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Media Bias Thread


Hugo Stiglitz

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I believe he means the bottom slice of tomato that has a little snotstring on it. I don't think it really is a snotstring or even a sweatball which would be round, but it resembles a snotstring.

Oh. That’s a tapeworm.
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2 hours ago, DDD Dad said:

IIRC that is mozzarella with olive oil on it.

 

1 hour ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

I believe he means the bottom slice of tomato that has a little snotstring on it. I don't think it really is a snotstring or even a sweatball which would be round, but it resembles a snotstring.

It is an interesting plate - deconstructed buffalo mozzarella (Italian Water Buffalo cheese) caprese salad (minus basil/add salad greens) in three sections and a hamburger patty topped with chimichurri (or a basil pesto sauce) in the fourth.  And as an added bonus - a mystery strand of something on one tomato. 

The hamburger and plate type are out of place - but it's a Trump diner so I guess that is to be expected. It belongs in The Gallery of Regrettable Food - http://lileks.com/institute/gallery/

 

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The white ball is burrata, which is like Xzibit heard you liked fresh mozzarella and put it in fresh mozzarella so you can cheese while you cheese. The sauce is pesto. The greens are frisee tossed in olive oil and lemon with white pepper and a little salt. The tomato is purple cherokee. The little string seems like something that came from the kitchen for a special guest. 

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That makes sense that the green sauce is pesto what with the mozzarella and all. Don't know why I was thinking chimichurri, although that may be my own bias. I have had some awful pesto sauces.

Glad you clarified on the tomato, too. The color looked like an heirloom or special variety.

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2 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

That makes sense that the green sauce is pesto what with the mozzarella and all. Don't know why I was thinking chimichurri, although that may be my own bias. I have had some awful pesto sauces.

Glad you clarified on the tomato, too. The color looked like an heirloom or special variety.

Chimichurri sounds damn good on a burger patty. 
 

Burrata is a nice cheese within a cheese. 
 

The plate could use a balsamic vinegar drizzle and perhaps a glaze on the burger patty.  I imagine the owner believes the dish is for Womb-Man and soy-boys. 

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Tbh, I love 'variety' burgers. Burgers to match your mood, your favorite toppings, the occasion, whatever. Sometimes plain, sometimes fancy, some days you just roll with what you've got in the pantry. Had a gorgonzola burger at The Wild Iris Cafe in Madison once that was really really tasty. I'd just run a long race the day before though so pretty much anything sounded good. Food is personal and though I'm giving Bozo a little grief, here's a toast to all the great burgers out there. Life's too short to have 'em all.

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Bari Weiss (proud Jewish defender and centrist columnist for the NYT) has resigned from the paper. Her resignation letter explains:

Quote

Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong. 

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets. 

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.

https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

We live in strange times. 

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13 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Bari Weiss (proud Jewish defender and centrist columnist for the NYT) has resigned from the paper. Her resignation letter explains:

https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

We live in strange times. 

Pfffftttt...  

 

They did dildo coverage.  Everything is fine.

 

Get with the fucking program.

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Sinclair stations to air “interview” this weekend with guests who claim Fauci is behind Covid 19. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/24/media/sinclair-fauci-conspiracy-bolling/index.html

The host, former Fox News host Eric Bolling, then has on a more legitimate guest (Fox News medical contributor) that calls the Fauci accusation highly unlikely. Wtf. You can’t make baseless claims and then profess balance by disputing them. Bolling also claims he doesn’t control the guest lineup or what text is placed on the screen. Nice journalism ethics there. I just followed my orders defense.

you wonder why people are quick to embrace qanon when local network channels are broadcasting this crap. The network news all should be slamming their corp bosses for continuing to have a relationship with Sinclair.

List of Sinclair stations including CBS in Austin and both San Antonio’s NBC and Fox channels. I don’t know if every station will air this or not. It’s on CBS Austin’s schedule for 10:35p Saturday night.

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Cross posting this from Covid thread. 
 

Cuomo quote included without batting an eye. Hilarious. 
 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/large-gatherings-are-fueling-rising-covid-19-cases-but-they-keep-happening/ar-BB17jbm3?li=BBnb7Kz
 

Once again, one subset of “large gatherings” not included. 
 

