Botched Calls, the Alito Flag Story and Live Streams on the Guilty Verdict!

Plus: Up Against the Deep Fakes

May 30, 2024

BILL KRISTOL & ANDREW EGGER: ‘Pain For Our Enemies, Pleasure For Our Friends’
JVL: Mrs. Alito Isn’t the Problem 🔐
JOE PERTICONE: Congress Is Spoiling for a Fight With Formula One

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LIVE at 8 PM EASTERN:

George Conway Explained it All (to Sarah Longwell) right after the verdict was read:

DONALD B. AYER AND DENNIS AFTERGUT: Donald Trump Is Now a Convicted Felon

WITH TODAY’S MANHATTAN JURY VERDICT that Donald Trump is guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal before the 2016 election, Trump is the first former president to become a convicted felon. That is a devastating legacy.
The convictions affirm that the rule of law is alive and well, at least in the nation’s largest and most important metropolis. Whatever one may say about it being a state court conviction, rather than a federal conviction for January 6th-related lawlessness, one thing is sure: The bell of accountability has been struck. It rings loudly around the world.
A jury has said to a former president, No one is above the law here.
This is the man who bragged he could walk away after shooting someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight. Aware of his prior success in flaunting rules that others must obey, many feared he could do that again here. But at last a reckoning has come.

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JILL LAWRENCE: The Alito Flag Story and Other Journalistic Botched Calls.

A police officer stands guard outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on April 19, 2023. (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

ONE OF MY FAVORITE PARTS OF THE NEWSEUM was a “what would you do?” exhibit positing various media ethics scenarios and asking visitors what they would do and why. The journalism museum had a prominent spot on Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation’s capital until it ran out of money and shut down in 2019. But the concept has been repurposed as an online instructional tool that helps students “apply journalism standards of accuracy, fairness and clarity in deciding how to report the news.”
The news business is a nonstop series of judgment calls, all day, every day. There are few if any concrete rules, and while some decisions are easy, many only seem that way in hindsight. Which brings us to the Washington Post’s revelation Saturday that a reporter and his editor knew about the upside-down American flag at Justice Samuel Alito’s house more than three years ago, and—drumroll—did not write a story.

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🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧

Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: Derek Thompson: Negativity Bias

Beg to Differ: Wanted: A Biden Campaign
Shield of the Republic: Crosses the Century Mark 💯

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BILL LUEDERS: Up Against the Deep Fakes

STEVEN KRAMER SAYS HE WAS JUST doing his civic duty by pointing out how easy it is to distort reality and corrupt the political process through the use of artificial intelligence.
“Maybe I’m a villain today, but I think in the end we get a better country and better democracy because of what I’ve done, deliberately,” Kramer, a political consultant responsible for a robo call that convincingly mimicked Joe Biden’s voice, told the Associated Press in February. He said the call, which went to thousands of New Hampshire residents days before that state’s first-in-the-nation Democratic primary on January 23, was meant as “a way to wake up the whole country” to this looming threat.

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CATHY YOUNG: The Mainstreaming of Antisemitism on the Right

THIS NOVEMBER, THE REPUBLICAN SENATE CANDIDATE in Minnesota will almost certainly be a guy who has railed against the “Jewish lobby” and “Jewish elite” and defended Jew-bashing rapper Kanye West. While Royce White, the former pro basketball player who has evolved from Black Lives Matter to MAGA, still faces a primary vote in August, he got the Minnesota GOP’s endorsement earlier this month, with two-thirds of the delegate vote at the state party convention (where he was introduced by top MAGA strategist Steve Bannon). A few days later, White faced some major blowback over a resurfaced clip from an appearance on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast last July in which he decried “mouthy” women and suggested that a globalist cabal may have engineered World War II with a view to getting women into the workforce. But the flap over White’s sexist comments overshadowed his troubling record of antisemitic rhetoric, which includes the claim on his own podcast—because of course he has his own podcast—that Jews use the Holocaust “to provide a victimhood cover for their own corrupt practices.”

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