Nicholas Kristof and the Collapse of Journalistic Standards
Source: RealClearPolitics - Homepage · Bias: Center Right
Summary
How can the American people know what to believe anymore? They're supposed to be able to turn to the New York Times and other legacy newspapers for impartial facts. Although that aspirational view was never as true as many of us supposed it to be, it's become scandalously untrue today.
Nicholas Kristof and the Collapse of Journalistic Standards
Center Right
How can the American people know what to believe anymore? They're supposed to be able to turn to the New York Times and other legacy newspapers for impartial facts. Although that aspirational view was never as true as many of us supposed it to be, it's become scandalously untrue today.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) board of directors voted to affirm the organization's definition of a journalist to make clear that terrorists are also journalists worthy of protection.
The post Not All Terrorists Are Journalists appeared first on .
As part of our July Fourth special broadcast, we continue our extended interview with Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. The book documents the rise of OpenAI and how the AI industry is leading to a new form of colonialism. “One of the things that you really have to understand about AI development today is that there are what I call quasi-religious movements that have developed within Silicon Valley,” says Hao. “The concept of artificial general intelligence is not one that’s scientifically grounded.”
A CNN panel had a good laugh as a GOP pundit twisted himself in a "pretzel" defending the Trump family.While discussing recent revelations about how much money Trump and his family made since returning to office last year, conservative podcaster Ben Ferguson had everyone around him in stitches.Ferguson, the host of "The Ben Ferguson Show," argued that the Trump family isn't corrupt for its involvement in billion-dollar ventures involving cryptocurrency and tungsten mining because they were engaged in "actual business."CNN anchor Abby Phillip, who described the Trump family as "real estate developers," shot back by asking, "What do the Trump sons know about mining rare earth minerals? What do the Trump sons know about robotics?"Ferguson's response was, "A lot, clearly, they made a lot of money off of it because they actually invest in it."The panel around him, which included political analyst and attorney Bakari Sellers, former Biden White House staffer Yemisi Egbewole, and former Bush White House official Ashley Davis, could be heard laughing together as Ferguson responded.Sellers chimed in by remarking, "I do hot yoga, and I feel like you're doing a little hot yoga too for that pretzel you got yourself in," which led to Egbewole and Davis laughing more."The president makes $400,000 a year," Sellers pointed out. "This quarter, he's made over $1 billion on crypto alone...that fundamentally is unethical. You can call it what you want."While Sellers mentioned Trump's presidential salary, Ferguson threw in one more defense: "he gives it all away," which also caused laughter around the table.
House Speaker Mike Johnson attempted to pass President Donald Trump's Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, by attaching it to the annual defense budget bill, or NDAA, a strategy devised by conservative hardliners led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL). However, the plan backfired when 14 House Republicans blocked the procedural vote, according to Politico. Luna had previously vowed to block all House bills unless the Senate acted on the legislation, but Johnson chose a different approach by combining both measures during the procedural vote. The failure was compounded by Trump's previous claims on Truth Social, when he opposed using the NDAA as leverage for the SAVE America Act. Luna and Johnson proceeded anyway. MS NOW was quick to react, with reporter Mychael Schnell saying, "it's a massive embarrassment and a blow to Speaker Johnson."She continued, "It's never good when a rule vote fails. But the interesting thing here is that the left hand isn't really aware of what the right hand is doing when you talk about Republican leaders, because last week, President Trump had taken to Truth Social and said he did not want these Republicans in the House to be holding hostage these procedural rules in the NDAA in order to get the SAVE America bill passed." The blocked vote has left the House floor paralyzed with no clear path forward for the legislation, though conservatives and Trump remain unwilling to abandon the effort.Watch the video below. Your browser does not support the video tag.
