Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Michelle Goldberg: Are Republicans Covering for Trump, or for Themselves?
Of all the interlocking mysteries of the Trump-Russia scandal, one that I’ve found particularly perplexing is the utter servility of congressional Republicans before a president many of them hate and believe to be compromised by a foreign power.
Yes, I know they’re thrilled about tax cuts and judges. Given how Russia has become a patron of the right globally over the last decade, some Republicans might welcome its intervention into our politics, believing that the Democrats are greater enemies of the Republic. And some are just cowards, afraid of mean tweets or base blowback.
But that doesn’t explain why, for example, Speaker Paul Ryan, a Russia hawk who is retiring in January, allowed his party to torpedo the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian interference in the election. Ryan, after all, knows full well who and what Donald Trump is. In a secretly recorded June 2016 conversation about Ukraine, obtained by The Washington Post, the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, said, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” Far from disagreeing, Ryan said, “What’s said in the family stays in the family.” If he were patriotic — or even if he just wanted to set himself up for a comeback should Trump implode — he would have stood up for the rule of law in the Russia inquiry. It’s hard to see what he got in return for choosing not to.
This week, however, a new possibility came into focus. Perhaps, rather than covering for Trump, some Republicans are covering for themselves.
Will Hurd: Trump Is Being Manipulated by Putin. What Should We Do?
Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them.
The president’s failure to defend the United States intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and condemn Russian covert counterinfluence campaigns and his standing idle on the world stage while a Russian dictator spouted lies confused manybut should concern all Americans. By playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the leader of the free world actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and weakened the credibility of the United States to both our friends and foes abroad.
As a member of Congress, a coequal branch of government designed by our founders to provide checks and balances on the executive branch, I believe that lawmakers must fulfill our oversight duty as well as keep the American people informed of the current danger.
Eugene Robinson: God bless the ‘deep state’
Before this harebrained and reckless administration is history, the nation will have cause to celebrate the public servants derided by Trumpists as the supposed “deep state.”
The term itself is propaganda, intended to cast a sinister light upon men and women whom Trump and his minions find annoyingly knowledgeable and experienced. They are not participants in any kind of dark conspiracy. Rather, they are feared and loathed by the president and his wrecking crew of know-nothings because they have spent years — often decades — mastering the details of foreign and domestic policy.
God bless them. With a supine Congress unwilling to play the role it is assigned by the Constitution, the deep state stands between us and the abyss.
Margaret Carlson: Trump Wants Putin to Keep Meddling to Get Himself Reelected
“Inexplicable. Head-scratching. Beyond understanding. Baffling.” So goes the commentary about Trump’s press conference in Helsinki.
Really? By now we should all know why Donald Trump sided with Russian president Vladimir Putin against his own country and why, Wednesday, when a reporter asked him if Russia is still targeting U.S. elections, Trump answered “no.”
There he goes again protecting Putin—or not, according to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose lies are coming at an ever faster clip. She claimed at her Wednesday press availability that Trump was turning down any more questions, not saying no to a specific one on meddling. Then he took another question. [..]
Trump is not so complicated that any scratching of heads is needed to get to why he persists in his protection of Putin. It’s the best way to insure Trump’s reelection. Amid the impulses driving Trump, none is more potent than not being a loser and proving to elites they were wrong about him. His constant denial that Russia meddled is not just to to protect his fragile ego from the suggestion he didn’t win fair and square, or to deny collusion, or stop the witch hunt; it’s to exonerate Putin, whose help dragged him over the finish line in the electoral college in 2016 and which he needs again in 2020.
Judd Legum: Facebook’s pledge to eliminate misinformation is itself fake news
Zuckerberg, facing an avalanche of criticism, later released a statement saying he “absolutely didn’t intend to defend the intent of people who deny” the Holocaust. He did not, however, back away from his core position – that Holocaust deniers have a place on Facebook.
Facebook is trying to have it both ways. The company is actively seeking credit for fighting misinformation and fake news. At the same time, its CEO is explicitly saying that information he acknowledges is fake should be distributed by Facebook.
Zuckerberg seems to believe that technology will get the company out of this jam. “We have to do everything in the form of machine learning,” Henry Silverman, an operations specialist for News Feed integrity, says earnestly in Facebook’s documentary about fighting fake news. [..]
But the idea that people will be willing to tolerate Holocaust deniers on Facebook if those posts reach a few less people ignores the moral component of these decisions. There is no algorithm for human decency.
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