Bob Woodward attempted to create a false equivalence between the GOP and the Left. Gene Robinson & Joe Scarborough nailed him for the silly statement.
No to false equivalence
It is often depressing to watch the mainstream media news because they leave so much information out there from those who would mislead in subtle ways. I could not have been more proud of Gene Robinson and Joe Scarborough recently as esteemed journalist Bob Woodward made the most asinine comment.
Joe Scarborough was discussing the fact that Republican politicians continue to play victims. He said they like to call liberals elitists, even though they are privy to Ivy League education and lives. It is an act. He was paraphrasing a statement from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Virginia Thomas. This commentary from the New York Times is probative.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife floated an outlandish conspiracy that members of the “Biden crime family” and “ballot fraud co-conspirators” were being sent to barges off of Guantánamo Bay to face military trials for sedition in newly-uncovered text messages with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, texted Meadows in the days after the 2020 election, according to the messages obtained by the House Committee investigating January 6 and reported on by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and CBS News’ Robert Costa.
“Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition,” Thomas wrote in a message on November 5, 2020, two days after the presidential election, according to the Post.
“These two are the elites,” Joe Scarborough said. “They are at the center of power. If anybody is at the center of power and she’s throwing out that victimhood. Isn’t that so representative of what Republicans have been building for years? They play victims when they’re the ones in most firmly ensconced in power after going to Yale and Stanford. If you look at this, these senators and Princeton and Harvard and on and on and on, it’s such a phony populist game.”
Bob Woodward’s answer was disappointing that he had to stop midstream as he saw Gene Robinson’s disapproval.
“The evidence is there in these texts,” Woodward said before starting his false equivalence attempt. “But I think we just have to pull back, or at least I personally as a reporter on this and say it’s not just the Right. There is a lot of this kind of emotional ‘there is only one way to look at this,’ from the Left. And if we as a country have to face that.”
Gene Robinson off-camera must have been in convulsions because he got Woodward’s attention midstream and said, “You disagree.”
And, of course, Robinson did.
“Well, I’m done,” Robinson said. “You’re getting a skeptical look because I guess there are extreme voices on the Left. I don’t think this is Right, or this is a need for balance. I don’t think this is. I think because what you saw was the Republican Party writ large basically losing its mind, but going and becoming a Trumpist party and adopting positions that establishment Republicans were horrified by.”
Joe Scarborough then joined to remove the false equivalence Woodward was trying to establish hypocritically.
“There is that is a false equivalency,” Scarborough said. “I do not see leaders of the Democratic Party saying Biden, crime, family and ballot fraud, coconspirators elected are going to be put on a barge, bureaucrat’s social media censorship, ensuring their reporters are being arrested and detained for ballot fraud right now. And over the coming days, says the wife of a Supreme Court justice to the chief of staff of a Republican president who is trying to defraud the American people. And steal the presidency and will be living in barges off Gitmo to face military tribunals for sedition.”
WOW! No. Though it seems that Progressives could reasonably accurately say that without worrying about it being a lie. This “roasting” was an excellent pushback against an outstanding journalist gone rogue with reality.