PURELY POLITICAL Friends
Even The Wall Street Journal persists in creating misinformed Talking Points for the discredited opposition.
Conservatives Have No Friends
Yes, I admit it. I subscribe to The Wall Street Journal. I have for years. And mercy me, I get both the printed (on paper!) version as well as the online edition.
Generally, I like their politics and most of their regular columnists, two in particular: I never miss the Thursday and Friday issues of the Journal, because Thursday is the brilliant Daniel Henninger’s day to opine; Friday is when my favorite columnist – Kimberley Strassel – delivers her usually riveting and always informative piece. For a long time, the Saturday weekend edition was also a favorite; it still is, but Peggy Noonan who I once admired and read with equal fervor has for the most part gone over to the dark side, so while I still scan her Saturday piece, I no longer take her seriously.
She has sold out to the Capitol Crowd.
Proving once again that conservatives have no home and no friends in Washington, D.C.
The Wall Street Journal has other fine writers and I mean no disrespect to them, but one has favorites, and Henninger, Strassel, and the erstwhile Mollie Hemingway, who doesn’t have a regular gig at the Journal but is published frequently, are mine.
So back to the business at hand.
The Wall Street Journal is among the most conservative newspapers in the U.S., certainly the most conservative among the largest U.S. print outlets.
However, I rarely agree with their editorial board on two subjects: Border security and Donald Trump. TheJournal nearly always defends mass migration and though it sometimes defends the former president, its journalists and news writers never do.
Which is disappointing, in that the Journal is the only national paper we can count on for even a smidgin of support.
For example, whenever a Journal reporter mentions Trump’s position on the 2020 election, the subjective expression “big lie” plays a prominent role in the coverage. You’ll read that Mr. Trump persists in telling “the big lie” that his election was rigged and/or stolen, rather than the more objective “his stated position,” “he continues to believe” or simply a phrase such as “his opinion” is never used.
From what we know now about that election, it certainly was not “the most secure” or “the most honest” or anything remotely resembling a clean-cut election.
A recent example of this editorial bias occurred in the Wednesday, September 27, 2023 issue in which an Editorial Board Opinion Piece entitled “A Reminder From Donald Trump” was printed.
The very first sentence in this eight-paragraph Op/Ed states that “Donald Trump suggested that Gen. Mark Milley, the nation’s highest military officer, deserves execution – as in death.” The piece goes on to claim Trump had also insisted that “NBC should be investigated for treason and that the FBI should raid the homes of Senate Democrats.”
None of which is true or accurate, though the charges were parroted on MSNBC, CNN, and elsewhere, all of which quoted directly from The Wall Street Journal editorial for their talking points.
Here’s what Trump actually wrote about General Milley, which the Journal kindly referenced: “This guy [Milley] turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
Which is true.
But it’s hardly calling for General Milley’s “execution.”
It makes one question whether Wall Street Journal editors remember what former CIA Director John Brennan said on the air (MSNBC, as I recall) after President Trump stated that he believed Russian Federation President Putin when he denied interfering in the 2016 election.
Brennan called the president’s remarks “nothing short of treasonous.”
I guess that means Mr. Brennan was calling for President Trump’s execution, right?
In another paragraph, Journal editors suggested that Mr. Trump had made a campaign pledge to abridge the First Amendment.
That would certainly be a “threat to our Democracy” as the Democrat Left loves to portend.
Here’s what the former president actually wrote on his Truth Social page: “Comcast, with its one-side[ed] and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC, should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason.’”
Mr. Trump did promise that should he win the upcoming election, NBC, MSNBC “and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage.”
I’m not sure that one would need to dig deep to discover that a medium of newscasting has been “knowingly dishonest and corrupt,” but nowhere in the above is there a “pledge to abridge the First Amendment.”
In fact, during a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Trump was asked if, considering the negative coverage he regularly receives, he favored limits on what the media can say, his response was, “No. The press should speak more honestly.”
I do believe that position compares favorably to the “Disinformation Governance Board” proposed by President Biden’s team.
If anyone is seeking to reduce or “abridge” the power the First Amendment, it would be the Democrat Party and its putative head, Joe Biden.
Everything that Mr. Trump did while in office, even after his election loss, was done within the bounds of the legal system. He sought redress through the courts and his lawyers.
He lost.
Many of us agree that the 2020 election was indeed stolen. Stolen by the likes of lawyers such as Marc Elias whose machinations helped alter voting rules in key states using the pandemic as a ruse to introduce and/or increase dubious activities such as ballot harvesting by unrelated individuals, expanded no-signature-verification mail-in ballots, multitudinous un-surveilled drop boxes, and other methods of collecting votes that made it easier to cheat.
The 2020 election may have been stolen “legally,” but stolen it was.
And all I can say to that is,
Let’s Go Brandon!
You are so brave!
We are well aligned on all you set out. Excellent!