CSotD: Putting Our Business in the Street
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Tom Toles played on Trump’s call for Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton’s computer, a 2016 campaign ruckus that began when it turned out she’d set up a computer at home on which she did some State Department work that should have been confined to government servers.
Although it was a private server and not just a home computer hooked into AOL, it touched off cries for investigation from the right, particularly after she said she had deleted personal and non-classified materials irrelevant to the matter.
Her rival in the presidential campaign leapt into action. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” Trump said at a news conference.
The issue began chants of “Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up!” at Trump rallies, but she subsequently sat for 11 hours before a Congressional committee that, despite predictions, turned up nothing, inspiring a Photoshopped Harry Truman meme and not a whole lot more, until FBI Director Comey announced a few days before the election that he was re-opening the case, which may have cost her the election but otherwise produced bupkis.
But, oh my, didn’t it follow her around, through the election and thereafter!
There was quite a bit of joking over the lack of security, though it later turned out that Russia apparently had taken up Trump’s challenge, without, however, penetrating any secure areas.
Similarly, there were accusations about the money raised by Democrats, though, as Rogers suggested, the furor involved a lot of pot-and-kettle logic.
And the money thing became an issue of speakers’ fees, complicated by the fact that substantial amounts of those moneys went to the Clinton Family Foundation, attacked by opponents as fakery but found by charity evaluators to be well-run and ethically clean.
The money thing seems more than a little quaint today, given the amount of personal profiteering and sale of access happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the most recent oddity being, as Granlund notes, the sale of sponsorship for an Easter Egg Roll that had been a free event since 1878, funded by the American Egg Board.
On the other hand, the flow of cash is not the only thing that was once a scandal but has since begun seeming perfectly normal. Three years ago, Zyglis took note of how horrified Republicans were over that email server, compared to how they felt over boxes of classified material at Mar A Lago.
But wait! There’s more!
Now we have the case of administration officials somehow inviting the editor of Atlantic Magazine to listen in on secret war plans. McKee may be exaggerating with the clown outfit, but he’s got that ID button right: Trump’s crack security team set up the meeting, which took place on Signal, a chat app that is relatively private but not secure at a level competent government would recognize.
Which makes the clown outfit not all that much of an exaggeration after all, given that Jeffrey Goldberg was somehow invited to a chat that included National Security Advisor Mike Walz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
At least when Dear Leader was passing along top secret Israeli intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the White House, he had the sense to step into a private room and not even allow the American transcribers in to record the conversation, though the Russians brought in a journalist.
When I was a reporter, I had to leave school board meetings when they went into special session, I couldn’t cover family court and I got a grand jury subpoena for knowing too much about a murder.
I cannot imagine being allowed, much less being invited, to eavesdrop on a discussion of war plans.
As former JAG Officer David French observed, any line officer who committed a screw-up like this would be relieved of command and might face criminal charges. And he’s not alone in his outrage.
The Maxwell Smart jokes are flowing, including one from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and you could almost feel sorry for the nitwits who bungled this, except that their incompetence could needlessly send young Americans to their deaths.
The memes are coming from all over, this one from Germany. I’m in favor of silliness, because sometimes serious analysis doesn’t get through, but if the late-night hosts start riffing on this and the Internet fills with jokes, it will get attention even from people who don’t bother with politics.
I also think there’s a good chance that a light-hearted, humorous approach like Bish’s will get picked up by editors who are deaf to subtle sarcasm and sleight-of-hand innuendo, and who think cartoons ought to be funny. It’s something of a jiu-jitsu approach, using their natural tendencies against them, but all’s fair in love and war, and this ain’t love.
Boris also makes a joke, but while Bish goes for a laugh in his criticism of the blunder, Boris makes his humor quite a bit darker.
Goldberg had the details of the strike two hours in advance, but kept silence, which I also would have done. But there are people in the business who can’t resist a scoop and have to blurt out everything they know regardless of its potential for harm.
And if the idiots didn’t realize they were adding Goldberg to the group, they could have added nearly anybody. Maybe not a Houthi, but perhaps someone who knew a Houthi. I’m sure their phone books are filled with names and numbers of political figures from other nations, as well as journalists with other loyalties.
It’s a funny cartoon, but it’s not a funny situation.
I spent a little time with Steve Brodner at the Montreal Convention last fall and can attest to the fact that he has a sense of humor, but he also has very little tolerance for incompetence, particularly incompetence in high places.
You shouldn’t, either.
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