CNN: American voters = "stupid as shit"

Project Veritas continues its "American Pravda" onslaught against CNN. In the latest hidden-camera video released by James O'Keefe, a CNN associate producer, Jimmy Carr, is caught saying that American voters are "stupid as shit," thus supporting the rightie suspicion that modern leftism amounts to coastal elitism and is no longer the champion of the average working man living in "flyover country." Carr also avers that Donald Trump is "hilariously unqualified" to be president and is "fucking crazy."

Andrew Klavan, meanwhile, has a short video on fake news.

A note about Van Jones, the prominent and outspoken CNN commentator who was caught saying the Trump-Russia narrative is a big "nothingburger": Philip DeFranco notes that O'Keefe's gotcha moment with Van Jones isn't really much of a gotcha, given that Jones is on record previously as saying, quite openly, that he doesn't expect anything to come of CNN's pursuit of the Trump-Russia angle. DeFranco shows the older footage of Van Jones, so it does indeed look as though Jones isn't privately revealing some new, previously unaired opinion. That said, I still think it's curious that Jones feels as he does, but the higher-ups at CNN wish to continue to beat this particular drum.

No matter the details, it's all about impressions, and CNN is losing the PR war here. The channel has lamely attempted to refocus attention on Trump's latest salvo of "lookist" tweets (Trump huffily tweeted about an MSNBC anchor, Mika Brzezinski, who had allegedly been "bleeding badly from a facelift"), which CNN, et al., are deeming sexist, but the right is pushing back by noting the media's hypocrisy in being faux-outraged now after having constantly and mercilessly lambasted Trump for his looks.

Personally, I'm not sure that Trump does himself any favors by shooting from the hip with his often poorly edited tweets. Others disagree, of course: some supporters think Trump is a mad genius, given his tweets' power to distract, and to drive to distraction, thereby allowing Trump a measure of control over the media narrative, as well as the freedom to move around behind the smoke screens he creates. Note, for example, that Trump's attack on Ms. Brzezinski (whom he also called "low IQ") is diverting people from the multi-front war going on right now with the continued planning of the border wall, the success of Kate's Law in the House of Representatives, various Obamacare rollbacks, the kicking-in of the travel "ban" (it's more of a moratorium than a ban), the quiet retooling of campus sexual-assault policy, etc.

Is Trump a mad genius? I don't think I'm smart enough to judge. I am, however, reminded of King Joyse from Stephen R. Donaldson's Mordant's Need fantasy novels. When our protagonist Terisa meets King Joyse, he is an old and possibly senile dodderer who seems oblivious to the fact that he's surrounded by enemies both within and without his kingdom, all of whom wish to do him in and take his kingdom over. By the middle of the second novel, though, we learn that Joyse's weak appearance has been a ruse to bring his many enemies within easy striking distance, and that Joyse has relied on his remaining loyal servants to keep the kingdom together while Joyse himself passively allows his master plan to coalesce. In a sense, Joyse's enemies end up doing themselves irreparable harm, much the way we see CNN currently flailing desperately, lashing out and making itself look increasingly worse. So while I can't say for certain whether Donald Trump is indeed the 4D chess master that some make him out to be, I can at least entertain the possibility that he's a hell of a lot more adept than he looks (and sounds).