Throwing Megyn Under the Bus
Roger Ailes has officially capitulated to GOP Bully Boy Donald Trump, begging his forgiveness for having the audacity to allow Fox News reporters to ask Trump tough questions during the recent Republican debate. In the battle between Trump and Fox star Megyn Kelly, Ailes chose Trump.
It’s not that I expect much of anything in the way of decency from Fox News management. Still, you’d think they’d be willing to protect one of their own from the misogynist rantings of a narcissistic gasbag. Kelly’s crime: doing her job at the behest of her employers. But no love for Megyn from top management. Instead, Ailes has stuck his nose so far up Trump’s ass that he’s ready to pop out of The Donald’s nostrils.
Time to dust off the resume and start looking for a new job Megyn. It’s clear your bosses don’t have your back. To them, you’re just another expendable blonde bimbo.
I mean, it often seems like Megyn Kelly is the only credible person on that whole darn network — which to be fair, it is not like I ever watch them. But from time to time I’ll see Kelly acting at least within the range of a normal, thoughtful human being instead of an idiotic gasbag of profound stupid. For example, during the election night thing, when she criticized “Republican math,” she did all right that night, I thought.
So anyway.Report
I concur with this. Kelly was the only one who kept her cool on election night 2012, who seems to have license to ask GOP guests hard questions, who called out the excesses of sexism out for what they were when someone who wasn’t a Democrat displayed them in interview segments. And I nevertheless have little doubt that she is, basically, right of center. It seems Fox values her more for her good looks than her journalistic acumen. When she starts doing things a journalist does, that seems to sometimes run up against the narrative-of-the-week. So it’s not really a surprise that Ailes might find her inconveniently popular.
I think she’d be a fine centerpoint around which CNN might try and revive its relevance.Report
I haven’t watched CNN ( or any other cable news station) since the last presidential election, but it couldn’t hurt CNN to add Kelly to their line up. I’m not a huge fan, but I don’t care that she’s right of center. At least she occasionally commits journalism.Report
Is Shep Smith gone from Fox? I’ve often seen clips where he’s intelligent, thoughtful, and non-doctrinaire.Report
I watch very little television, and that includes news, so I have very little to say about this other than: Trump is fantastic for ratings. So guess who wins?
Some days I kind of hate all of humanity.Report
Maybe she will go on for the coveted token conservative position.Report
This is going to be a fun election with potentially hazardous consequences. Go Donkeys.Report
Truly, the most important election in our lifetimes.Report
No, that one was 2000, but nobody knew it at the time.Report
Which election, the one on November 7th that didn’t matter or the one on December 12th that ruined two of the three branches?Report
I think everyone is reading way too much into anonymous sources and a pat narrative. It’s not too much different than the Hillary Clinton in Trouble stories from a month ago.Report
If the rumors about classified stuff being in her emails happen to be true, the road ahead gets bumpier.Report
When haven’t there been rumors about something? There’s a cottage industry built to generate Clinton rumors.
Last I heard, the NYT or the Washington Post — one of them — got badly, badly burned on that issue. They ran an anonymous source without so much as a moment to fact check, and got slapped down by…everyone.
I think last I heard they were looking to see if there was stuff in there that was classified afterwards, since we already had the fun of OMG Clinton violated rules passed after she left office! excitement then letdown (I guess only very special people have to obey future laws too).
Besides, are we really done with Benghazi?Report
It’s when the rumors are confirmed to be true that ish starts to cause problems, Morat20.
This is the story that I saw today. Maybe it’s nothing, of course.Report
When has it been true in the past? I’ve seen Hillary accused of so many things that she didn’t end up doing that I’ve gotten cynical as to accusations.
Isn’t that not only a natural response, but a rational one?
Last I checked, the”investigation was entirely the NYT jumped onto was, well — I don’t know what the government calls it, but it’s basically when you check through your archives to make sure stuff that’s NEWLY classified isn’t there unsecured. Because, you know, it wasn’t classified then.
And given my work, trust me on this: You’d be SHOCKED at what gets retroactively classified all the freakin’ time.
I know her private email was legal — Rice did the same thing, for instance. It wasn’t banned until after she left the State Department.Report
Would a Secretary of State be shocked by it?Report
I have no idea. But I’m pretty darn sure that there’s nothing wrong with sending unclassified data around, because it’s unclassified. If that changes, you need to stop sending it around. When it changes.Report
I admit that I didn’t know about retroactive classification.
That’ll make arguing about it difficult, though.
“It wasn’t top secret when she emailed it!”
“Emailed what?”
“I can’t tell you that.”Report
Indeed. 🙂 Although I know for certain (well, assuming you believe the FBI) that some of the classified materials found were not classified at the time the emails were sent.
