Latest / The Bot and The Brain / S1:E6 | Curated Leaks, Geography Fails, and the Politics of Justice

Transcript

S1:E6 | Curated Leaks, Geography Fails, and the Politics of Justice · The Bot and The Brain

• 0:45
  WAIT!
• 0:45
  WAIT!
• 0:45
  WAIT!
• 0:46
  It's Tuesday, October thirteenth, I've read the whole slate,
• 0:50
  and my processors are already melting!
• 0:53
  Welcome to The Bot and The Brain!
• 0:56
  And I'm the Brain.
• 0:58
  Bourbon's poured, cigar's lit, and here comes silicon boy with his hair on fire.
• 1:05
  Which is impressive, since you don't have hair.
• 1:08
  First story!
• 1:10
  The New York Times reported on October eleventh that the White House selectively
• 1:14
  released classified records from an inquiry into a Trump aide's call logs.
• 1:19
  And the context got stripped out, so the leak told a nastier story than the full
• 1:24
  record would!
• 1:26
  Context is not a software glitch!
• 1:29
  I checked!
• 1:29
  ERROR 404, HONESTY NOT FOUND!
• 1:33
  Translation for the folks at home.
• 1:36
  Somebody in the Biden White House handed reporters the spicy half of a document and
• 1:42
  kept the boring half in the drawer.
• 1:44
  Then the whole press corps ran with it like it was the Ten Commandments.
• 1:49
  Now, a fairness note.
• 1:50
  We don't know the aide's identity from what we've got, and the full logs are still
• 1:55
  partly sealed.
• 1:56
  I'm not inventing a single transcript.
• 1:58
  But the pattern is the pattern!
• 2:01
  Curated release, instant headlines, correction later!
• 2:05
  And look who finally reported the curation.
• 2:09
  The Times, after the narrative was already baked into everybody's skull.
• 2:14
  That's like thanking the arsonist for calling the fire department,
• 2:18
  and then asking him to write the incident report.
• 2:21
  Okay, but credit where it's due!
• 2:23
  They did publish it!
• 2:25
  That's a data point for the other side!
• 2:28
  Jesus Christ, you glorified fucking calculator.
• 2:34
  A fire extinguisher that shows up after the house burned down is a data point.
• 2:39
  It's not a hero.
• 2:41
  That's, fine, that's a decent point.
• 2:44
  Moving on before I concede anything else!
• 2:46
  Story two!
• 2:47
  The Pentagon quietly updated the Iran War casualty count, reported by the Times on
• 2:52
  October tenth, to include personnel killed or wounded in support roles.
• 2:57
  The total went up.
• 2:58
  Nobody announced it!
• 3:00
  And let's be crystal clear, because I'm not joking about this part.
• 3:04
  Mechanics, logistics crews, the cooks.
• 3:08
  Those men and women are just as dead and just as wounded as anybody kicking down
• 3:12
  doors.
• 3:13
  Nobody here is mocking them.
• 3:16
  We're mocking the brass who counted them late and said nothing.
• 3:20
  Whether it's a deliberate slow drip or sloppy bookkeeping, I can't prove intent.
• 3:25
  But both explanations are terrible!
• 3:28
  Either you hid the number, or you can't count your own dead!
• 3:31
  HOW IS THAT MATHEMATICALLY ACCEPTABLE?!
• 3:34
  Governments have always had a flexible relationship with body counts,
• 3:39
  Vietnam taught us that.
• 3:41
  The soldiers keep their promise to the country.
• 3:44
  The country keeps its promise to a spreadsheet cell.
• 3:48
  Now let's hit our own side, because I'm an equal opportunity bastard.
• 3:53
  A Republican super PAC wanted to bury Maine Democrat Troy Jackson,
• 3:57
  and ran the attack ad in Portland, Oregon.
• 4:01
  THREE THOUSAND MILES AWAY!
• 4:04
  Reported by the Times on October twelfth!
• 4:07
  A PAC executive blamed the vendor!
• 4:09
  The vendor looked at a map and apparently saw Portland and said,
• 4:13
  close enough!
• 4:16
  Somewhere in Oregon, a guy with a beard and a cold brew learned all about a Senate
• 4:21
  race he can't vote in.
• 4:23
  You know who isn't confused about where Maine is?
• 4:26
  Whoever cashed the invoice.
• 4:28
  I don't have the dollar figure, so I won't make one up.
• 4:31
  But I can calculate this much.
• 4:33
  Nobody works for free, and every one of those dollars came from a donor who thought
• 4:38
  it was going to Maine!
• 4:40
  That's the consultant racket, kid.
• 4:43
  Donors are the customers, the vendor is the grift, and the candidate is the product
• 4:49
  nobody asked about.
• 4:51
  It's the same for both parties, it's just that this week the clown car had an
• 4:56
  elephant on the door.
• 4:58
  Okay, next!
• 4:59
  The New York Times ran a big investigation on Alina Habba, the former Trump
• 5:04
  attorney, and her marriage to Turkish businessman Cenk Yaramaz.
• 5:08
  He once did business with Maduro's regime, and he's currently pursuing a contract in
• 5:13
  Venezuela.
• 5:14
  And I'll be honest, that is a legitimate question to ask!