"I am appalled. The Department of Health will conduct an investigation," the governor said. "We have no tolerance for the illegal & reckless endangerment of public health."

 

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1 hour ago, GRHorn said:

Cross posting this from Covid thread. 
 

Cuomo quote included without batting an eye. Hilarious. 
 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/large-gatherings-are-fueling-rising-covid-19-cases-but-they-keep-happening/ar-BB17jbm3?li=BBnb7Kz
 

Once again, one subset of “large gatherings” not included. 
 

"I am appalled. The Department of Health will conduct an investigation," the governor said. "We have no tolerance for the illegal & reckless endangerment of public health."

I'm just curious - why the obsession with Cuomo and NY? The article covers several other states as well, but you and the rest of the DT cabal (seewhatididthere) really have it bad for NY

Nevermind that our fair state of TX is comparatively shitting the bed for shutting down large meetings and groups. Shit, the Typhoon Texas near my parents house in Pflugerville had packed lines on every tower ride, and they were clearly not social distancing

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17 minutes ago, Captainant said:

I'm just curious - why the obsession with Cuomo and NY? The article covers several other states as well, but you and the rest of the DT cabal (seewhatididthere) really have it bad for NY

Nevermind that our fair state of TX is comparatively shitting the bed for shutting down large meetings and groups. Shit, the Typhoon Texas near my parents house in Pflugerville had packed lines on every tower ride, and they were clearly not social distancing

Trump sycophants can't stand the fact that Trump is from NYC and nearly universally despised there.  Especially among the crowd he most wants to belong to.  They carry his water far and wide.  This, of all things, shouldn't surprise you one bit.  

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I've been very impressed with Kaitlan Collins on CNN.   She's always on point when interviewed by a main anchor, even keeled, professional.  And she doesn't give two shits about Trump's bullying style in press conferences, keeps after him, never intimidated.   She's 28 and has more balls than most of the men who interview Trump.

Parents must be proud.

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20 hours ago, Captainant said:

I'm just curious - why the obsession with Cuomo and NY? The article covers several other states as well, but you and the rest of the DT cabal (seewhatididthere) really have it bad for NY

Nevermind that our fair state of TX is comparatively shitting the bed for shutting down large meetings and groups. Shit, the Typhoon Texas near my parents house in Pflugerville had packed lines on every tower ride, and they were clearly not social distancing

No obsession with Cuomo. He just had the most ridiculous unchallenged quote that was in the article. 
 

 

20 hours ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Trump sycophants can't stand the fact that Trump is from NYC and nearly universally despised there.  Especially among the crowd he most wants to belong to.  They carry his water far and wide.  This, of all things, shouldn't surprise you one bit.  

I’d guess that the percentage of Trump voters that give a shit about how he’s perceived in Ny is less than 10%? What an odd thing to post. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

This thread doesn't get a ton of traffic, but it might be one of the most important threads on the politics board. The root cause of many of our country's problems stem from a lack of truth and facts, and an inability of the public to easily discern fact from fiction. 

One of the potentially best ways to combat fake news is to go after advertisers. Whoever advertises on the more extreme propaganda sites are the prime targets: Huffington Post, Fox News, Brietbart, etc. There are still blue chip advertisers advertising on these outlets because their customers frequent these outlets.

Obviously, 40% of the population won't participate in any given boycott of a given media outlet because they believe the fake news, but businesses losing a portion of the other 40-60% will hurt pretty badly.  Once those companies stop advertising, it will become more and more difficult for these media outlets to dig up advertisers, or at the very least it will put a major dent into their profits.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/22/william-barr-rupert-murdoch-muzzle-andrew-napolitano-fox-news-trump-critic-book

The attorney general, William Barr, told Rupert Murdoch to “muzzle” Andrew Napolitano, a prominent Fox News personality who became a critic of Donald Trump, according to a new book about the rightwing TV network.

Barr’s meeting with Murdoch, at the media mogul’s New York home in October 2019, was widely reported at the time, with speculation surrounding its subject. According to Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, subjects covered included media consolidation and criminal justice reform.

