Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
While President Trump was away on a diplomatic mission to Hanoi to negotiate a nuclear deal with Kim Jong Un, the media breathlessly turned its eye to Capitol Hill to hear from a sleazy disbarred lawyer.
The dueling news stories summed up the country’s two political movements. Republicans were trying to dismantle weapons of mass destruction, while Democrats were deploying weapons of mass distraction.
In Vietnam, President Trump was dealing with serious problems. In Washington D.C., Democrats and their media arm can’t imagine any problem more serious than Trump. Forget North Korean nukes, the true threat to Democrats and the media isn’t radiation, it’s viewership. What keeps CNN’s, MSNBC’s, the New York Times’ and the Washington Post’s bosses up at night is fear that Mueller might not deliver.
And as the atomic report clock ticks down to zero, bringing Michael Cohen to Washington D.C. was a desperate effort to squeeze 15 more minutes out of their smear campaign by pretending to believe the same guy they had been calling a liar last year. Michael and the media are a perfect fit for each other.
“I have lied, but I am not a liar,” he insisted. It was an echo of CBS’ infamous, “Fake, but accurate.”
“Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress,” he claimed, but had somehow implied that he should lie. Trump had somehow “mesmerized” him into doing things that “were absolutely wrong”.
Like lying to Congress. Again.
But, now that he was back, who had mesmerized Mikey into lying about not seeking a White House job? Either Trump has the power to “mesmerize” him over 8,200 miles away from Vietnam or he has been looking deep into Bill’s baby blues or Hillary’s colored contact lenses to make him lie all over again.
Like claiming that Trump only ran for office to “make his brand great”, despite seeing his brand, and that of his daughter, take a severe beating during the campaign due to boycotts and accusations of racism.
“He had no desire or intention to lead this nation—only to market himself,” Michael Cohen claimed. “He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election.”
Trump’s net worth had been estimated at $4.5 billion in 2015. During the campaign it slid down to $2.8 billion. It’s currently estimated at $3.1 billion. Forbes estimated that his net worth had fallen by a billion during the campaign largely because of brand damage and media harassment.
If Trump were running for office only to make money, he would have dropped out after losing a billion.
Michael Cohen 2.0, with Clinton pro Lanny Davis representing him pro bono, is just as happy to lie as 1.0. And his lies, by no coincidence, mirror the talking points of his media bosses. But, like the entire Russia hoax, they never amount to anything substantial. The disbarred lawyer was happy to repeat media slurs against Trump like “racist” and “con man”. To toss out late night show insults and insinuate worse.
But the convicted liar’s testimony lurched through a swamp of its own contradictions. Trump had lied about his dealings with Russia, according to Michael Cohen, because he never expected to win the election. But if Trump was lying about his dealings with Russia because he was Moscow’s puppet, then why bother with the whole vast conspiracy if he wasn’t even going to win? What was the actual point?
Like the media’s Russia conspiracy theories, his take on them doesn’t make any actual sense.
Neither Michael nor the media have any credibility left. Michael Cohen and the media both say one thing today and another tomorrow. They don’t have ethics, they have sides. Back when he appeared to be working for Trump, the media insisted that he couldn’t be believed. Now that he’s being repped by a Clinton lawyer, Michael Cohen has suddenly become as entirely believable as the Clintons themselves.
Michael Cohen had already pled guilty to lying to Congress. It’s hard to imagine a worse congressional witness than a lawyer who had not only lied, but who had admitted to lying to Congress. But the entire Russia conspiracy theory likely originated with a Clinton sleazebag who had allegedly tried to smear Vice President Dan Quayle as a cokehead based on the claims of a felon who admitted to making it all up.
The Trump Russia smear was shopped to David Corn, a leftist hack, accused of sexual harassment, and a series of disgraced FBI and DOJ figures, including Andrew McCabe, who was found to have lied under oath. Cohen is just the latest in a parade of losers and freaks, like Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Bruce Ohr, who couldn’t be trusted by their organizations, their spouses or by the taxpayers who pay their salaries.
Bringing in Cohen means scraping the very bottom of the barrel. But his slimy ooze is still floating a little higher than Ali Watkins, the 27-year-old Politico and New York Times hack who had reported on Cohen’s previous House appearance. Watkins’ source eventually turned out to be the Senate Intelligence Committee aide twice her age whom she was sleeping with the knowledge of her media superiors.
As bad as Michael Cohen is, the media is still worse. It’s the only industry where sleeping with married men to undermine President Trump makes you a Pulitzer Prize finalist instead of a national disgrace.
The media and Michael Cohen deserve each other. Hopefully, like Ali Watkins and James Wolfe, and Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, they’ll be very happy in their adulterous leftist relationship together.
But the media’s latest shiny lying object can’t fix its real problem.
The media made a mint off the Russian conspiracy theories. But Mueller couldn’t deliver collusion, neither could Michael. “Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. I want to be clear,” he slithered.
“But, I have my suspicions.”
After all the noise, House Democrats were left with little more than the insinuations of a convicted liar.
It was the second bitter disappointment after disgraced FBI honcho Andrew McCabe told 60 Minutes that there had been a 25th Amendment discussion about removing President Trump, only to have his spokeswoman backtrack and claim that “at no time did Mr. McCabe participate in any extended discussions about the use of the 25th Amendment, nor is he aware of such discussions.”
Liars with law degrees will sometimes tell the eager lynch mob what it wants to hear, but then they quickly clean up the mess and change the topic to calling President Trump a racist.
The Cohen circus was heavy on insinuation, but, as usual, distinctly short on Russian substance. The content didn’t matter and was never going to. The existence of the circus however matters very much.
What did matter is that House Democrats are not only poisonously partisan, but deeply unserious. While nuclear negotiations that might prevent or bring on a war were taking place in Vietnam, Democrats were undermining the President in the face of the enemy. This wasn’t a coincidence. It was sabotage.
While President Trump was hard at work trying to defuse the weapons of mass destruction in North Korea, House Democrats and their media arm tried to detonate a weapon of mass distraction.
It smoked, rolled around a little bit, made some noise, and then fizzled out.
“I tell my staff that 200 years from now people will be reading about this moment,” Rep. Cummings boasted.
They won’t even remember it next week.
If Trump’s negotiations succeed, they might be remembered two centuries from now. But this latest episode in the Democrat circus will be a fading memory by the time you finish reading this tonight.
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