“We will see if this is a legal and valid election,” Stefanik, a member of House GOP leadership and a Donald Trump ally, said in an interview with “Meet the Press.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., on Sunday wouldn’t commit to certifying the 2024 election results during an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
While interviewing Stefanik, who serves in House Republican leadership, host Kristen Welker asked, “Would you vote to certify, and will you vote to certify, the results of the 2024 election no matter what they show?”
Stefanik, who has boosted former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, said that she did not vote to certify the 2020 results in the state of Pennsylvania and several other states because there were “unconstitutional acts circumventing the state legislature and unilaterally changing election law.”
“Today a Republican admitted she plans to help orchestrate another insurrection if Trump loses again in 2024… Now here’s Tom with the weather.” - NBC News, basically
Stop blaming the media.
They reported the pussy grabber tape and reported when Donnie said that he ‘liked soldiers who didn’t get captured.’
People voted for him because he said the shit they wanted to hear, and they’ll ignore any news that tells them what they don’t believe.
The media also spent a lot of time letting Trump just say whatever he wanted without any criticism. Which I think was their point. Maybe if you’re going to report on this stuff, also push back on it.
In the Before Times, they didn’t have to criticize. Just reporting obvious fuckery would have been enough.
Like when? When we went into Iraq because WMDs?
When you say that, what do you have in mind?
Off the top of my head:
- John Edwards
- Gary Hart
- Rod Blagojevich
- Robert Bork
Which one of those people were not criticized?
To take one example that I was very closely following, Blagojevich:
Reporting at the time was not overly critical; all that was needed was to report the facts of the matter, because the general public was in agreement on the nature of reality, something which is horribly lacking today.
The imaginary fifth one.
Lol
There’s plenty of media pushing back on him. It’s basically a huge maga-cultist complaint that they aren’t very nice to Trump, because they point out and dissect what he has said and criticize it. They see the lopsided amount of times his BS is being called out as evidence that the media is biased against him, not that he spews a lopsided amount of BS.
The media also spent a lot of time letting Trump just say whatever he wanted without any criticism.
That depends on what you are reading. However, good journalism should be impartial. It should not criticize or provide opinion, it should report facts (including fact checking when a person says bullshit). But to give opinion is arguably bad journalism, or better to say, not journalism. It is political analysis/opinion column/political show. Which is part of the media too, of course, but it is often confused with the good journalism.
But to give opinion is arguably bad journalism, or better to say, not journalism.
Walter Cronkite did it. He almost singlehandedly changed the nation’s general opinion on the Vietnam War. And most people would consider Walter Cronkite to have been an excellent journalist.
Also, ‘criticism’ is not the same as ‘opinion.’ If Trump says something false, he should be rightly criticized for saying that false thing. That is not an opinion-based issue.
Excellent journalist can do non-journalist analysis too. It is just not journalistic reporting.
Interesting that you ignored the more important part of my post.
Because what you called criticism, I called fact checking, and I mention it in my original statement. You don’t criticize when you report. You simply state that it is false.
However, good journalism should be impartial. It should not criticize or provide opinion
Hard disagree. A good journalist is partial to objectivity and speaks truth to power.
When Trump is spreading baseless conspiracy theories, most of which literally endanger the lives of his intended target, you don’t just fucking let him do it without any pushback and let people without any background in relevant fields try to figure out whether he’s lying.
That’s journalistic malpractice and also how the world got to the point where one of the two main parties is a literal fascist movement rather than a legitimate political party.
it should report facts (including fact checking when a person says bullshit
You can only fact check so much in real time, especially when you’re talking to someone who swings wildly between rambling nonsense and turning dog whistles into fog horns and you’re apparently not allowed to criticize or have opinions 🙄
to give opinion is arguably bad journalism, or better to say, not journalism.
In the same way that Donald Trump Jr arguably has a chin. You could make that argument, but you’d be wrong.
good journalism should be impartial. It should not criticize or provide opinion
That is what the textbooks say. It is not reality in any way. Actual “facts only” would be boring and dry - and news should be that way but it isn’t and I think we all know why.
Besides, word choice alone is an opinion. There’s almost no such thing as reporting without an opinion. The actual method is to recognize that opinion exists, not to pretend there isn’t one. The latter is what corporate news sewers do.
Selecting what stories to report is also an opinion. Just saw a headline from WaPo today of “Trump makes fun of Biden’s stutter” like this is a newsworthy thing to cover for a potential presidential candidate. Look at Trump breaking norms and being uncouth! Surely this important and objective recounting of his every utterance will inform the public and make people think he’s not fit to be president rather than make him look like a alpha troll cutting down an old dude who can’t talk good.
good journalism should be impartial
Neutrality in situations of oppression amounts to aligning with the oppressor.
Neutrality in situations of straight-up violating norms and standards and telling lies… aligns with the liar.
Neutrality to a fault… is a fault.
