following a presidential election, the Vice President, as Senate President, ceremonially opens the envelopes from each state, and then the votes are counted. Of course, everyone already knows what the count will reveal, as everyone did on 6 January 2021.

Eastman, time after time after time, pressured Mike Pence’s closest advisors, saying Pence’s ceremonial position was not ceremonial at all. Rather, he had the authority to invalidate a state’s submitted electors and declare Trump the real victor. When the Pence team continually rejected his argument he suggested Pence should recess the congressional event and send everything back to the states, so they could “investigate” their fraud-corrupted elections and determine the proper electors.

None of this worked.

You may be asking, “Why did the Pence team even begin to listen to Dr. Eastman?” They did it because he was representing Donald Trump who thought Eastman correct (well, he would, wouldn’t he?).

So, who is John Eastman?

First, he’s a member in good standing of the Federalist Society, and here’s what the Society says about him:

Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.

Sounds impressive.

Here are a couple of salient points about the good Dr. Eastman.

From 4 November, right up to the morning of 6 January, Eastman met at least eight times, not including phone calls, with the Vice President’s team led by his Director of Legislative Affairs, John Jacobs who testified today. Throughout their conversations, Jacobs would get Eastman to admit repeatedly he did not believe his own argument. Eastman even went so far as to agree if Pence did as he asked and the Supreme Court were to decide on the matter the vote would be 9-0 against. But still he persisted, and he did so all the way to his speech on the Ellipse just before Trump told the crowd to go to the Capital and “fight like hell.”

Today’s Hearing disclosed just how close the mob came to getting Mike Pence and his family. We learned as the Secret Service was hurry-upping the group to safety in the bowels of the Capital, the Proud Boys were only 40 feet away, the Proud Boys who had decided Pence should be killed. This was new to me.

We all know how it turned out. Pence, to his everlasting credit, the Pence, who had for four years been Trump’s foremost sycophant and who I thought closely resembled a cross between Uriah Heap and a mortician, that Pence, courageously did his job. While Trump was happily watching the insurrection unfold on television, it was Pence who communicated with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley demanding he assemble the forces to quell the coup attempt. Milley, who never heard from Trump, testified Pence was “highly animated.”

At 2:15 on the morning of 7 January, Pence opened the envelopes, and the votes were counted. He then announced Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

And what became of Dr. Eastman, Trump’s leading Svengali?

Shortly after the insurrection, he formally requested Trump pardon him before leaving office.

It never happened. Donald Trump only rewards successful sycophants.

 

 

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