Passionately Wrong

With only 140 or so shopping days to go before Christmas, there is something Lawrence O'Donnell could be given as a holiday gift. That would be  a dictionary (or would be, if there was no online dictionary). Incensed that the media telecast Donald Trump's entire liefest, then ignored Kamala Harris' rally afterward, O'Donnell remarked (at 3:07 of the video posted by this journalist)

It's 2016 all over again. The same mistakes are being made3 all over again. I've never seen an industry slower at learning from their own stupid mistakes than the American news business and you cannot expect them in the next 89 days to figure out what they haven't been able to figure out in nine years- how to cover a Trump for President campaign...

On October 28, 2016 we learned "Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton's Campaign." Three days later, we were treated to the New York Times headline "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia." That article included the now literally incredible report

Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.

There is no telling whose those "intelligence officials" were because a few days before Trump became President, an Intelligence Community Assessment acknowledged

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goas were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary (Hillary) Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

The irony is startling, given that on nine occasions in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, Trump stated a variation of, as he said in Michigan, "if Hillary is elected, she will be under protracted criminal investigation followed by the trial of a sitting president."

These statements were rarely questioned by the media, which Lawrence O'Donnell correctly points out failed in 2016.  "All over again" does not, however, adequately characterize a media which paved the way for a Trump victory then and is fawning over his opponent eight years later.

O'Donnell continued

Donald Trump gets credit from the people he lied to today for lying to them. They appreciate it. Reporters understandably and incorrectly believe that the most important thing a candidate can do is to answer their questions. But they don't know what an answer actually is. Words spoken after their question marks are not necessarily answers and are never answers when they come from Donald Trump.

Trump isn't getting credit from individuals in the media for lying to them. He's getting credit- understandably and correctly- for appearing before them and answering questions, which his opponent, Kamala Harris, is noticeably avoiding doing.

It's no small thing to answer questions, even if most of the answers are dishonest, which is typical for Trump (which makes the dishonesty no more acceptable). And notwithstanding O'Donnell's claim that "they don't know what an answer is," Merriam-Webster defines "answer" as "something spoken or written in reply to a question."

The news show host added

There are rumblings in the news media now that Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate not doing what Donald Trump did today- stand up in front of reporters and take their questions and some of their timid minds in the news media can't wait to give credit to Donald Trump for standing up and lying in response to every question they ask. A lie is not an answer. Donald Trump never answers reporters' questions. Never.

Again: A lie, if in response to a question, is an answer. Donald Trump is very generous with his answers, viewing each as an opportunity to twist a tale. If he periodically told the truth, Donald Trump would not be Donald Trump and never would have been elected President. Lying is an art which many successful politicians including Presidents such as Reagan and Clinton, successfully practiced but never perfected. (Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden were not good at it; a pattern, perhaps?)

Still wrong, O'Donnell followed with

Anyone in the news world who tells you Donald Trump has answered reporters' questions and Kamala Harris hasn't is lying to you and they're too stupid to know that they're lying to you because they don't know what an answer is.

Lying and stupid, a twofer. By contrast, as Collins Dictionary notes, "a lie is something that someone says or writes which they know is untrue." Therefore, if someone is "too stupid to know they're lying to you," he or she is not lying. The individual is not fully aware the statement is untrue. 

The only rationalization for claiming that Kamala Harris hasn't "answered reporters' questions" is that Kamala Harris has been asked very few questions by the media. That is not by accident, in part because the vice president has proven to be very bad at that. And in the alternative, broadcast media will show adoring and rapturous crowds at packed rallies. Harris remembers that  Hillary Clinton answered reporters' questions and never became President Hillary Clinton,  That is not coincidental and the current nominee does not want history to repeat.

The problem with covering Donald Trump's campaign is not that it is covered. It is insufficient fact-checking. When the former President- or his opponent, when she does- hold a news conference, it should be broadcast. In general, candidates should answer, honestly, questions which the news media poses, or wishes to pose, to them.

Lawrence O'Donnell does not agree. He also doesn't know the meaning of simple English. What do they teach at Harvard, anyway?

 

"It was 2016 all over again today ... the same mistakes are being made" -- @lawrence 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/CxfddzLjuX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 9, 2024

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An American, Technically

The Daily Beast notes

Justice Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, once again unwitting made herself the internet’s Main Character on Tuesday after an undercover reporter released a secretly recorded conversation in which she nastily complained about her neighbor’s Pride flag and bizarrely declared “I’m German.”

 “Look at me. I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German,” she told a documentary maker who was posing as a conservative activist. “You come after me, I’m going to give it back to you. And there will be a way—it doesn’t have to be now—but there will be a way they will know. Don’t worry about it.”

It was a single soundbite among a conversation full of flat-out MAGA-fueled weirdness from Martha-Ann....

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell asked "What cold Samuel Alito's wife possibly mean when invoking Germany and being German to inspire fear in the people who in her mind, at least, come after her?" He began answering his own question with "many peoples of the world have much to be ashamed of- non more than Germany and Germans. Mrs. Alito sounds proud of being German."

 

An article entitled "Other Nations Could Learn From Germany's Efforts to reconcile after World War II" appeared in 2015 in Johns Hopkins Magazine. Greg Rienzi drew heavily on the work of Lily Gardner Feldman. The British-born Feldman grew up in London "yet spent several formative years living and working in Germany" and recently had written Germany's foreign Policy of Reconciliation: From Enmity to Amity. Rienzi explained

On September 10, 1952 a reparations agreement between Israel and West Germany was signed in Luxembourg. The first reparations payment to the Israeli state as goods in kind began in 1953 and ended in 1965; payments to individuals continue to this day. By the end of 2008, Germany had provided 66 billion euros in all forms of compensation, with the largest share going to Israel....

Germany's ongoing relationship with Israel is unique, Gardner Feldman says, but one can see similar reconciliatory themes, approaches, and patterns through Germany's relations with its other former enemies. In her book, she argues that the "cornerstone, perhaps the very definition, of German foreign policy after World War II became, progressively, reconciliation." Germany had to reconcile with the countries and people it had attacked, occupied, and slaughtered during a brutal six years of war and destruction. Gardner Feldman examined all German chancellors from Adenauer to Merkel and found a common strain: an imperative to repay a deep moral debt.

