Chuck Todd Did Journalism On Biden 'Ukrainium One' Story, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH CHUCK TODD?
CHUCK TODD, BLINK IF YOU HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED OR POSSESSED BY A DEVIL.
Miracles are abounding! The House of Representatives has commenced a full and formal impeachment inquiry into the crimes of Donald Trump, lions and lambs are lying down together, and we are pretty sure an evil witch kidnapped Chuck Todd's stuffed animals and told him he'll never see them again unless he commits one (1) act of actual journalism, on television where everybody can see it . And he did! Either that or the real Chuck Todd has been kidnapped and whoever interviewed Louisiana GOP Senator John Kennedy on Tuesday afternoon was a shapeshifting impostor.
One of the two.
Kennedy had come on to react to news that Nancy Pelosi had just announced the impeachment inquiry, and needed to share with Todd how his "mind works." (Not particularly well!) As the banjo from Deliverance started playing, Kennedy shared a "strange analogy" about what would happen if a guy were to rob a bank, but on the way to the jailhouse, the cops "beat the living Hades out of him." He explained ... we think ... that the bank robber is Joe Biden's son Hunter, who obviously robbed all the banks in Ukraine, and the cops are Donald Trump, who might have performed a wee bit of ass-beating on the suspect, by extorting the Ukrainian government into trumping up a bullshit investigation into Hunter Biden by threatening to withhold already appropriated military aid. He just thinks we're going to have to investigate both .
Chuck Todd -- we give Chuck Todd a lot of shit around here, but for once, Chuck Todd was not having it .
TODD: Senator [...] I will give you a second to respond here, but here is where I find all this stuff a bunch of [ we think Chuck Todd was going to say a cuss like "bunch of BULLROAR"!] -- it's hard to believe on Hunter, it's hard to believe the concern about Hunter Biden by some of these folks making this case. If they were so serious about this, i'm trying to figure out why nobody from the FBI has been contacted.
GOOD POINT!
TODD: Not a single person. I don't understand why Rudy Giuliani thinks it's better to investigate an American [by outsourcing] it to a country that apparently they also didn't trust. Do you see why i'm skeptical that the Hunter Biden stuff is really that serious? If they were serious about it, you go to the FBI, you don't go to an oligarch in Ukraine.
ALSO GOOD POINT!
KENNEDY: Well, number one, Chuck, you don't know that the FBI hasn't been contacted.
Anybody who believes Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump have called the FBI about their very sincere worries about the alleged crimes of Hunter Biden probably has parents who are also close cousins.
TODD: And if there were an investigation, Senator, don't you think that our friends in the White House would let you know publicly that there was a sort of inquiry going on?
Chuck Todd has apparently seen Donald Trump's Twitter account.
KENNEDY: You don't know whether the FBI has been contacted or not and if the FBI follows protocol, it wouldn't tell us, that's point one. Point two, and I hope you'll let me finish, what we do know is this. A Russian oligarch hired Hunter Biden, paid him $50,000 a month, gave a bucket load of money to his law firm. It may turn out that the -- I said Russian, I meant Ukrainian oligarch. It may turn out that the Ukrainian oligarch got Mr. Biden's name off ZipRecruiter.
ZipRecruiter!
KENNEDY: But I doubt it.
John Kennedy doubts it.
KENNEDY: If you go to Mr. Biden's wikipedia page, there are other similar allegations.
So many "allegations," on the official website of allegations, "Wikipedia."
KENNEDY: I'm not making an allegation of impropriety.
But ya are, Blanche.
KENNEDY: But I am saying that's going to be investigated. If not at the instigation or the suggestion of Republicans, by Mr. Biden's co-candidates.
John Kennedy apparently thinks the Democratic primary is going to feature Fox News-level conspiracy theories about Biden, if he turns out to be the frontrunner. That's ... OK, we'll give him that one.
This is the point where Todd, having made his good point about the FBI, decided to test this new "journalism" thing even further, by saying truthful things and not just that, if he had just told the truth it would have been progress , but he also called Kennedy a gaslighter and decried false equivalencies. Chuck, wink if you are being forced to commit journalism against your will!
TODD: You do realize, Senator, a lot of people have attempted to look into this and they haven't found a "there" there to look into it.
Correct! Even the New York Times breaking Biden Ukraine scoops from Ken Vogel, a windsock of a reporter who so desperately wants there to be a "there" there, tend to admit that the story is bullshit in the 19th paragraph or so. It's like the Times 's Clinton Foundation reporting on bath salts.
KENNEDY: Who has? Who has! Who! Who! Who!
TODD: That's the point here, you brought up the FBI.
KENNEDY: Who's looked into it, Chuck?
TODD: Apparently the Ukrainian government. Apparently every Ukrainian journalist.
KENNEDY: Has NBC looked into it?
TODD: Yes, sir. You do realize you're looking for outcome, not the facts, that's what you keep telling me.
KENNEDY: No.
TODD: There have been four or five different entities who found nothing.
KENNEDY: Who!
