Rachel is the best anchor on television and it isn’t even close.

Rachel Maddow’s report last night on a hoax NSA report being shopped around to news outlets in this country was riveting, in my opinion. It shows that she knows how the game is played and she plays it well.

I think it would surprise no one to find that her intended audience is an audience of one. She didn’t mention him by name, but she knows he is watching. It is reported that he watches her show every night.

“I watch her show every night.” Bannon said. “I’m a huge fan.” Trump’s Debt to ‘Brilliant’ Rachel Maddow by Joshua Green, Bloomberg.com 8/23/2016

That Bannon is Steve Bannon, White House Chief Strategist (aka Donald Trump’s consigliere). Joshua Green actually confirmed this on her show (her reaction is at the 2:15 mark) last year. Also, If you haven’t read Joshua Green’s terrific article on Steve Bannon from 2015, you need to read it. I have read through it at least twice.

I suspect that Rachel has learned how to read him by reading Mr. Bannon’s favorite books: Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” and the “Bhagavad Gita”, an ancient Hindu text describing a holy war that results in the achievement of dharma, a type of order that makes the universe possible.

One of the main tenets from “The Art of War” is the following:

“All warfare is based on deception.” Sun-Tzu, “The Art of War”

Considering that Rachel is a Rhodes Scholar, I would think that she has at least perused this.

Let’s back up a minute. What happened last night was Rachel in her first 20 minutes (which is always a monologue to set up the remaining 40 minutes of her show) sent a warning to all media out there that do not like Trump and want to take him down. “Watch your back.” She detailed how she received what was purported to be a classified NSA document sent through her site SendItToRachel.com. Instead of rushing the news out as quickly as possible, they tried to find ways to check it for accuracy so they sat on it. Very few people knew about it and the news of this document did not leak out. (The White House might want to talk to Rachel about how that is done.)

A good breakdown of this is through Jen Hayden of Daily Kos. Here is the link.

While she and her staff waited, she tracked other news organizations to see if they had picked this up. They didn’t find their document, but they noticed a trend with several news outlets, specifically “The Intercept”. Their reporting on the alleged Trump/Russia scandal was muted. They did not jump on the “Did Trump collude?” bandwagon. Their reporting actually seemed to shy away from making that accusation. This organization’s reporters are very good and very professional. Some are well-known to readers of Daily Kos, such as Ryan Grim (formerly of Huffington Post). These guys are not amateurs.

Suddenly, though, about a month ago, they broke the story about how the Russians had attacked voter roles through hacking attacks on state e-mail servers. This was classified until a new employee named Reality Winner (I am not making this up.) sent them a memo detailing this. She was subsequently arrested and is awaiting prosecution for leaking classified material. This information was not hoax material, but it did yield a leaker. Rachel broke down their process beautifully, and in the process probably saved a few reporters’ jobs. Unfortunately, it was too late to save these guys.

She compared key aspects of the original memo that Ms. Winner sent to “The Intercept” and compared it to hers. That’s when she noticed something fishy and that is when she realized that she caught the deception. She did not say who she felt was responsible for sending the fake document, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out. The subtext was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. Steve Bannon was her audience of one and it read, “I’m gonna get you sucka.”

I am certain that MSNBC’s lawyers were very pleased. Steve Bannon is either smiling out of respect or he’s furious that it didn’t work. I hope it’s the latter.

If you haven’t watched it, you need to watch it. I would bet that this is now required viewing with every news organization in the land.

She is the best anchor on television and it isn’t even close.