O'Donnell displayed an image of a series of Nazi-era German banners and added of Mrs. Alito

She's also proud of flying flags and here's the flag that was used to express that specific pride, the pride of being German beginning in the 1930s. Is the fear that flag created around the world the fear that Mrs. Alito wants to create in her threatening use of her heritage? Look at me, look at me. I'm German, I'm German. My heritage is German.

That may be the case. However, Alito instead may have been projecting what she believes is a (positive) stereotype of Germans and German-Americans as prone to retaliation and in general as a people not to be messed with. However, in my experience, the common pejorative was "domineering" but my heritage isn't German, so there is that.

O'Donnell continued

O.K., Mrs. Alito. Tell us more about your family. What did they do during the war? I mean, your relatives who were still in Germany living under and perhaps like most Germans, supporting Adolf Hitler and everything he did. Tell us more.

It certainly would be interesting while not particularly important because it was approximately 80 years ago, sins of the father and so forth. More interesting-and significant:

The sad-sack loser (redundancy day!) from Two and a Half Men makes a good point, where "interesting" could be replaced with "derogatory."

That’s… a really interesting view of the history of the German people. https://t.co/XjKFjLeepA

— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) June 11, 2024

More importantly, Martha-Ann Alito isn't German. She's an American. From Kentucky. From a portion of the country the right likes to refer to as the "real America" or "America."

Once calling a work colleague "Polish," I was reprimanded by being told "I'm an American." More specifically, the colleague could have added "a Polish-American." And yet, decades later the wife of a United States Supreme Court Justice has told documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor "I'm German, from Germany. My heritage is German..." Her heritage presumably is German but she is an American. 

She is an American, unquestionably. However, whether she is happy about that, aside from her husband having a coveted, well-paid job with lifetime security and no accountability, is far more dubious. Flying an American flag upside down in support of an insurrection against the federal government is a pretty good clue. Martha-Ann Alito is a German-American and American but the America she longs for is one our Founding Fathers would not recognize.

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As Usual

In Tuesday's crossover from The Rachel Maddow Show to The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell stated

And this single source close to Deutsche Bank has told me that the Trump-Donald Trump's loan documents there show that he has co-signers. That's how he was able to obtain those loans. And that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs.

That would explain, it seems to me, every kind word Donald Trump has ever said about Russia and Vladimir Putin, if true, and I stress the if true part of this.

Trump family attorney Charles Harder on Wednesday threatened to sue the network unless the latter chose to "retract, correct and apologize for" what he contended were completely false remarks. In response, or simply because MSNBC is a credible news organization, O'Donnell later led his program with

Last night on this show, I discussed information that wasn’t ready for reporting. I repeated statements a single source told me about the president’s finances and loan documents with Deutsche Bank, saying “if true” as I discussed the information was simply not good enough. I did not go through the rigorous verification and standards process here at MSNBC before repeating what I heard from my source.

Had it gone through that process, I would not have been permitted to report it. I should not have said it on air or posted it on Twitter. I was wrong to do so.

This afternoon, attorneys for the president sent us a letter asserting the story is false. They also demanded a retraction.

Tonight, we are retracting the story. We don’t know whether the information is inaccurate. But the fact is, we do know it wasn’t ready for broadcast, and for that I apologize.

Harder had demanded not only a retraction and apology but also a correction. Instead, the undoubtedly carefully vetted statement included "we don't know whether the information is inaccurate." Though a lawsuit, judging by the lawyer's threat, should be forthcoming, it will not ensue. Trump has made a cottage industry out of threatening to sue one entity or another, and then backing off.Also

Threatening to sue someone for misrepresenting your financial dealings while trying to keep all of your business and tax records from being made public makes your legal threats....a little weaker. https://t.co/ipVCWOK5ie

— Tim O'Brien (@TimOBrien) August 28, 2019

Discovery can be a real bitch.

O'Donnell (presumably) told the truth: one of his sources had told him that Russian oligarchs co-signed for a loan Trump received from Deutsche Bank.  After the MSNBC host issued the retraction, however, the President posted a tweet denying- falsely or otherwise- that there were Russian co-signers, but also lying:

Crazy Lawrence O’Donnell, who has been calling me wrong from even before I announced my run for the Presidency, even being previously forced by NBC to apologize, which he did while crying, for things he said about me & The Apprentice, was again forced to apologize, this time.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2019

As usual, he lied not because he is unable to do otherwise. He lied because there is no reason not to. Thursday's focus, predictably, was on O'Donnell rather than on the deceit of Donald J. Trump, holder of the position previously known as Leader of the Free World.

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Mueller's Choice

In the video below from the 10:00 p.m. ET hour, Lawrence O'Donnell can be seen reporting

Tonight, in a letter to Robert Mueller signed by a Deputy Attorney General, the Justice Department is telling Robert Mueller that he may not make "any comment on the facts developed and legal conclusions by the Special Counsel's Office with respect to  uncharged individuals."

Donald Trump is an uncharged individual. The letter also says that Robert Mueller should not testify about the "deliberative process," including any discussions that he and his staff had about "investigative steps or decisions made during your investigation. That means- according to the Justice Department, anyway- that Robert Mueller cannot answer the most important questions that he will face on Wednesday....





An hour earlier, on the other cable news network not serving as an arm of the Trump Administration, John Dean (coming up big as usual) said something startling:

If you look at the new regulations of the Department that came out during the Trump Administration- it's now called the "Justice Manual"- first of all, a former employee who is subpoenaed, as Mueller asked to be in this case, is considered under these regulations and those regulations restrict what he can say. So it almost looks like a set-up to me that he asked for this subpoena.

No "almost" there, Mr. Dean. After Anderson Cooper asked him to comment further, Dean continued

He asked for the subpoena, which would force him under the regulations of the Department, even though he's now a private citizen. There's no enforcement device at all with these regulations. I don't know what the Department would do with a former employee who went ahead and did something in direct violation of these but....

This is yet another example not only of the destruction of norms by the Trump Administration but of the concept of "a nation of laws, and not of men" turned upside down. Only a Trump-owned Justice Department would do this, though if successful, future GOP presidents will get the message.

There is nothing legally binding Mueller to testify only as the Justice Department wishes or which would impose a penalty upon the former Special Counsel if he spoke out of turn.