At some point, if you’re neutral to the point that you’re unwilling to take a critical stance of anything, you could save yourself the effort as a journalist and just forward along everyone’s press releases and quit pretending that the role of the journalist in the 1st Amendment is to hold the powerful accountable and to tell truths they might not want told- and get on with that business of licking those delicious boots
One doesn’t have to be neutral, but one can separate one’s opinion from facts.
However, good journalism should be impartial.
Good journalism provides context, draws attention to cause and effect, and doesn’t pretend that events occur in a vacuum.
That’s true. But it is still can be done in impartial way.
Impartial is one thing, but being impartial while one side relies on outright lies is another thing.
To give an example, back when I was in college (the mid-90s), my college newspaper ran an article from a Holocaust denier. At the time, he was going across the country trying to get college newspapers to run his “the Holocaust never happened” piece and my college’s newspaper agreed to it. I confronted the editor-in-chief and he replied “we have to tell both sides of the story.”
Except there aren’t two sides of this story. There’s one. The Holocaust happened. That’s a historical fact. Trying to “be impartial” with this is to elevate wild conspiracy theories to the same position as historical facts.
Impartial reporting of FACTS is not given equal time to facts and falsities.
This. If one person says it’s raining and another says it isn’t, a journalist’s job isn’t to report that “expert opinions vary on the state of the weather”, a journalist’s job is to go the fuck outside and figure out if it’s raining.
Stop blaming the media? The fuck you talking about? They made him and supported him in every way!
Fuck no we won’t stop blaming the media, they know exactly what they did. You hear any actual apologies, see any actual changes for the better? No. No you don’t.
Stop blaming the media. FFS.
This
I’m not sure that comments blaming the media. It’s not the media’s fault it’s commonplace
The rolling insurrection continues. Rep. Stefanik needs to see some charges, be removed from office, and 14th amendment prevent her from hold any office ever again. Take the gloves off Joe. No negotiation with terrorists, no kit gloves for insurrectionists.
A smart liar (e.g. the ones who didn’t end up in stories like this) would’ve just said yes and planned to do what they were going to do anyway. This is the low-hanging fruit.
We’re to the point where fascists are comfortable saying shit like this.
Only the best anti-American racist idiots.
On one hand, definitely. But you and I aren’t her target audience.
Right, but the point of her response was to tell Trump she is loyal and would make a good VP.
At this point nobody in the GOP cares what the public thinks. They know GOP voters will vote for the Trump ticket no matter what. And Democrats will be the first against the wall after the election.
So that leaves just one audience member.
I press in the sharpie very hard when I vote against her.
On the face of it, it is manifestly reasonable to say that you’ll certify on the condition that the election is free and fair- that is, after all, always the condition of doing so. But that’s not what she’s saying here- she’s repeating claims that 2020 was invalid
In reality it’s extremely unlikely that the election in 2024 will be unfair or rigged against the GOP, and she deserves all the opprobrium she has coming her way for creating the impression (for her audience) that an unfair election is likely to occur or that 2020 was rigged or illegal. After all, that’s the rhetorical setup MAGA created in the run-up to 2020: if they lost, it was unfair (and therefore, time to do a treason/coup).
Her rhetoric here could simply be a prediction that 2024 will be an illegitimate election, or it could be a cue for her audience to prepare to accept or commit political violence in 2024- and as such, it is a textbook example of stochastic terrorism and should be understood as such. Also the media that declines to note this should be evaluated as enabling, vs. holding to account
ship of theseus arguments are their stock in trade. You start with a statement no one could disagree with, like “I will vote to certify the election if it seems like a free and fair election. If it seems otherwise, I will lead an investigation that will root out fraud and ensure the people’s voices are heard.” Then you start doing string substitutions:
“it seems like a free and fair election” gets subbed for “Trump wins”
“it seems otherwise” == “Trump loses”
“lead an investigation that will root out fraud” == “obstruct the proceedings”
“the people’s voices are heard” == “Trump is installed as dictator for life”
Then you pretend you never made those substitutions, and you get to rhetorically hammer your opponents for being against free and fair elections and in favor of fraud. After all, everyone else heard the very reasonable “I will vote to certify the election if it seems like a free and fair election. If it seems otherwise, I will lead an investigation that will root out fraud and ensure the people’s voices are heard.” But the party faithful clearly heard: “I will vote to certify the election if Trump wins. If Trump loses, I will obstruct the proceedings and ensure Trump is installed as dictator for life.”
Innuendo Studios has a great video about how the Christian Nationalist terrorists use their media pipelines to establish public vs private definitions of phrases, and then use those equivocated phrases to say one thing to the general public and another thing to their base.
ship of theseus arguments are their stock in trade.
Yes, if they couldn’t ship unpopular politics misleadingly as uncontroversial feel-good slam-dunks, they’d never get any support in politics. It’s a pity that sort of rhetoric works as well as it does
Also Innuendo’s work is fantastic
Sure glad the centrist establishment media just gave her a multiweek bonanza on a non-issue. Good job guys! At least they performed the critical role of nationalizing an, at most, university-wide story at the behest of conservatives bent on destroying the country.