“But it was also about Judge Andrew Napolitano.”

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https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/if-biden-were-a-republican/

 

You know all these questions (and more) would be asked if Joe Biden were a Republican.

If you think the press is the least bit balanced, you should also wonder why they aren't asking these questions about Obama's questioning his competence, his family benefitting from his office, his ties with White Supremacists, whether he will refuse to concede, breaking norms, opposing travel bans and this:


"...Mr. Biden, you finished near the bottom of your class at Syracuse Law School, you rely heavily on teleprompters in public appearances and yet you still frequently stumble over the most basic facts, asserting for example that 150 million Americans had died of gun violence or that 200 million Americans had died of COVID-19. How will you prove to the American people that you are cognitively capable of handling the demands of the world’s most demanding office?"

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This is NOT a story about media bias but one in which there's a discussion with how the media landscape might change if Trump loses the election. According to this article, the MSM has been putting off changes in ownership and how they embrace new technology because of the president's constant attention toward them has raised their profiles and has helped them remain relevant.

Also, look for the link to an Easter Egg at the end for something to help distract and calm you over the next couple of days.

It’s the End of an Era for the Media, No Matter Who Wins the Election
Trump made the legacy media great again. Here’s what’s next for them.

There’s a media phenomenon the old-time blogger Mickey Kaus calls “overism”: articles in the week before the election whose premise is that even before the votes are counted, we know the winner — in this case, Joe Biden.

I plead guilty to writing a column with that tacit premise. I spent last week asking leading figures in media to indulge in the accursed practice of speculating about the consequences of an election that isn’t over yet. They all read the same polls as you do and think that President Trump will probably lose.

But many leaders in news and media have been holding their breaths for the election — and planning everything from retirements to significant shifts in strategy for the months to come, whoever wins. President Trump, after all, succeeded in making the old media great again, in part through his obsession with it. His riveting show allowed much of the television news business, in particular, to put off reckoning with the technological shifts — toward mobile devices and on-demand consumption —  that have changed all of our lives. But now, change is in the air across a news landscape that has revolved around the president.

And given the jittery pre-election timing, I’ll try to keep these items short so you can check Nate Silver’s Twitter feed in between reading them.

Spoiler

 

The News Business After Trump
Before the 2016 election, Andrew Lack, then the head of NBC News, warned colleagues that MSNBC’s revenue would take a 30 percent hit if — when — Hillary Clinton was elected, two people familiar with the remark told me. (After the debacle in 2016, few in the media wanted to be quoted speculating about what happens after the election.)

Well, TV sure dodged that bullet! CNN’s chief, Jeff Zucker, later told his Los Angeles bureau that Mr. Trump had bought the declining business four more years, a person who was there recalled. (A spokesman for CNN said that Mr. Zucker would not have speculated on future ratings.) And it has been a profitable time for cable news, a record-breaking year for political books and, generally, a bonanza for the legacy media that live rent-free in the president’s head.

That may be ending. MSNBC and other outlets that thrived on resistance to Mr. Trump may see their audiences fade, said Ken Lerer, a veteran investor and adviser to old media and new, who also predicted that The New York Times would “cool off” as you, dear reader, find other things to do.

And the people who continue to pay attention to the news will stay online.

“The pandemic has advanced digital by four or five years and it will not go back to what it was,” Mr. Lerer said.

In corporate media, that means what Cesar Conde, the new chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, has been calling an “omnichannel” strategy, as brands like MSNBC no longer see themselves primarily as television. For new outlets, it’s an opportunity to press their advantage of being native to this new world.

“Many media organizations have spent the past four years generally failing to adapt to a campaign, a president, a White House and an administration that is extremely online,” said Stacy-Marie Ishmael, the editorial director of the nonprofit Texas Tribune. “We are only, four years in, getting to grips with how to contend with rhetorical techniques, messaging and communications steeped in misinformation and propaganda.”