NBC legal contributor and former US Attorney Mimi Rocah tweets "for months, Barr has attacked Mueller for not stating whether he would have charged Trump with obstruction if he were not POTUS. Now DOJ is trying to silence Mueller & prevent him from giving that opinion."  However, it's Robert Mueller's decision alone to make.

Barr is trying not only to silence Mueller, but to intimidate him into silence.  And Robert Mueller, with a professional resume unmatched by few if any lawyers in the USA, is no young kid who will need a good recommendation from a grateful former employer. He is Lt. Mueller, who doesn't need to impress anyone and can afford to be informative and fully candid.  He'll go down in history as one who took seriously an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth or as a guy who was intimidated into covering up for Bill Barr and Donald Trump. His integrity and legacy are on the line.



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"Never Send A Marine To Do A Hit Man's Job"

Like any would-be fascist, Donald Trump can sense weakness.On Monday, Michael Wolff, author of "Siege- Trump Under Fire," told Lawrence O'Donnell (in the first part of a two-part interview) that President Trump

thought from the beginning he could take Robert Mueller.  He says I know this guy.  I know this kind of guy.  You know, he`s too separate as I said, he said he`s got no game.

And I think he sensed that.  He sense this had as a weakness in the special prosecutor.  He sensed that he could be – you know, by saying a witch hunt, witch hunt, witch hunt, he could be the person that Robert Mueller was essentially would say, you know, this is a crazy man and how to predict what a crazy man will do.  And that`s a scary thing.

Asked by O'Donnell about Steve Bannon, Wolff replies

And he says never send a marine to do a hit man`s job.  I think he sees this as Steve understood, you know, Robert Mueller is there as to – as an institutional guy to protect an institution.  And Donald Trump is perfectly willing to destroy an institution.

Robert Mueller played right into the President's game. The next evening, Ari Melber reported that according to "Siege," the Special Counsel's office had investigated whether the President could directly (as well as indirectly) fire the Special Counsel and whether he could dismiss the Special Counsel if the purpose were to impede an investigation. The staff concluded that the President could do either or both.

Wolff had told O'Donnell

What happens to the work product they ask if they are fired?  Well, the chances that it could be – the possibility is it could be completely destroyed.

They go through one of these one after another of these contingencies, nothing with a positive result.  And one of the things that I think happened here or one of the things that I feel might well have happened here is Robert Mueller looked at this and said, you know, this guy, Donald Trump could bring the house down,  could bring the temple down.

Describing the Special Counsel as an institutionalist concerned with the house burning down is fairly generous. The intrepid, courageous Marine was intimidated by a President who realized that was his only way to head off a report that would lead to removal from office, if not prosecution. As Elie Mystal explained to Melber

It's like the old Mike Tyson thing, where he would win the fight before he got into the ring because people were scared of him. Mueller- and I think this gets to this institutionalist aspect of Mueller's investigation- he was more concerned with the institution, with his own part of the store, than he was with the rest of the house burning down.

 Mystal noted that Mueller had forgotten the advice traditionally given to football players by their coaches: "stop worrying about what they're going to do to you and start worrying about what you're going to do to them." Instead, Robert Mueller was cowed by a President who knew only intimidation of the Special Counsel stood between him and report which would lead to his removal from office and/or prosecution. "Mueller," Melber recognized, "clearly played the game not to lose." In so doing, he made sure Donald Trump would win, and the suspicion grows that that was no accident.

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Never Weak

Lawrence O'Donnell is wrong- probably. You can see and hear O'Donnell beginning at 37:00 of the video below remarking

And the one thing we know Donald Trump has never felt about 9/11 is grief. In his lifelong quest for attention, Donald Trump managed to get himself on local television in New York City on 9/11 after both of the World Trade Center towers fell and he had no idea how to even begin to express grief because of course couldn't feel any. Instead the feeling he had that day on 9/11, the thing he found in himself was pride- pride in himself that he believed he now had the tallest building in lower Manhattan now that the World Trade Center had collapsed.

(Video of World Trade Center smoldering while Trump comments on New York television.)

Did you hear any grief there? That was on 9/11. And it wasn't grief that the President felt today when he got off Air Force One in Pennsylvania to attend the 9/11 commemoration of Flight 93 that takes place there every year. There is only one President in our history who cold arrive at such a solemn and tragic commemoration and behave as if he were arriving at a rally.

But Trump's lack of grief probably is secondary to his fear of showing weakness. David Ignatius believes that Bob Woodward's tome "Fear" demonstrates

When Trump is on the verge of doing something conciliatory — apologizing for a racist or sexist comment, for example — he stops himself for fear that it will show weakness. Trump (prodded by his Iago-like deputy macho-man, Steve Bannon) keeps insisting that he must stay strong, regardless of how unprincipled it may seem.

Woodward’s narrative of the weakness phobia begins at the low point of the campaign, with the revelation of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasts about grabbing women’s genitals. His aides have written a statement in which Trump would concede, “My language was inappropriate, not acceptable for a president.” But Trump protests: “I can’t do this. This is bull****. This is weak. You guys are weak"....

Anxiety about weakness mounts when Trump is in the White House. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has many faults in Trump’s eyes. He’s too friendly to Europe, too willing to accommodate Iran, too independent in his views. But Trump sums up the problem at a July 2017 meeting: “Rex, you’re weak.”

The most appalling instance of placing image above principle comes after Trump’s waffling comments about the August 2017 clash between white nationalists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rob Porter, Trump’s staff secretary, encourages the president to give a conciliatory statement.

Despite fears that it “looked weak,” Trump follows Porter’s advice and, using a teleprompter, tells the nation: “We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence.”

When Fox News reports a “course correction” on Charlottesville, the president panics. “That was the biggest f***ing mistake I’ve made,” he tells Porter. “You never make those concessions. You never apologize. I didn’t do anything wrong in the first place. Why look weak?”....

In my own conversations with top White House aides, I’ve seen a similar obsession with shows of strength. Reversing long-standing positions on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a “strong position.” Preserving the Iran nuclear agreement is a “weak position.” Perception is policy.

