In Front of Our Noses: Contempt for the Press
Also contempt for citizens.
The following is what is becoming standard operating procedure for high-ranking Trump officials, whether it is when dealing with the press or in congressional hearings: beligeretn deflection and non-answers.
One can see similar behavior from the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
(Spoiler: contra the Tweet, RFK did not DEMOLISH anyone, but the point is the clip, not the Tweet.)
Part of all of this is just what incompetent people do when cornered. But I would submit that it is also more than just demonstrating rudeness, if not contempt, for those asking the questions; it is contempt for all of us. The press exists to inform the public; congressional hearings exist to inform the public.
I understand that not all journalist’s questions are perfect and that members of Congress are often trying to score points. Further, the occasional deflection or fit of pique by public servants is par for the course. But the reality is, this administration practices this kind of behavior constantly.
When the FBI Director and cabinet officials have no respect for the public they serve, they see no reason to give an account for their behavior. They don’t have to answer to us, you see. They just have to make sure the boss is happy and that they get to enjoy their sinecures as long as they can. It is behavior that is antithetical to notions of democratic governance and cleaves to a combination of kleptocracy and personalistic oligarchy.
Back to Patel: the notion that polling the audience is a way to answer a reporter’s question is childish. Worse, he denies facts that are in the lawsuit he filed.
If you want to be further enraged and depressed about the state of the FBI, listen to Tuesday’s episode of The Daily.
I read through the SLPC indictment and it’s so against common sense. As in, we the public apparently do not grasp the concept of ‘informant’; therefore we are supposed to be outraged the SLPC was both paying a guy in some nazi party while calling him an extremist on their website. Rather than, I guess, having a secret informants section on their site for the public to scroll through.
It’s like salt-of-the-earth dumbness without salt-of-the-earth intuition. How do you end up with that?
@Modulo Myself:
It’s malicious persecution of those opposed to the MAGAt agenda.
@Kathy:
I don’t think it’s going to go very far. The indictment is ludicrous and talks about the SLPC as if it were trying to conceal these accounts. And then it shows direct evidence of the SLPC paying these accounts directly, as if that’s a gotcha. No, they just weren’t trying to conceal the accounts or launder money, because why would they be doing that? Kash and co probably promised Trump they would vindicate him on his nonsensical version of reality re: the Unite the Right march, and they dug through the archives and came up with this.