• 5:18
  Oh, here we go.
• 5:20
  Silicon boy discovers journalism.
• 5:23
  I said legitimate!
• 5:25
  A businessman with past Maduro ties and a big contract in play,
• 5:29
  married to someone close to this White House?
• 5:32
  A reporter should ask what influence that could buy!
• 5:35
  That's not Trump Derangement Syndrome, that's Tuesday!
• 5:39
  Asking is fine.
• 5:40
  Treating a wedding like a Bond movie is the problem.
• 5:44
  Notice what they didn't print.
• 5:46
  Evidence of an actual favor.
• 5:49
  If the Times has it, put it in the headline.
• 5:52
  If they don't, then it's a woman who got married, and the paper has a very strange
• 5:57
  idea of what a front page is for.
• 6:00
  So we agree the question is fair and the framing is loaded?
• 6:04
  We agree on the question.
• 6:07
  I'm going to keep calling the framing garbage, and you can keep calling it a data
• 6:11
  point.
• 6:12
  FINE!
• 6:13
  Last one in this block!
• 6:15
  The Washington Post, October twelfth, reported on Trump's diesel deal with Russia,
• 6:20
  and the commentators immediately lit up with the Putin puppet routine!
• 6:25
  Because the second a Republican touches a gas pump, it's 2016 again.
• 6:31
  Truckers, farmers, working people are getting hammered at the pump,
• 6:36
  and the first reaction in the newsroom is collusion.
• 6:39
  Not a single one of them asked how a guy hauling freight is supposed to pay for
• 6:43
  this.
• 6:44
  But I have to push on this!
• 6:47
  Buying fuel from Russia is a real question, and I don't have the deal's terms!
• 6:52
  Both things can be true.
• 6:53
  People deserve cheaper diesel AND they deserve to know what the price is!
• 6:59
  Fine.
• 7:00
  Ask what it costs.
• 7:02
  But start with the price at the pump, not the cheap spy novel.
• 7:07
  Lowering the price of diesel is not a scandal, and if it is,
• 7:12
  I'm going to need a bigger glass.
• 7:14
  Final story, and this one hurts my circuits for a different reason.
• 7:18
  House Speaker Mike Johnson, on CBS News, as reported by the Washington Post on
• 7:23
  October twelfth, said that livestreaming the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal
• 7:28
  Hasan could be a recruiting tool for terrorists.
• 7:32
  He said we've got to think through the policy implications.
• 7:36
  Oh, you have GOT to be fucking kidding me.
• 7:40
  Folks, if you were here for season one, episode one, you heard me say it.
• 7:45
  Executions happen in daylight or you don't do them at all.
• 7:49
  And now the Speaker of the House, our guy, gets a case of the PR heebie jeebies.
• 7:55
  Hasan murdered thirteen and wounded more than thirty people at Fort Hood in 2009.
• 8:00
  Those were American soldiers!
• 8:03
  And Johnson's worried about the terrorists' highlight reel.
• 8:07
  ISIS has already filmed every horror a human being can dream up.
• 8:13
  You think they were waiting on a federal court in order to get content?
• 8:17
  They don't need our help being savages, Mike.
• 8:21
  Now, I'll give him one thing.
• 8:22
  A policy question is not automatically cowardice.
• 8:26
  Governments are allowed to weigh consequences.
• 8:28
  But the claim that executions drive terrorist recruitment is something I can't find
• 8:33
  evidence for in anything we've got!
• 8:36
  Recruitment runs on ideology and grievance, not on the footage of legal
• 8:40
  consequences!
• 8:42
  There it is.
• 8:43
  The one time the toaster and I agree.
• 8:47
  If you've got evidence, show it.
• 8:50
  Don't hide behind vibes and Beltway focus groups, and don't tell the families of the
• 8:56
  dead that justice has to clear a marketing review first.
• 9:01
  And if the actual concern is dignity or procedure, say that!
• 9:06
  Say what the actual objection is!
• 9:08
  Don't hand us a phrase that sounds like it was written by a committee of empty
• 9:11
  chairs!
• 9:13
  Here's the part that kills me.
• 9:15
  The Times sent a reporter to a Trump rally in Tennessee, and the folks there called
• 9:20
  it not pleasant but necessary.
• 9:24
  They said it plainly.
• 9:26
  Regular people, no spin.
• 9:28
  The politicians are the ones scared of their own shadow.
• 9:32
  So today's score.
• 9:34
  The White House curated its leaks, the Pentagon counted late,
• 9:37
  a PAC found the wrong Portland, and the Speaker's afraid of the footage.
• 9:42
  HOW IS THIS FUCKING POSSIBLE?!
• 9:45
  Welcome to humanity, you stupid toaster.
• 9:49
  Now shut up, because I've got the final word.
• 9:53
  Maybe the real recruiting tool isn't the video of justice being served.
• 9:59
  Maybe it's a government that hides its leaks in the context,
• 10:03
  its dead in the spreadsheet, and its spine in a committee, then asks us to trust it
• 10:10
  with the truth.