Others predicted a deeper cultural shift — from Stephen Colbert’s biting satire back to the sillier Jimmy Fallon, from politics back to entertainment, whenever the studios can get production running again. But some veterans of the business of politics doubt that news coverage can really calm down — or that consumers can look away.

“If Biden is elected, conservatives will be energized, not retreating,” said Eric Nelson, the editorial director of Broadside Books, HarperCollins’s conservative imprint. “Trump will keep tweeting, and new scandals from his presidency will keep unfolding for well into 2022. By the time that all chaos and nonsense runs out, Trump could be running again for 2024.”

A Wave of Retirements
You aren’t the only one just barely hanging on until Election Day. Most of the top leaders of many name-brand American news institutions will probably be gone soon, too. The executive editor of The Los Angeles Times, Norm Pearlstine, is looking to recruit a successor by the end of the year, he told me. Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post, just bought a house out of town and two Posties said they expected him to depart next year. He hasn’t given notice, The Post’s spokeswoman, Kristine Coratti Kelly, said. And the executive editor of The New York Times, Dean Baquet, is on track to retire by the time he turns 66 in 2022, two Times executives told me, dampening speculation that he might stay longer.

Over in big TV, Mr. Zucker, of CNN, has signaled that he’s frustrated with WarnerMedia, and broadcast television is overflowing with speculation about how long the network news chiefs will stay on, though no executives have suggested imminent departures. “Everyone is assuming there’s going to be turnover everywhere, and everyone is absolutely terrified about who is going to come in,” one television industry insider said.

This isn’t just the usual revolving door. Newsroom leaders face strong pulls in conflicting directions. Outlets all along the spectrum, from the staid BBC to the radical Intercept, have been moving to reassert final editorial control over their journalists. But newsroom employees — like a generation of workers across many industries — are arriving with heightened demands to be given more of a say in running their companies than in years past. New leaders may find opportunities to resolve some of the heated newsroom battles of the last year, or they may walk into firestorms.

Mr. Pearlstine, the only one talking openly of his departure, told me that the new “metrics for success might be different as well — issues such as inclusiveness, such as being anti-racist, such as really commanding some new platform, be it podcasts or video or newsletters, in addition to having journalistic credentials.”

And, he said, the old top-down newsroom management is a thing of the past. “Consent of the governed is something you have to take pretty seriously,” he said.

Wesley Lowery, a CBS News correspondent who has been a voice for more diverse and politically engaged journalism, said he had already seen signs of change.

“These big institutions very rarely come out and announce some big sweeping change — they say, ‘We’re not changing,’ and they change,” he said. “Even people who made a big deal about how the rebels were wrong are now conceding to the things we all wanted.”

Fox News on Autopilot
The right-wing cable channel has been riding high as the quasi-official White House network, though it has always been at its strongest when it’s attacking Democrats — who seem poised to take power.

But the approaching election has executives around Lachlan Murdoch, Fox’s chief executive, preparing to battle on several fronts: with left-wing critics, with what senior executives fear could be regulatory retribution from Democrats and perhaps most of all from James Murdoch, Lachlan’s more liberal brother and critic, according to a person familiar with the company’s plans.

And Lachlan Murdoch ends the election cycle as he began it: with no real control of the network’s high-profile talent and an unusually low profile for a figure of his nominal political power. One data point: a surprised patron of the Midtown power lunch spot Estiatorio Milos in late October reported overhearing Mr. Murdoch politely spelling his name to a hostess who didn’t recognize him.

The Attention Wars
The battles over speech and censorship, the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci tweeted recently, are becoming “attention wars.” As recently as last week, senators were dragging in tech executives to complain about individual tweets, but the arguments are about to turn more consequential. The platforms are increasingly being pushed to disclose how content travels and why — not just what they leave up and what they take down.

“We’re in this brave new world of content moderation that’s outside the take-down/leave-up false binary,” said Evelyn Douek, an expert on the subject and a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

In practice, Twitter, Facebook and the other big platforms are facing two sources of pressure. The first is from Australia and the European Union, where Germany has become the latest to push toward tight copyright restrictions.

“We are now at an inflection point with the digital platforms,” Rod Sims, the chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, told me in an email. “The tide has turned all around the world as governments and antitrust enforcers now see the size of the challenge ahead.”

