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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Are you guys keeping up with this "ABC Whistleblower" story? Earlier in the week there were "reports" that someone would be filing an affadavit regarding ABC News's conduct during the debate. Fast forward to today, and we have the alleged affadavit. The source seems to be "Black Insurrectionist--I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS @DocNetyoutube" on X.

This is obvious bullshit right? The names are conveniently redacted. To throw another monkey wrench into it, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted this morning that the whistleblower was killed in a car crash, before quickly backtracking (on the car crash, not on the whistleblower).

Is it going to be like this for the next two months until the election? Will it ever end? Do I just need to stop paying attention to internet bullshit? Will the inevitable defamation suits bring things back into equilibrium?

It's nonsense, anyway - if Kamala was told the questions in advance, she didn't do anything with that information, all she did was give weird scripted answers that barely engaged with the subject while Trump exploded.

While yes she gave weird scripted answers, that is better than her 2019 performance of being totally unprepared and rambling. Im sure she practiced (what else would she have been doing? not talking to press that is for sure), but its a plausible accusation. It happened before with Hillary. The moderators were clearly on Kamala's side. And its something fairly easily to do.

She prepared, but she prepared a bunch of talking points that were mostly unconnected to the questions. If she knew what the questions were, wouldn't her responses have been more relevant?

Because actual answers would inform the public that she is to the left of their loony neighbor that everyone laughs about when he starts waxing poetic about Chavez at the block party after his 2nd Mike's hard.

I didn't watch the whole debate, were there any questions that weren't obviously coming? I didn't feel like there were any looks that Trump wouldn't have drilled.

The Obamacare question was fairly out of left field. The rest were mostly obvious. But order and framing are important.

Smells like bullshit to me. Thinking of a way it could be real...

A real, Trump supporting ABC employee of 10+ years exists. Some or most of the things described actually happened the way they are described. Employee doesn't want to go public because he would like to keep his job? One way or another ABC employee meets Random Bullshit Twitter Guy. Random Bullshit Twitter Guy (RBTG) has no real experience in anything other than Random Bullshit Twittering, so he comes up with the affidavit + notarized letter to speaker idea without any attachment to Trump campaign. This is the best he can come up with, the debate happens, and he slow rolls the facts to maximize his good boy points.

Grammatical errors, capitalization, and formatting aside, stuff like this paragraph reads more like bad campaign messaging than it does a whistleblower that is reporting due to his/her integrity.

"No questions concerning her brother-in-law, Tony West, who faces allegations of embezzling billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and who may be involved in her administration if elected."

The exposition makes sure the audience (us, the public, not congressmen) knows who Tony West is. Perhaps he could have received input from some Trump campaign staff while crafting this testimony? He is an avid partisan and not just a concerned whistleblower?

But, uh, yeah. Fox News should be blasting the hell out of this story if it is even partially verifiable. The guy who got the scoop should be cashing in on the lucrative nature of this story beyond farming a few Twitter followers. He should be doing interviews right now. That Fox News is not doing so should suggest they fear another defamation suit. Which should suggest it's not a verifiable story, or at least has not yet been verified.

Will it ever end?

No.

Do I just need to stop paying attention to internet bullshit?

Yes.

Will the inevitable defamation suits bring things back into equilibrium?

No.

The fact that it's an affidavit is suspicious in and of itself, as the right has, in recent years, acted as though anything in an affidavit must be The Truth (see all of the Sidney Powell affidavits). The most common use of affidavits is in litigation. If I want to depose someone, standard practice is to execute an affidavit that gives an outline of their testimony and the points I want to make. I'll submit that to opposing counsel, and if they have no objections, the affidavit will be admitted in lieu of the deposition. In this case, they're simply a tool for greater efficiency. Even if opposing counsel always wants a deposition (so they don't waive their right to cross examine), they're still useful in at least we have a concise outline of the major points counsel is trying to make.

They have other uses, mostly in property law where someone will execute an affidavit as to the property's history or something like that to make it easier for title researchers to get a picture of the land in the absence of formal recorded documents. Again, they're a tool, but since they aren't deeds, etc., they aren't dispositive and can be challenged in court.

I don't know what purpose an affidavit like this serves. Is there pending litigation? Even still, affidavits only attest to facts, not opinions. ABC is allowed to be biased. It may be a political scandal but there's no legal cause of action here. Even if this is completely legitimate I don't see the purpose for it; it's not like Trump can sue ABC for being biased. And even if they could, and this guy was their star witness, I wouldn't execute the affidavit like this. It draws conclusions rather than simply state facts. I doubt this is real, because no lawyer would draft this.

Re: affidavits, it could be some sort of (ineffectual, agreed) attempt to counteract the 'claims with no evidence' tendency in the MSM? Eyewitness claims (of course) are evidence, but take a look at the coverage around Rufo's eyewitness who took a video of some people grilling cats, confirmed that cats were on the grill, etc -- yeah this would certainly be 'evidence' in any court of law, but not if you ask ABC or whatnot.

So maybe they think that putting the thing in writing and getting a notary to stamp it will somehow make their enemies treat it more seriously? One step away from sovereign citizen stuff, but what can you do?