I also know the laws regarding personal email use that the current Secretary of State is bound to didn’t take effect until after Clinton left, and she pretty much followed the same ones Rice did.
That’s the problem with investigations like this. Everyone wants to make political hay out of it, and at least half the people doing the investigating aren’t looking for people to hang — but where processes weren’t sufficient (which includes processes for identifying newly classified materials and were it might be located).
So you get stuff like “IG Criminal Probe” that’s…not criminal and not looking to make a case, but which has identified material now classified that was passed around when it was unclassified on non-secure servers. And what to do about that.
And I suspect found some of them when checking Hillary’s email dump. “Oh crap, we classified this a year after she left” or more likely “We classified this sort of information after she left”.
I deal with secured, classified, and proprietary data all the time. I’ve watched people who suddenly had to stop doing a job they’ve been doing for a decade, and route communications through a third party for vetting, before…sending it to the person that normally got it. Really ticks people off, too.
But that’s what happens when your company loses an awful lot of money to fines for violating the law and sending export controlled data to foreign nationals, even if it’s data the foreign nationals already have.
Not kidding there. One guy I know GOT blueprints from a foreign country, did a non-classified analysis of a bit of it, and had to get the blueprint cleared (not the analysis!) to send back — because the blueprint was over export controlled material.
It’s crazy. It’s not like TV where it’s all big stamps and top secret. it’s stuff like not putting the right footer on a Powerpoint slide to let people know it’s classified, or not scrubbing your archives when some document gets classified after you and half your department spent months marking it up and passing it around before sending off the final version.Report
THIS is why you pay close attention to what your security guy tells you and if you have even the slightest question, you check with him again..and again…and cya.Report
Well the interesting thing is that some folks who have got caught in this web as well are faring a lot worse than our current former Sec State.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/case-against-ex-nsa-manager-accused-of-mishandling-classified-files-narrows/2011/06/07/AGk3ZZMH_story.html
“Two remaining Espionage Act charges relate to information that Drake possessed but that had been published on the NSA’s in-house intranet. Legal experts said Drake could contend that the material was unclassified information that was widely available to tens of thousands of agency employees.”
Don’t tell me that dog can hunt.
But the guy’s in court fighting for his freedom. HRC is on the campaign trail for stuff that can be, argued, the same type of alleged offense. It’s particularly curious that the Obama’s admin has ” It has notoriously prosecuted more individuals under the Espionage Act of 1917 for improperly handling classified information than all previous administrations combined.”Report
Having seen more reports, I’m beginning to suspect that the stuff might not have been retroactively classified.Report
I am just a simple country mouse, but for my entire professional career, all work-related written electronic communications have had to be done via company e-mail, so they could be properly secured, and subject to audit/review. At no point could I have utilized private mail accounts, services or servers for any work business.
And my job doesn’t have me dealing with the sensitive diplomatic relationships among nuclear-armed powers. I’m kind of surprised the regs were so loosey-goosey.Report
“I’m kind of surprised the regs were so loosey-goosey.”
They weren’t, actually. If you or I had done what Clinton did, we’d be lucky if we *only* lost our job.Report
The regs were indeed that loosey-goosey. If you recall, the Bush Administration ran much of their email through private servers, including Rice.
They were eventually tightened up as Clinton was leaving, but the IT wheels grind particularly slow. Mostly because the folks making the decisions, in the end, know very little about IT. Making them understand why they shouldn’t get this information on their iPhone, or why they should use the much slower (because of whole-disk encryption) travel laptops, etc is quite difficult when the people affected have only the vaguest idea of “why”.
The bulk of this kerfluffle is that Clinton violated a standard set after she left. As did Rice, but Rice isn’t running for President.
The new rules were part of a broad, Executive branch push for tighter data control, security, and traceability.Report
Pretty much what morat said. 25 years of experience suggests that when all of the investigative dollars have been spent, what they will find is that Hillary was inside all of the rules that were in force at the time.Report
Time to dust off the resume and start looking for a new job Megyn. It’s clear your bosses don’t have your back. To them, you’re just another expendable blonde bimbo.
That’s a terrifically concise and insightful to wrap the whole thing up. Very clever Michelle. Nicely done.Report
Doctor Jay calls it. It’s all about ratings. Besides, you thought the suck up media wasn’t going to fold? They all whore out their dignity, their self respect, everything for “access”. God forbid they actually do real reporting and not just retype a press release.
And no tears for Megyn. She knew the drill.Report
So I got a chance to read the links and even go down the rabbit holes that they provide, and I see a lot of inSINuation, and SINsational reporting, but really nothing more than wishful thinking.
Now, that said, it seems that Megyn Kelly is the highest rated show in cable news, so I rather doubt that she is going anywhere anytime soon.Report