President Donald Trump's image within the MAGA movement is "collapsing under the weight of reality" as his followers find it more difficult to reconcile his brand with the administration's recent fumble in the war with Iran, according to one analyst. Mary Trump, a psychologist and author, argued in a new Substack essay that her uncle is driving a wedge in his base as he continues to tout his brand of strength after he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian regime that some have described as a complete capitulation. The agreement allowed Iran to immediately resume selling oil and lifted some sanctions on the regime in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which had been shut since the early days of the war. Trump described the phenomenon as a "growing divide" within the movement itself. "This is no longer simply a disagreement over one agreement with Iran. It is an increasingly public recognition that the image Donald carefully constructed over decades as a fearless negotiator and master dealmaker is collapsing under the weight of reality. The farther reality drifts from the mythology, the harder it becomes for even his most devoted supporters to reconcile the two," Mary Trump wrote."One faction refuses to acknowledge that Donald could ever be wrong and therefore views whatever agreement he signs as, by definition, a success. The other sees what is unfolding as an unmistakable capitulation after months of war, tens of billions of dollars spent, global instability, higher energy prices, and the unnecessary loss of human life," she added.
Donald Trump lost three big cases at the Supreme Court on Monday. His appeal of E. Jean Carroll’s verdict failed. He was blocked from firing a Federal reserve official. And most important, the court upheld the counting of late-arriving mail ballots. He ranted wildly over these losses. On the last one he exploded in a long and angry tirade, seething over the “powerful Communist Movement taking place in our Country” and demanding again that Republicans pass onerous voter suppression. It’s clear why: This deals a major blow to Trump-GOP hopes of stealing the midterms by invalidating untold numbers of votes. Yet Trump won big at the court, too, securing the power to fire independent regulators at will. We talked to Lisa Graves, a former Senate Judiciary Committee counsel who writes about the Supreme Court. We discuss what the ruling on mail-balloting does, why it will thwart a major piece of the Trump-GOP election-rigging scheme, how Trump and the Supreme Court are teaming up to empower themselves at the expense of Congress, and how a future Democratic Congress can fight back. Listen to this episode here.
Former CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane expressed astonishment on Sunday at the viral reach of a Senate floor speech by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) cataloging alleged corruption across the first 500 days of President Donald Trump's second term."Wow," MacFarlane wrote, noting that Murphy's floor speech on Trump administration corruption "has now received 1 million views."MacFarlane highlighted the speech's striking opening framing, writing that Murphy "opens the remarks by arguing that Trump has turned the White House into a 24/7 corruption operation."That characterization came directly from the senator's address. Murphy told colleagues that over the last year and a half, Trump "has turned the White House into a 24/7 corruption operation," calling it "a national crisis" and saying lawmakers "should start acting like it."The roughly half-hour speech, titled "Trump's 500 Days of Corruption," followed up on earlier floor addresses Murphy delivered on the administration's first six weeks and first 100 days. In it, the senator highlighted what he described as the most egregious instances of Trump, his family, and members of his administration using their positions of power to enrich themselves and do favors for their billionaire allies at the expense of American taxpayers.Murphy argued that the president's goal was to engage in so much corruption and self-enrichment that it simply becomes "the pitter patter of rain" — normal, constant, and never-ending. He contended that Trump is betting the steady drip of new corruption stories will eventually exhaust the press and the public into no longer paying attention.The senator walked through a month-by-month timeline of alleged self-dealing. He began with an April 7, 2025 memo from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche ordering the termination of several Biden-era DOJ investigations into crypto companies, noting that Blanche was himself a major crypto investor working for a president deeply involved in the crypto industry. Murphy also pointed to pardons issued at taxpayers' expense as part of the pattern.Murphy closed by insisting the presidency "is not a license to steal from the American people" and that the federal government "doesn't exist to make Donald Trump rich," urging both Democrats and Republicans to confront the issue.For MacFarlane, the takeaway was less the substance than the spread — a lengthy, detail-heavy floor speech, the kind that often disappears without notice, instead racking up a million views and breaking through to a much wider audience.