And what about Trump’s ruinous legal problems with special counsel Robert Mueller? They’re the fault of Trump’s chicken-hearted lawyers, of course. Woodward quotes the tough-guy-in-chief. “I don’t have any good lawyers. … I’ve got a bunch of lawyers who are not aggressive, who are weak, who don’t have my best interests in mind, who aren’t loyal. It’s just a disaster.

Unless done adroitly, there is a thin line between demonstrating sensitivity by expressing grief and sadness- and appearing weak.  In the instances Ignatius cites, Trump was afraid of evincing weakness. And so the man who should have retired the Oscar for his performance as a tough, no-nonsense executive in The Apprentice "stays strong, however of how unprincipled it may seem."

Or Donald Trump may be that extraordinarily unusual individual who doe not show grief because he does not grieve, in which case he should be prevailed upon to donate his mind and body to science. If done immediately, he would be doing science and the world a great service. However, it is a little more likely that the obvious lack of compassion or sensitivity is the great con man putting on an act and pretending to be the great alpha male.

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Game Plan

On Tuesday night, Lawrence O'Donnell (segment beginning at 18:43) interviewed Gene Sperling, the director of the National Economic Council under Presidents Obama and Cinton.  Sperling noted of the Corporate Tax Cut Scam of 2017

This $1.5 trillion deficit increase is probably going to be larger when you actually take the gimmicks out. It could easily be closer to two trillion. So (Republican Tennessee Senator Bob) Corker says "well, let's put in a provision. It's kinf of like the whipping boy provision. If the corporate tax cuts don't bring in eonuth revenue, we'll raise taxes on middle-class Americans." Well, either that's not going to happen and it's a gimmick to give them cover for this huges deficit increase or it actually would raise taxes, actually when the economy is weak and make no sense at all.

Recognizing that obsessing over the deficit is bad policy (and probably bad politics), Charlie Pierce notes

The Deficit is about the fourth- or fifth-worst problem with what the Republicans are preparing to pass. Students will be hurt, so will the working poor. (God, Gene Sperling, enough with “the middle class.” When did Democrats decide that the poor were not part of the country?)

It took a while for Democrats to decide that the poor were not part of the country, enhanced by the realization that almost no voters care about the poor. But the lack of concern became evident in roughly late winter of 2008, when Party leadership and (admittedly) its voters decided that a primary race between three credible United States senators should be quickly winnowed to two of the individuals. (This was before the revelation about the sexual appetite of the other.)

The campaign would not be between one of the two candidates attempting to make "history" and the other candidate, John Edwards, who noticed two Americas, separate and unequal, wealthy and otherwise. It would be between the black male and the white woman, either of whose election would make "history," one ultimately doing so. Call it the prioritization of inherited characteristics over policy or something more pithy, but that was that.

The "two Americas," the rich set against the middle class and the poor, became the two Americas, well-educated and not, which worked out well for the Party in 2008 and boomeranged in 2016.

Nevertheless, it would be ironic if, while  suggesting policy should be more important for voters than race or gender, I would neglect arguably the most important policy implication of the Corporate Tax Cut Scam of 2017. Sperling continued

And I think what really is the concrn for so many people is that when they're raising $1.5 trillion deficit, you know, Lawrence,we know what they're going to do, the moment they do this, the  moment they make the deficit that much worse in the out years, they are going to go back and tell people they have no choice but to cut Medicare, Medicaid, maybe even Social Security. In fact,in their own budget, they have 473 in Medicare cuts and 1.3 trillion Medicaid. So when you look at what this is going to be, when you look at why this is going to be a bad deal for the middle class, it's not just that it raises their taxes, it's what they're going to do to make up for the debt increase they create, giving tax cuts for the top 1% and the largest companies in our country. 





Don't take it only from Democrat Gene Sperling. Bruce Bartlett, who served in the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations, concedes that while serving corporate donors is one objective of the GOP tax bill (hat tip to Steve M.)

.. The main reason is that a huge tax cut cements Republican policy into place even if Democrats regain control of Congress and the White House.

In fact, I think many Republicans know and expect that they may lose control of Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020. Their tax cut will ensure that the era of Democratic control will be brief and unpopular....

Republican deficit hawks, who are now AWOL, will suddenly reappear the moment Trump signs the tax cut. The media will be filled with reports from leading authorities about how the deficit endangers the country in a variety of ways, arguing that action must be taken immediately.

But taxes will be off the table because of the tax pledge. Therefore, all deficit reduction must come from spending cuts. And of course, defense cuts will be off the table. Therefore, the bulk of cuts will have to come from so-called entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare because that’s all that will be left.

That would make the Corporate Tax Cut Scam of 2017 the culmination of Paul Davis Ryan's wet dream. It also would be the wet dream of his Republican Party, whose strategy always has been to make government fail, thereby undermining voters' faith in government, thus spurring demand to slash and burn the government.... such as programs of earned benefits, Social Security and Medicare, as well as Medicaid.

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If Only I Could Have Posted This On St. Patrick's Day

He talks! He has a squeaky clean image! He leads!

Meat Loaf was wrong when he sang "two out of three ain't bad" because two out of three can be very bad.

Lawrence O'Donnell appears to have been the first person (and confident he was) to have noticed that Devin Nunes dropped the name of Paul Ryan when he gave an impromptu news conference on the White House lawn after the committee chairperson dropped by to give to the President, a possible target of the investigation his committeee was to hold, intelligence he would offer no one else. On March 22 O'Donnell explained (best to start at approximately 4:48 of video below)

Donald Trump is the second person that Devin Nunes gave that information to 
today. The first was Paul Ryan, his boss in the House of Representatives.
And Paul Ryan then told Chairman Nunes to bring it to the president. To 
completely bypass his committee, to completely ignore the tradition and 
practice of sharing that with the Ranking Member of his committee, Adam 
Schiff.

Just run it right down to the White House. And so Paul Ryan left Devin 
Nunes wide open to accusations that he was running down to the White House 
to offer some political protection for the damage his committee did to the 
president on Monday.







O'Donnell returned to the topic Monday, observing "And as more inexplicable than him running first to the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, which is the single most under reported stop on Devin Nunes` tour that day on his way to the White House." Doggedly, he wouldn't let go of Ryan, on Tuesday remarking

He is afraid to talk about Devin Nunes. Afraid. He would 
rather talk about the most colossal legislative failure any speaker of the 
House has ever had, his first big bill as speaker.

