The Other Side

A Corrective to Trump Derangement Syndrome

Christian and conservative folk in New Zealand will be delighted that retired radio talk-back host, Leighton Smith will be writing a regular opinion piece in the NZ Herald.  His first effort was published recently.  

Conservative voices are all too few and far between.  Hence our welcome to the new Herald columnist.  Just how radical he will turn out to be is evident from his first article.  He has risked facing the worst and most vitriolic horde who have spent the last two years maligning the current US President, Donald Trump.  Imagine the extent of Trump Derangement Syndrome unleashes on our fair shores by Smith's first article.  In the Herald it was titled "The case for Donald Trump". 

Let's be clear.  That headline was as volatile as high octane aviation fuel.  It would inevitably ignite in splenetic vitriol rarely seen or heard.  We were already chuckling.  Here is a sample from Leighton Smith's piece:

So let's get back to January 17. On that evening a website of dubious repute, BuzzFeed, issued forth with a claim that the President of the United States had instructed his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, to lie to the Congressional Committee.

There were the usual anonymous sources, but no evidence. The requirement for truth and accuracy has taken a deep dive if Trump is the target. It should be noted that BuzzFeed was the source for the release of the Steele dossier, the unverified document "bought and paid for" by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Nevertheless, the story was followed by the usual suspects, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC et al. More careful analysis was available if you knew where to look, though it's obvious to any journalist or publisher that the lack of verification required caution. You had to read to paragraph nine to see "if the story is correct".

Over two days the landscape changed.  Robert S. Mueller, Special Counsel, with no clear mandate, issued a statement. "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's office, and characterisation of documents and testimony obtained by this office regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate."

Wow! We - and I say we because the whole world was now engaged - had been inundated with accusatory headlines as statements of fact. The cable talk shows were overwhelmed with excitement at the prospect of impeachment. Rational analysis was irrelevant. Even some Trump supporters were developing vertigo.  Mueller had never before broken his silence, as Special Counsel, to comment on media reports.

The subsequent developments after the BuzzFeed piece had been covered exhaustively and extensively . . . . Not.  But, says Smith, there was another scandal erupting amongst the anti-Trumpers:

In the midst of all this, there was a concurrent story. Bruce Ohr, who had been number four in the Department of Justice, was revealed to have told Congress, last August, that everybody of consequence in the FBI and DOJ knew that the Steele dossier was fake from the very beginning.

Kimberley Strassel from The Wall Street Journal, an investigative journalist of the highest order, concludes "that senior Mueller players were central to the dossier scandal. The conflicts of interest boggle the mind....the FBI has been hiding and twisting the facts from the start."

Along with John Solomon from The Hill.com, Strassel has borne the brunt of heavy social media attacks in her persistent search for the facts. Wouldn't you think, wouldn't you hope, that in "the home of the brave and the land of the free" a far greater number of journalists would possess the integrity of these two.

It's refreshing, is it not, to hear the other side for a change.  Doubtless the NeverTrumpers have been choking on their cereal.  Not a bad thing.