The Trump administration, after just four months, appeared this week to be headed into a Watergate-style abyss, as the Comey memos piled on leaked classified secrets and a special counsel was appointed to examine team Trump’s Russia ties. Some conservatives have already concluded that Trump has to go. Others are defending him, if not on the grounds of a continuing allegiance, then on the grounds of process. Another group is creating whatever distractions it can to get grassroots rightwingers to focus on something else. If that tactic works, it’s because their readers are permanently suspicious of everything that liberal media outlets print.
The 25th Amendment Solution for Removing Trump
Publication: The New York Times
Author: Ross Douthat is the New York Times’ in-house religious conservative. He’s been featured a number of times in Burst Your Bubble, but we’re looking at another of his columns because of the way this one has led to animated discussion on the right.
Why you should read it: In short, Douthat argues that Trump’s mental faculties are so atrophied, and he is so dangerous, that he could and should be removed under the provisions of the 25th amendment to the US constitution. Section 4 of that amendment says that the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet can determine that “the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and toss him. Douthat argues that Trump’s well-attested “incapacity to really govern, to truly execute the serious duties that fall to him to carry out” should be enough to get them to act.
Excerpt: “It is not squishy New York Times conservatives who regard the president as a child, an intellectual void, a hopeless case, a threat to national security; it is people who are self-selected loyalists, who supported him in the campaign, who daily go to work for him. And all this, in the fourth month of his administration.”
The Elites’ Dangerous Fantasy About Removing Trump From Office
Publication: The Federalist
Author: John Daniel Davidson is a senior correspondent at the news site for millennial conservatives, The Federalist. He’s appeared on the usual roster of conservative sites – First Things, the Wall Street Journal and National Review – but also at the Los Angeles Review of Books and n+1. Lately he has been working the “Trump derangement syndrome” beat, arguing that people on the left and right are losing their minds over the president.
Why you should read it: Davidson attempts to rebut the Douthat article. His arguments are straightforward. Removing Trump would spark conflict in a precariously divided nation; elites should not seek to override the will of the American people without serious reasons for doing so, and the materials leaked to date don’t measure up; and the leaking campaign is itself disturbingly anti-democratic. A bad president, he thinks, is less dangerous to the republic than a constitutional coup would be. Two years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine conservatives having this debate about a Republican president. Developing momentum for impeachment may render it moot.
Excerpt: “The 25th amendment is not, however, a way for elites to get rid of a president they despise without having to persuade the millions of people who voted for him that he is indeed unfit for office. Douthat is indulging a dangerous fantasy here. It might feel good to write a column calling for the president’s removal. It might give pundits a rush of blood to the head. But this is not a parlor game.”
Five Unanswered Questions About ABC’s Cancellation of Last Man Standing
Publication: Breitbart
Author: Daniel Nussbaum is a Breitbart reporter focused on the “Big Hollywood” section, set up by Andrew Breitbart to probe liberal control of the nation’s premier cultural institutions. A favored topic is the perfidy of liberals like Meryl Streep and Stephen Colbert.
Why you should read it: ABC recently cancelled Tim Allen’s sitcom, Last Man Standing. When entertainment media reported it, most people shrugged and moved on. In the conservative media bubble, however, people smell a purge. Allen himself is a conservative, and so was his character on the show, a suburban dad named Mike Baxter. Nussbaum writes that the show was “one of the few (if not the only) broadcast network shows to explore the life of a politically conservative working man”, and he argues that the ratings were still high. This piece of pop-cultural paranoia also functions as a useful distraction. The story got lots of airtime on Fox News on Tuesday night, when the channel was prepared to run anything in order not to discuss the Comey memo.
Excerpt: “Was the cancellation of the show motivated by politics in any way, either by the series’ own conservative-leaning worldview or by star Tim Allen’s own politics? Despite getting this exact question on the conference call, [ABC Entertainment’s president, Channing Dungey] avoided answering it directly.”
Slain DNC Official Contacted WikiLeaks?
Publication: Front Page Mag
Author: Recycling this conspiracy theory for David Horowitz’s Front Page is Matthew Vadum. His previous attack-dog work includes a widely criticized book on the right’s vanquished enemy, the civil rights group Acorn.
Why you should read it: As Trump’s travails have worsened, a Hillary Clinton-focused conspiracy theory has acquired new life in rightwing media, which is keen to avoid topics such as Russia and James Comey, or diminish their impact. Seth Rich, a DNC staffer, was murdered last year in mysterious circumstances. The right, aided by hints from Julian Assange, has long contended that he was assassinated for passing on DNC emails to WikiLeaks. On Monday, a private investigator (and Fox News contributor) claimed to have proof that Rich had contacted WikiLeaks. Rich’s family angrily disputed it, but it was enough for outlets from InfoWars to Fox News to revive the story. The conspiracy crowd is still running hard with it. As with conspiracy theories involving Sandy Hook and other examples, this all comes at the expense of a victim’s grieving family.
Excerpt: “Could this refusal to let the world’s most respected law enforcement agency examine its servers be part of some kind of cover-up?
Perhaps the DNC wasn’t hacked by Russia at all and Democrat officials know it.
Maybe the Russian hacking claim was intended to generate sympathy for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Maybe it was intended to distract from Clinton’s own suspicious dealings with Russia. Maybe Democrats made the claim with the intention of associating Donald Trump with it.”
How to Read the Newspaper
Publication: National Review
Author: Kevin Williamson is an old hand at National Review. He found his greatest notoriety when he penned a piece for the magazine last year on the white working class, whose charms included the claim: “The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.”
Why you should read it: Like all the most successful National Review writers, Williamson is careful to alternate between viciousness and apparent reasonableness. On the face of it, his argument in the new piece seems sound. Conservatives reflexively hate the media, but mostly it is not “fake news”. By refusing contact with the liberal press, conservatives collude in the erosion of a “shared reality” that we could base sensible political discussion on. He calls out Sean Hannity by name for distortions in pursuit of holy war on the “MSM”. This is all right as far as it goes. But what Williamson doesn’t talk about is the way that conservative suspicion about mainstream media has been actively promoted for several political generations by the conservative movement, including National Review.
Excerpt: “Not long ago, when I would inform someone that they had passed along an internet hoax or erroneous claim (writers on public affairs spend a fair amount of their correspondence thus engaged) the response would be a sheepish ‘oops’. About once a week, someone will inform me that Hillary Rodham Clinton was disbarred for misconduct (she wasn’t) or that Barack Obama’s mother-in-law is receiving a six-figure federal pension for having babysat his children (she isn’t) or some other such nonsense, and then cry ‘fake news!’ when corrected. The irony is that they have fallen for fake news, and retreat into ‘fake news!’ when their gullibility is shown.”