The Trump-Ryan healthcare bill. That healthcare bill is the single, 
biggest, public professional embarrassment in Paul Ryan`s life.

And he would rather talk about that now and has said more publicly about 
that than he has said about Devin Nunes and that scandal.

And the reason Paul Ryan is afraid of talking about Devin Nunes is because 
the way-over-his-head chairman put Paul Ryan dead center in this scandal on 
the first day when he told reporters something none of them have noticed 
that first stop that he made before going to see the president at the White 
House, was Paul Ryan`s office.

The MSNBC anchorperson added "And I don`t know what I have to do to get any reporters to notice this, including the ones who were standing there in the White House driveway and
heard him saying that."

Finally, someone else did, and it took another O'Donnell for it  to happen. In an interview conducted with Ryan Wednesday but telecast Thursday on "CBS This Morning,"  Norah (unrelated) O'Donnell

 asked him what he knew about Nunes’ source and what other evidence he’s seen.
“You were among the first that [Nunes] briefed. What did he tell you?” O’Donnell asked.

“He had told me that — like, a whistleblower-type person had given him some information that was new that spoke to the last administration and part of this investigation,” Ryan said. “He briefs me about it, didn’t know the content of it, only knew the nature of it and that he was going to brief others.”

“Did you ask to see the documents yourself?” O’Donnell asked.

“He didn’t have the documents, so I didn’t,” Ryan responded.

“Did you encourage him to then go tell the president about it?”

“No, but I told him to just add it to his investigation,” Ryan said.

“So you at no time said, ‘Whatever you find out, you should probably go tell President Trump about it?’” 

“Oh — he was gonna brief everybody. He — I already knew he was going to go and brief. So the — what Chairman Nunes said is he just came into possession of new information that he thought was valuable to this investigation, and that he was going to go and inform people about it,” Ryan said.

“But he hasn’t. I mean, he hasn’t even informed the Republican committee,” O’Donnell said.

“Yeah, I have seen the actual documents. I don’t know that he’s been in possession of them yet. Let me say this: It’s very important that we allow and encourage whistleblowers to talk to Congress,” Ryan said.

You probably caught Nunes was going to go inform people about it. .  Reliable sources have confirmed that Representative Nunes did not cathch the plate number of that bus Speaker Ryan sent to run over him.

Norah, evidently in some sort of "O'Donnell tradition," wouldn't let it drop:

“Can you just help me understand that, though? Because if it’s a whistleblower, why wouldn’t that information then be shared with the Democrats on the committee, and even the other Republicans who haven’t seen it?” O’Donnell asked.

“I don’t know the answer to that question, you’d have to ask that person. I don’t even know who this is,” Ryan said.

“I mean, you’re a member of the Gang of Eight. You can see the most classified intelligence that our government has, right? You could request this information,” O’Donnell said.

“Yeah, we want this information to be provided to Congress and we’re waiting for it to be provided to Congress,” Ryan said.

The speaker also said he has no knowledge of whether President Trump is under investigation for ties to Russia.

"We're waiting for it to be provided to Congress", saith the guy who was allegedly assured that Nunes "was going to go and inform people about it."  If up to him, he'd wait forever. The Speaker made Nunes and can break him because he appoints committee chairpersons and can replace them.If he wasn't informed, he chose not to be informed.

Therefore,  notwithstanding (Lawrence) O'Donnell harping on an issue when no one cared about it and (Norah) O'Donnell interrogating Ryan about it, we still don't know what the Speaker was told by chairperson Nunes. He may have been selling him out or buying time for both of them.  Either way, however, as Lawrence O. noted on Tuesday

That`s why Paul Ryan is not ordering Devin Nunes to recuse himself because
Paul Ryan is in this thing as deep as Devin Nunes is. And if Devin Nunes
can lose his chairmanship over it, then Paul Ryan can lose his speakership
over it.

While precious little is known, two things are clear: Paul Ryan is Speaker of the House, but no leader. And there is something about an O'Donnell.







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The Republican Media- No. 39

Politico always has been one of the media organs most aggressively pushing the "on the one hand and on the other hand" meme.  On Thursday, January 16, Dylan Byers didn't disappoint when he wrote

Back in May 2012, five months before the presidential election, Fox News produced and aireda four-minute video attacking President Obama. The decision to create an attack advertisement was seen as so ethically questionable that, after criticism even from conservatives, Fox News issued a rare statement clarifying that the video "was not authorized at the senior executive level."

On Wednesday night, MSNBC's Lawrence O’Donnell produced and aired an anti-Chris Christie ad (above) and offered ideas for future ads that could be used against the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.

"I wrote that ad in a few minutes,” O'Donnell told viewers. “I was just sitting there listening to him, just grabbed those quotes and wrote it. You can do this at home, it’s easy.”

We've reached out to MSNBC for comment regarding their decision to produce and air the advertisement. We will update here if and when we hear back.

Notwithstanding the title of the piece, "MSNBC Creates, then Airs, Anti-Christie Ad," there is no evidence the network itself produced the hypothetical campaign spot (video, below). Before going to commercial O'Donnell, who is a veteran television writer and producer, remarked

Chris Christie has already written the attack ads that his opponents will use against him when he runs for president. I actually took some of Chris Christie`s own words from his press conference last week and produced a perfectly respectable fake attack ad against Chris Christie which I will show you in tonight`s rewrite. You are not going to believe how easy it is to do this. And yes, you can try it at home.

Immediately before running the ad, O'Donnell stated "I wrote this commercial while Chris Christie was actually still doing his press conference."

Unless O'Donnell is lying, he himself wrote the commercial. Compare that with the way Fox News rolls, as described by the author of "The Loudest Voice in the Room." Asked by Chris Hayes why Fox News is so successful, Gabriel Sherman explained

One simple answer, Roger Ailes. He starts in everything (sic) with the network starts with him. It is a completion reflection of his world. He has two meetings a day, where he comes in, monologues about the news, gives his take on the headlines and that radiates through the building, from the daytime news shows to the pundits at night. Everything works together. It`s one cohesive package. At other networks, shows do their own thing. Different points of views. Fox, even with different hosts, it`s essentially one 24-hour product that`s packaged by Roger Ailes.