I will never forget reading New York Times book critic Dwight Garner’s 2002 review of Jared Kushner’s loathsome memoir, Breaking History, because if you cull it down and paraphrase it, it becomes a perfect description of Kushner the person.So I’ll attempt to use the magic of Garner’s wonderful wordsmithing.Kushner is a soulless, mannequin-like vanity project. He is the ultimate political arsonist, happily burning down the very democratic foundations and institutional norms that he relies on to sustain his global grift.His efforts on behalf of his equally grifting and crooked father-in-law are queasy-making money-grabbing stunts that feel exactly like watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo. He is a deeply uncomfortable, unnatural experience. He is superficial and self-serving.Oh, there is so much more to say about Kushner, but column space prohibits me from expanding on my rewording of Garner’s poetry.Kushner is nothing more than a spoiled real estate heir who got his job because he married Trump’s daughter before Trump did. I’m referring, of course, to Donald’s well-documented incestuous infatuation with Ivanka.What business did he have negotiating nuclear disarmament with Iran? That sentence, however, gives it all away. Because his business is an illicit and, arguably, illegal one.The original JCPOA nuclear deal was negotiated over years by the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia, and China, with nuclear physicists and non-proliferation experts, and ran to 159 pages.Now, you tell me why a guy whose business dealings have frequently hovered near severe financial distress was sitting at a table yammering about nuclear weapons.Iranian officials were reportedly confused when the White House kept sending Kushner and his partner Steve Witkoff, since neither has any background in nuclear policy. One former senior State Department official who participated in actual Iran nuclear negotiations said it plainly: “I’m not saying you need to be a diplomat to be a good negotiator. But you need to have some sense of history, and you need to know geography.”If you base your assessment of Jared Kushner’s diplomatic chops and sense of history on those criteria, you can once again relegate him to dog-eye goo.And since this deal involves enormous sums of money, Kushner’s association with companies in financial distress should instantly preclude his participation. The framework deal released, and presumably the one the prodigal whiz-kid helped cook up, would release up to $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets, authorize Iran to sell oil on global markets in U.S. dollars, and, if a final deal is reached, lift all sanctions on Iran entirely.Energy analysts say Iran could ramp up exports to roughly 2 million barrels per day, one-third higher than before the conflict, potentially unlocking hundreds of billions of dollars for the Iranian regime. Iran’s total frozen assets abroad are estimated at somewhere between $124 billion and $167 billion.From the looks of it, “negotiator” Kushner is giving away money fast and furiously, much like Saudi Arabia gives money to Kushner.And just who in Iran will see that money? The Iranian people have lived under crushing poverty and religious authoritarianism for nearly half a century. The regime that runs Iran doesn’t build hospitals and schools with windfall money from the Kushner cash machine. No, it funds proxy militias, builds missiles, and pays for the apparatus of repression that keeps its own citizens in line, and they will never see a dime of it. They never do. And J.D. Vance’s comments about turning over a “new leaf” in the relationship with Iran are as naive as…well, Jared Kushner!I will wager money I don’t have that Jared is involved in all this wheeling and dealing because he is representing the interests of his father-in-law and two brothers-in-law, dunce Donny Jr. and dim-witted Eric. It’s all so blatantly obvious, and no one is sounding the alarm.Let’s be abundantly clear about why Kushner was really there, and that was to make sure the Trump family gets their cut.Whether it’s reconstruction contracts, sweetheart investment deals, or some back-channel percentage of the billions being unlocked, Kushner is the family’s eyes on the money. He and Trump couldn’t care less about Iran’s nuclear program, its regime, or its people. They care about the cash and making sure some of it flows back to them. That’s the only reason he was in the room.Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, has garnered $6.16 billion in assets with an eye-popping (not eye-goo in this case) 99 percent of its funding derived from foreign nationals, including sovereign wealth funds operated by the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion into Affinity, despite senior Saudi officials registering their own opposition, which was overruled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself.