She’s obviously setting up for another attempt to overthrow the government.
The first attempt has never ended
It’s really weird, disconcerting and discouraging that both sides accuse each other of stealing, both sides have rather ardent and vocal bases, both bases want to jail the politicians involved but only one side actually time and again gets caught cheating, lying and stealing, yet has the most loyal and fanatic base that actually want to murder those thst don’t agree.
I get the average trump voter as they actually believe the nonsense they believe in, a lot can be said about gullibility, racism, etc, but as they are fed a steady diet of lies that include “the brown ones are coming to kill you” I get where they’re coming from. They’re mostly terrified because they’re fed terror every goddamn day even though mostly nothing happens.
If the world survives this election (big if right there) can we please PLEASE do something about news providers in the US? Shut down oan, Fox News, etc. put laws in place requiring news organisations to be truthful. Yes, mistakes can be made but if a news organization sees that they publish untrue information, they must retract it and publish and equally big retraction. If they push too much to ignoring certain facts from whichever political isle, they must be punished, HARD. I don’t care if it’s left or right extremism, all need to be curved, news needs to be neutral facts to inform the general public.
With news changing to influencers, apply those rules to influencers as well. Yes, free speech must be a thing, but once you have an audience, you’re not allowed to feed them bullshit that goes against the greater good. It’s the same as yelling “fire!” in a theater. There are logical limits to free speech, this should be one of them.
This limitless lying that organisations like Fox News are allowed to do right now has caused possibly irreparable damage to so many things, it has destroyed lives and may end humanity altogether (hello, global warming “myth”!)
Cut the shit, stop the lying. We need to change how news and baseline truth and facts are given to the general population. If you lie, be it that you’re a news organization, a company selling snake oil medications, a politician, an influencer, whatever it is, once you reach a group, you either are truthful or you get punished.
If you allow us to cheat and just steal the presidency, I’ll see it as legal and valid
I don’t know exactly when we stopped hanging traitors, but I’d like to return to that policy.
Nah, too gruesome and we’re better than that.
Publicly exposing them for the liars they are, ejecting them from public offices for life, putting them on registries, etc. is better.
It requires though that we start defining a baseline truth in news and facts. I know that there are risks of fascism taking over through that through propaganda, but if we can ensure that news and facts are based on reality, science, etc, then we have a chance of getting it done right
How? There are flat earthers… Fact has nothing to do with it.
The republican traitor swine must be crushed under the heel of justice.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After Welker pressed her again on the matter, Stefanik wouldn’t commit to certifying the election results and criticized efforts to remove Trump from the ballot in Colorado, Maine and other states.
And the Supreme Court is taking that case up in February — that should be a nine to zero to allow President Trump to appear on the ballot because that’s the American people’s decision to make this November.”
Stefanik also defended Trump’s recent remarks calling rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and remain in prison “hostages,” echoing that language herself.
During a rally in Iowa on Saturday, Trump urged President Joe Biden to release the rioters from federal prison: “I call them hostages.
When asked if she stood by the comments that she made on the House floor calling Jan. 6 a “truly tragic day for America,” Stefanik said, “I have concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages.”
Biden deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks responded to Stefanik in his own appearance on “Meet the Press,” saying: “I’m not sure that this ‘I know you are, but what am I’ situation is going to work when it comes to democracy."
The original article contains 853 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Ridiculous question. Would a Democrat agree to unilaterally certify the results eleven months before it happens?
Yes, it’s part of their job.
Only to people that think it’s a rubber stamp process and are too stupid to consider the implications behind it actually being Republicans repeatedly trying to rig the last one.
In this case is not about right now cerifying the results since the election are yet to start, much less to know who is going to win.
The issue is that these traitors tried to say that the election was stolen and even tried to do illegal things to cancel or delay the results.
She was asked I’d she is going to certify the election regardless of who wins even if she doesn’t like the results, and yet she failed to do so.
No, she wasn’t whether she will certify it if “she doesnt like the results.”
The exact question she was asked is even in the excerpt.
Maybe you should read it.
Kind of ironic, more when the question is written there.
“Would you vote to certify the 2024 election, no matter what they show”
Maybe it is you who cannot comprehend what you read.
Uh huh.
And, Great Minds, why would anyone say yes unequivocally before an election that hasn’t happened and might have actual fraud in it?
Dur, are you that dumb or what ? Even If you don’t like the results, you have to accept them. That is the whole issue about it.
It is not a matter of a toddler wanting another toy, it is a politician. I know that you and that idiot also have the mental capacity of a toddler but without restrictions. Even if you don’t like the result you have to accept it.
I really need to stop trying to explain the obvious to idiots.
Why, did your mirror broke?
Still that you do not understand something so easy is really showing how much of an idiot you are.
Even if that person doesn’t like the result, or thr maga moronic cult, they have to accept the result, like it or not.