Five days after O'Donnell's piece, on January 20 MSNBC's Chris Matthews took a different tack than had his colleague, editorializing

The fact of the matter is that this case will proceed and will be judged not by the politics, but by the facts as they come to light. If it is found that the governor has set up a political operation that turned on punishing rivals and holdouts while favoring friends, the question then will be whether the tough-guy tactics crossed the line into criminality.

Certain hosts, including O'Donnell, on MSNBC have come down hard on the ruthless, incompetent governor.  Not so Matthews, for whom the standard is criminality. if Christie's tactics have not "crossed the line into criminality," he will be "exonerated,"  an awfully low bar for the governor of a state. But Dylan Byers evidently thinks MSNBC is run like Fox News.  While he first attributed production of the ad to Lawrence O'Donnell, he then refers to the network and "their decision to produce and air the advertisement."  It is a slick sleight-of-hand and a nefarious means of implying that management of MSNBC maintains the same control over that network's hosts as Roger Ailes does over his own.

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Missed Opportunity

Last week, following their tiff about foreign policy, Rand Paul and Chris Christie exchanged words over federal disaster aid.  MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell (transcript, here) was overcome by the Governor's manliness:

Yes, Rand, good luck with trying to kiss Chris Christie. I happen to have right here, Chris Christie`s reaction to your kissing proposal. Said this tonight on a New Jersey radio station.I`m running for re-election in New Jersey I don`t really have time for that at the moment.So Rand, you will be lucky if you get a hand shake. And if you do get to shake his hand on Republican presidential debate stages it will be before and after he beats the living heck out of you in those debates.

And we have a winner in the Rand Paul versus Chris Christie fight. Last night, the judges called it unanimously for Chris Christie.

Yes, this is a prime-time host on what is often assumed to be the "liberal" or "Democratic" network.   The guy who cut taxes on millionaires, personally and publicly ridiculed individual teachers, pursued the destruction of the teachers' union, slashed retirees' pensions he had promised to preserve, rejected federal financing of women's preventive health programs, sabotaged the public schools in favor of charter schools, rejected public financing of a critically needed transportation project, vetoed significant gun control initiatives, fought access to medical marijuana, and nixed same-sex marriage legislation will "beat the living heck out of" his opponent, the liberal host breathlessly maintained.

Governor Christie won  the argument because, according to O'Donnell's logic, Rand Paul offered to meet with the Governor personally and iron out their differences.   Apparently, that to O'Donnell is an unacceptable sign of weakness.

On the merits, Christie did win the argument- or, rather, the Kentucky senator lost it.   The latter contended

It is really -- I think kind of sad and cheap that he would use the cloak of 9/11 victims and say, I`m the only one who cares about these victims. Hog wash, if he cared about protecting this country, maybe he wouldn`t be on this give me, give me, give me all the money you have in Washington or don`t have, and he would be a little more fiscally responsible, and note that the way we defend our country, the way that we have enough money for national defense is by being frugal and not by saying give me, give me, give me all the time.

But the Governor's sin is not in saying "give me" the $550 million in federal public assistance grants for New Jersey residents after Hurricane Sandy.  It's in use of a portion of the money to advance the political career, inside and outside of the state, of one Christopher J. Christie.  NJ.com, the online edition of  the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. observed the Governor "siphoned off money that was intended for victims of Sandy to promote himself in a series of TV ads" as

the Christie administration turned away a qualified low-bidder seeking to produce the series of TV commercials promoting tourism at the Shore, titled “Stronger Than the Storm.”

Instead, Christie’s appointed cronies chose to spend $2 million more for a campaign produced by MWW, a public relations firm based in East Rutherford that’s known for its abundant political connections in both parties.

Why? The governor’s office dances and shuffles around this point, and the woman in charge of this selection process, Michele Brown, wouldn’t comment.

But know this: MWW proposed a series of ads featuring the governor and his family, a move that would be illegal in New York state and should be here. The firm with the lower bid, the Sigma Group, did not.

So maybe Sigma’s plan was flawed in other ways? No, not even according to the committee of insiders that reviewed it. According to records obtained by the Asbury Park Press, Sigma’s bid “addressed the tasks and deliverables specified in the RFQ (request for quotations) ... (and) could effectively meet the requirements of the RFQ.”

Brown, for the record, worked in Christie’s inner circle at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and is now head of the Economic Development Authority. In 2007, while working for Christie, she borrowed $47,000 from him for personal reasons.

Are we supposed to believe this was a detached and unbiased review? That a Christie loyalist happened to pick the ad campaign that featured the governor and his family, and is set to broadcast in other states where he will need votes to win a presidential primary?

Caught in an ideological straitjacket, Paul was offended the Governor captured taxpayer funds to spend somewhere other than on bombs and missiles, money he believes instead should be spent on "national defense."  So he fails to identify the self-serving and vaguely corrupt nature of the relationship, one he could have labeled (playing a little loose with the phrasing) "money laundering for Chris Christie's presidential bid."

And caught in an ideological bind, the Kentucky Senator would not, could not, attack the underlying assumption of "Stronger than the Shore"- that the Jersey shore was saved by New Jerseyans and New Jerseyans alone.

That premise inherent in the marketing strategy is belied by the value of over a half billion dollars in funding from taxpayers of the United States of America.  It is Republican gospel that "I" or in this case, our own state, did it alone.  In the era of Barack Obama, New Jersey's own Cory Booker, and others whose identification as Democrats begin and end with the (D) after their name, the words of an actual Democrat and progressive, Elizabeth Warren, bear repeating:

You built a factory out there? Good for you.  But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Governor Christie took a huge chunk of money from taxpayers all across the nation and converted a part of it for his own political benefit.  Rand Paul, expected to vie for the GOP presidential nomination, might have connected this to Christie's telegenic appearance, aimed at sinking Mitt Romney, with Barack Obama a few days before the 2012 presidential election, combined with a more recent appearance with the president Republican voters love to hate.

Sensing criticism of Barack Obama, and a (valid) bid to attribute the President's re-election in small part to his crass political move, O'Donnell wouldn't have approved.    That alone might have redounded to the political benefit of Rand Paul and turned an inconsequential tactical defeat into a rousing victory.