TODD: I just told you. MSNBC?
KENNEDY: Wait!
Todd kept repeating the facts, and Kennedy continued to hoot like an owl with a lower Louisiana accent, but not the charming and beautiful kind of lower Louisiana accent, more like the 12 Years A Slave plantation owner lower Louisiana accent.
TODD: I said Ukrainian journalists have, the Ukrainian government has. Apparently, if the FBI has been contacted, the FBI can't seem to open an investigation either because they haven't found enough.
KENNEDY: JINGLE JANGLE JINGLE JANGLE DADDY'S PLAYIN' WITH HIS CAR KEYS, AIN'T THAT A PICKLE! [ not an exact quote ]
TODD: We've looked into it. The New York Times has looked into it. Maybe you're right, maybe there's magical missing information here. But at some point, do you not accept all of these entities looking into it to have found the answer? And again, if what Hunter Biden did was wrong, boy, there are a lot of people with the last name of Trump that have some answering to do about their foreign work and their foreign entanglements.
Good point, Chuck Todd!
KENNEDY: I'm going to have to disagree with you, Chuck, I don't think there has been an in-depth investigation of this.
TODD: [...] Who would have to conduct this investigation for you to accept that there's nothing there? And do we have to conduct investigations basically based on partisan fairness? If we do this, we have to do that? That isn't how the rule of law works, sir.
But it's how Bothsides-ism works, and that is usually Chuck Todd's favorite thing, WHAT IS HAPPENING?
KENNEDY: If you want to be fair, then it seems to me, in my example, that you need to investigate both the alleged bank robber and the alleged violation by the policeman who beat the bank robber suspect! Now, you have said there have been investigations. I'm saying who? You're telling me MSNBC has investigated this and concluded that there was nothing wrong with Hunter Biden being picked -- no.
TODD: The allegation is this. That somehow the vice president was acting on his own behalf, not on the behalf of essentially the entire Western world [ which is what it was -- Ed.] in calling for a corrupt investigator to get fired. The allegation is that somehow he was doing it at the behest of his son. There is no evidence that anything like that exists. It's an allegation that you're simply making [...] it's sort of the old LBJ, we have no idea if it's true but make them deny it. That's not how politics is supposed to work. I understand in Louisiana and Texas it can work that way sometimes. But we were trying to create a fair rule of law here standpoint.
LOOSIANA AND TEXAS LIBELS!
Again, this is Chuck Todd, MSNBC and NBC News journalist, whom you see on the TV far more than you'd like to see him, explaining correctly to the yokel from Louisiana that he is full of shit, and to please shove this whataboutism bothsides-ing up his ass.
KENNEDY: I agree, Chuck, and if you were right, I would agree with you. If you were right, I would agree with you. But you're wrong, this hasn't been investigated! And just because YOU think that the -- I'm not alleging the Vice President did anything wrong. But I'm just telling you the American people are looking at this and going, "Okay, umm, Mr. Biden!"
Okay, ummmmm, Mr. Biden!
TODD: And how does that have anything to do with the President of the United States going to another world leader and saying, open an investigation up on my chief political rival?
You know, the real issue here.
KENNEDY: Because it has to do with Ukrainian corruption which is what all of this is about.
At this point Chuck Todd just giggles, probably thinking about how the GOP has been fighting Ukrainian corruption lo these many years, no matter what, they're just always fighting Ukrainian corruption, they are obsessed.
Here is where Chuck Todd uses a word we didn't think Chuck Todd knew:
TODD: The Ukrainian corruption, it depends on what you view as corruption. What one side is corrupt, I am trying to be fair here, but you can't gaslight us, sir. Don't gaslight us.
KENNEDY: I'm not gaslighting you! I'm telling you the facts. Do you deny those facts, do you think they got Hunter Biden's name off ZipRecruiter? I don't!
Chuck Todd is pretty mad at John Kennedy for gaslighting America about Joe Biden, just like Wonkette was mad at Chuck Todd for gaslighting America about the Mueller hearings, and how Lauren Duca was mad at Trump for gaslighting America about ... you know, everything.
It kept going on like that. Todd even rejected "false equivalencies" (!!!), and eventually John Kennedy said Rudy Giuliani is "wild as a March hare," which is probably factcheck true.
We hope this is the start of a new career in journalism for Chuck Todd, but we are not dumb, and we are fully aware he probably just got struck by lightning and/or there is a ransom to be paid and by this afternoon, the real Chuck Todd will be back in his chair, fuckin' it all up, and looking worse for the wear.
But this was nice, wasn't it? It was very nice.
GOOD JOB, CHUCK TODD. PLEASE COMMIT ANOTHER ACT OF JOURNALISM AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE.
[transcript partially via Crooks & Liars ]
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And also, the dumbing down has nothing to do with education. They made smart, well-educated people dumb by using fear.
This honestly reads like every Facebook argument with a Trumper ever. "The thing that happened, about which there are many facts from a variety of reputable sources, did not happen because Fox says so and also maybe Jews."