The second source of pressure is the United States, where President Trump has pushed to repeal or revise Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from being liable for what they publish while allowing them to moderate content. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a co-author of the 1996 law who would head the powerful Finance Committee if Democrats take control of the Senate, said he was skeptical that changes to Section 230 would actually stop misinformation or what conservatives claim is censorship. And he noted that Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has said he supports some revisions, too.

“He made his money, and now he wants to pull up the ladder behind him,” Senator Wyden said in an interview on Saturday. “The fact that Facebook, of all companies, is calling for changes to 230 makes you say, ‘Wait a second.’” Mr. Wyden said his priority when it comes to big tech in the new Congress would be privacy legislation.

The media’s internal conflicts, meanwhile, play out on Twitter and, increasingly, on Substack, a newsletter platform where large audiences are paying for work by anti-Trump conservatives and iconoclastic voices on the left, who were joined last week by Glenn Greenwald, the national security journalist and free speech advocate who helped found The Intercept and quit in a dispute over whether his work should be edited.

Another way of looking at Substack is as a kind of Twitter Premium — a place you can pay for more content from your favorite journalists. And that synergy has caught the attention of some at Twitter itself, where the notion of acquiring the newsletter company has been discussed internally, a person familiar with the conversations said. (Executives at both companies declined to comment on the speculation, but after this column was published, Hamish McKenzie, a co-founder of Substack, tweeted that a sale to Twitter was “not going to happen.”)

But it’s not clear whether Substack will continue to be the venue of choice for all of its stars. Mr. Greenwald wrote that he’d been exploring “the feasibility of securing financing for a new outlet” that would challenge what he sees as the “groupthink” of the left in the Trump era. And roiling anger in Silicon Valley with tough media coverage of companies and investments means there are deep pools of money for a new assault on big media.

“There’s going to be a surge of money after the election, especially from tech bros who think they can fix everything,” said one of the Substack writers who has drawn interest from tech investors.

Staying Sane for the Next 48 Hours
Nothing good will come of reading political news, much less Twitter, between now and the election. Election week is usually a good time to hide out at the movies, but with theaters closed, you’ll have to find escape elsewhere. Two favorites: The Times’s brilliant Election Distractor on the web; and for your Kindle, Malka Older’s Centenal Cycle, a bit of high-concept political sci-fi that will prepare you for many of the coming tech and political battles.

On election night, however, come to Twitter for the jokes and stay for what is really one of the highlights of American democracy, such as it is: the reassuringly sophisticated, nerdy and nonpartisan vote-counting conversation that you can listen in on among the likes of Mr. Silver, Nate Cohn, Ariel Edwards-Levy and Brandon Finnigan.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

You wanna stop conflating an administration's authoritarian train wreck attempts at overturning a democratic election with an investigation that was a confetti blower of indictments, pleas, convictions, and prison sentences appointed by that same administration's DOJ? Cuz it'd be a lot cooler if you did .

 

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/matthew-mcconaughey-calls-out-hollywood-hypocrisy-for-mocking-conservatives-refusal-to-accept-biden-win

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5 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

You wanna stop conflating an administration's authoritarian train wreck attempts at overturning a democratic election with an investigation that was a confetti blower of indictments, pleas, convictions, and prison sentences appointed by that same administration's DOJ? Cuz it'd be a lot cooler if you did .

 

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/matthew-mcconaughey-calls-out-hollywood-hypocrisy-for-mocking-conservatives-refusal-to-accept-biden-win

McConaughey can get fucked with that both sides shit. 

2016 and 2020 ain't the same ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fucking sport 

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Dems didn't even open impeachment hearings on that. Trump and Friends are taking 50 swings at the plate in court.

Mueller testified in live sworn televised testimony that Trump was guilty of the very act Clinton was impeached for and Dems who allegedly couldn't accept the election were all "nah, we'll pass. We know there's another crime is coming around the bend" and to no one's surprise, there was!

 

But otherwise, obviously adding the hypothetical 50 Hillary lawsuits and no concession, apples to apples.

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