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At Most, An Obama Network



Progressive blogger and (Hilary) Clinton enthusiast Taylor Marsh explains today why Barack Obama never has been a shoe-in for re-election.    One problem, she notes, is

That Obama hasn’t made solid relationships inside the Democratic Party and in the progressive community, beyond his die hard fans and supporters, makes it rougher for him. I don’t know anyone who thinks Obama runs the Democratic Party, with more evidence today that he doesn’t. He’s the un-Lyndon Johnson, a man who gets by on his own steam, not through relationships inside Democratic or progressive circles. The attitude of Robert Gibbs is brought to mind and just what a bad beginning the Administration made toward their base. Obama is another in a long line of presidents who don’t feel compelled to build the political party that made his rise possible. The feeling is Pres. Obama’s a one man ego band.

Tuesday, however, Marsh had slapped The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf, who had mistaken MSNBC's Chris Matthews for an objective journalist and therefore was aghast at Matthews' criticism of Mitt Romney over his Bain Capital involvement.   Marsh similarly criticized Politico's Dylan Byers because he had naively slammed Matthews for exhibiting "partisan loyalties" when he "accused the Obama surrogate of 'sabatoge' and 'betrayal' of the campaign."

Matthews, Marsh argues, lost his journalistic credentials when he became an enthusiastic cheerleader for Obama's 2008 campaign, most infamously for his "thrill going up my leg" comment.        Marsh observes "Chris Matthews has been a die hard Barack Obama supporter for over four years now, which is his choice."   Then, however, she draws a false parallel, claiming

Fox News Channel is a ratings juggernaut doing partisan coverage. Are Friedersdorf and Byers really the only ones who don’t know MSNBC is now the bookend to Fox News Channel? 

Friedersdorf and Byers may be confused about MSNBC but, to a lesser degree, so is Marsh. MSNBC is not the Democratic alternative, nor is it the liberal or progressive alternative- that would be Al Gore's Current TV, especially with the Young Turks' Cenk Uygur. With little more than two exceptions (staunch liberal/progressive Chris Hayes on weekend mornings, populist Dylan Ratigan on weekday afternoons),  MSNBC is the pro-Obama network.     That is hardly synonymous with "liberal," "progressive," or (as Marsh obviously understands better than most) even "Democratic."  

Matthews' pro-Obama slant during the 2008 campaign was far more noble, with far more benevolent effect, than his approach to the 2000 presidential campaign, when he functioned as an unofficial surrogate for the Republican.   Bob Somerby describes Matthews' role in the Bush-Gore campaign:

Of course, it was Matthews’ remarks about Campaign 2000 which provided the comic relief. “I think he ran a terrible campaign in 2000,” Matthews said, skillfully keeping his straight face. Just last Friday, we gave you a small idea of what this big nut-case meant (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/17/11). What made Gore’s campaign so “terrible?” For one thing, he wore a three-button suit—and those buttons had Freudian meaning. Beyond that, he had hired a woman to teach him how to be a man. He was “today’s man-woman,” “a man-like object;” he “didn’t have his gender straight.” He would lick the bathroom floor to be president. Over and over and over and over, he was “Bill Clinton’s bathtub ring.”

Matthews behaved like a genuine demon for the campaign’s twenty months, offering ugly, bizarre complaints about Gore’s “terrible campaign.” He told Gennifer Flowers how hot she was when he dragged her out on the air; she then spent a full half hour denouncing the Clintons’ murders. Presumably, Matthews did this to serve the pleasure of Welch; his salary was $1 million in 1999, but it soon went up to $5 million. (This type of largesse cannot be explained by Hardball’s ratings, though the show was influential at that time within the mainstream press.)

Somerby typically is too harsh toward Matthews, who conducts some searing interviews which would (or should) put nearly everyone else on TV news to shame.    Still, Somerby's suggestion (there and elsewhere) that the host was doing the bidding of his corporate sponsor has its parallel in today's MSNBC.  

After the network's Rachel Maddow defended Obama's recent remarks about Bain Capital, she interviewed Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who had criticized the campaign (though, significantly, not Obama himself).      Maddow served as public relations flak for Booker, one of Wall Street's favorite Democrats, arguing that he had been misunderstood.    Fawning over Booker (whom Somerby says is a buddy of hers from Stanford), she chose not to emphasize the impact of the Bain Way upon the employees of the companies it took over.     Somerby commented

If Maddow would stop her absurd attempts to defend her appalling friend, maybe she could report on what Romney actually did at Bain! Maybe she could report the looting of those pension funds, in ways her viewers could grasp and pass on.

Or is she keeping her trap shut too? Despite what your lizard brain is saying, corporate-picked multimillionaires may not always be on your side.

Rachel Maddow does, at times, question corporate power, as does Ed Schultz.     (O'Donnell does so infrequently and Sharpton is little more than Obama's mouthpiece.) Other hosts, especially Matthews, on the network are hardly reticent about criticizing Democrats, a wise tactic for a pro-Obama operation intent on avoiding being typecast as "pro-Democrat." MSNBC surely is not impartial, and does not claim to be, but neither is it the partisan counterweight to the cable network representing the public relations wing of the Republican Party.

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Much Ado About Not Very Much


Newt Gingrich, blasting Mitt Romney, early this week stated "you have to ask the question, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money?      "Although "nobody objects to Bill Gates being extraordinarily rich, they provide a service," he explains, objectionable is when an investor receives "six-to-one returns, and the company goes bankrupt," at which time "you have to ask the question, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money?"      The next day, he noted "if someone who is very wealthy comes in and takes over your company and takes out all the cash and leaves behind the unemployment? I think that’s not a model we want to advocate..."

Reaction from the left was muted, although Benjy Sarlin at Talking Points Memo argued "The former Speaker is making the case that, in contrast to good old fashioned businesses who make stuff, Romney and his ilk have instead gamed the system to create a soulless machine that profits from the misery of others."   And Lawrence O'Donnell somewhat naively praised Gingrich for "forcing Republicans to think about something they don't like to think about, the difference between the right to do something and doing the right thing."

Conservatives predictably were critical, with the Chamber of Commerce, Jim DeMint, and Rush Limbaugh, who claimed "you could have read this in an Occupy Wall Street flier," being among those who objected.        And the oddest knock came from Jon Huntsman, taking a break from slamming Mitt Romney for- well, for everything- curiously maintaining "I think it’s more instructive to look at Governor Romney’s record as governor.     You can’t be on both sides of this issue. If you’re going to stand for breaking up the banks, then you can’t criticize Bain Capital for doing some of what it did."      Whatever that means.

There was no reason for Republicans to be so exorcised (although they do appear to need an exorcist) about the comments of one candidate questioning the rapacious capitalism of corporate raiders.        Newt since has somewhat backed off his comments, and they were merely sound and fury signifying nothing, anyway.          As usual, Robert Reich understood immediately:

Where has Newt been for the last thirty years? Leveraged buyouts became part of traditional capitalism in the 1980s when enterprising financiers began borrowing piles of money, often at high interest rates, to buy up the stock of ongoing companies they believe undervalued. They’d back the loans with the company assets, then typically sell off divisions and slim payrolls, and resell the company to the public at a higher share price – pocketing the gains.

It’s a good deal for the financiers (the $25 billion buyout of RJR-Nabisco in 1988 netted the partners of Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts around $70 million each – and most of Mitt Romney’s estimated $200 million fortune comes from the same maneuvers), but not always for the company or its workers.

Some workers lose their jobs when the company downsizes. Others, when the company, now laden with debt, can’t meet its payments to creditors and has to go into bankruptcy. According to the Wall Street Journal, of 77 companies Bain invested in during Romney’s tenure there, 22 percent either filed for bankruptcy or closed their doors by end of eighth year after Bain’s investment.

But, hey, this is American capitalism – at least as it’s been practiced for the past three decades. Is Newt proposing to ban leveraged buyouts? Or limit the amount of debt a company can take on? Or prevent financiers – or even CEOs and management teams – from taking a public company private and then reselling it to the public at a higher price?

None of the above.

Rick Perry criticizes Romney and Bain pushing the quest for profits too far. “There is nothing wrong with being successful and making money,” says Perry. “But getting rich off failure and sticking someone else with the bill is indefensible.”

Yet getting rich off failure and sticking someone else with the bill is what Wall Street financiers try to do every day. It’s called speculation – and at least since the demise of the Glass-Steagall Act, investment bankers have been allowed to gamble with commercial bank deposits, other people’s money.

So is Perry proposing to resurrect Glass-Steagall? Not a chance.

Gingrich, Perry, and others are putting particular focus on the people who lost their jobs as a result of Romney’s Bain Capital. Gingrich’s Super PAC will be running $3.5 million of ads featuring emotional interviews with some of them.

But what, exactly, are Romney’s opponents proposing to do about layoffs that harm so many people? Millions of Americans have lost their jobs over the last four years – and as a result have often lost their health insurance, their homes, and their savings.

Are Gingrich, Perry, and others proposing to expand health insurance coverage for jobless Americans and their families? All I hear from the Republicans is their determination to repeal the law that President Obama championed – which still leaves millions of Americans uninsured. Do Romney’s opponents have plans to keep people in their homes even when they’ve lost their jobs and can’t pay their mortgages? No. Do they propose expanding unemployment insurance? If memory serves, most of them were opposed to the last extension.

Soon, Newt Gingrich will be back to calling President Obama a socialist, South Carolina will customarily vote for the GOP's next-in-line candidate, and all will be right with the world.





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Just Talk

The National Restaurant Association says it has received the request from Joel Bennett, attorney for one of the women who signed a sexual harassment complaint against Herman Cain. The NRA says it will decide tomorrow whether to release the woman from her confidentiality agreement.

The agreement has not been made public and, as they say, God is in the details. Or, ironically, the devil is in the details. Nevertheless, this is not necessary.

Sure, careful attorneys aim to cross all T's and dot all I's. But they also tend to view everything through the prism of their own profession, rather than realistically. Fortunately, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell understands, explaining (rough transcript, here; video, below) on Wednesday

And you have been challenged, you women who have accused Herman Cain 0f sexual harassment. I know you and your lawyers fear what could happen to you if you did come forward, if you violated your confidentiality agreements. I am here to tell you that absolutely nothing would happen.

The advice your lawyers are giving you is legal advice, offered within the confines of a legal matter. Now you need political advice because this is in fact not a legal matter anymore; this is a political matter. Your lawyers have told you that if you violated your confidentiality agreement the National Restaurant Association, a Washington lobbying group, can sue you for doing that. They can drag you to court, they can get their settlement money back from you and possibly get more money from you in damages and legal fees.

I am here to tell you that that can never, and will never, happen and I am telling you that as a political fact. That is the political reality you and the Restaurant Association are facing. The National Restaurant Association spends its day lobbying Congress against increasing the minimum wage among other legislative interests that restaurants and hotel business has. The National Restaurant Association knows that they would pay an extreme and immediate political price for suing you for telling the truth about what happens in the headquarters of the National Restaurant Association. They know that if they sue you, they will not be allowed to set foot in at least half of the offices in the United States Senate and a couple of hundred offices in the House of Representatives. They know practical politics and representing the interests of their members means they absolutely cannot afford to sue you.

They also know the legal prospect of success with a Washington, D.C. jury are close to zero. You women have nothing to fear anymore in the National Restaurant Association. You srim (sic) nothing to fear in those confidentiality agreements. They are just pieces of paper....

I will provide you all of the funding you might need for a legal defense fund to fight and beat the National Restaurant Association and Herman Cain at their confidentiality game.

O'Donnell acknowledged that the women legitimately fear hostility from some quarters. Clearly, O'Donnell recognizes that this is not 1991 and the public reaction would not mimic that to Anita Hill when she truthfully testified about the sexual harassment she faced from her former employer, Clarence Thomas. Not only have the American people gained far greater knowledge of sexual harassment in the workplace, it is unlikely that any alleged victim know would make the same mistake as did Anita Hill- calmly, rationally testify to the facts while the man summons up phony righteous indignation.

O'Donnell, who worked on Capitol Hill from 1989 to 1995, can be accused of suffering from the same malady he recognizes in the attorney of Cain's accuser. Fortunately, however, O'Donnell is right and, whether or not the National Restaurant Association decides to extend its beneficence to the unknown woman, she would be well served to tell all.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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