Keep Hope Alive!

Back when The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto wrote the paper's 'Best of the Web' column, one of his rubrics was 'Diagram this Sentence,' in which readers were challenged to deconstruct a long and confusing line, usually from a liberal author. On Saturday's AM Joy, MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley offered a prime example of the genre.

Responding to the refutation by the Mueller team of Buzzfeed's report that President Trump had ordered Michael Cohen to lie about Russia collusion, Wiley said:

"In this case, it doesn't mean, what we are hearing in this, does not mean that we know that there won't in the future be corroborated evidence of Donald Trump having knowledge of, and in some way being part of, what could be, could be -- and I'm speculating -- could be a conspiracy to suborn perjury. That is a possibility. We don't know."

Got that? The debunking of Buzzfeed doesn't mean that we know that something won't pop up in the future. She's "speculating," but it "could be, could be, could be." It's "a possibility." But then again, "we don't know."

Great point. And the fact that scientists have refuted the claim that the Moon is made of green cheese doesn't mean we know that proof of lunar cheese won't arise in the future. It's "a possibility." We just "don't know."

A very animated Elie Mystal jumped on Wiley's bandwagon:

"We can't take our eyes off the prize here. This is what liberals do. Something happens, there's some pushback, there's some nuance, and liberals go into this, like, backpedaling like, oh, my God, now how will the anti-vaxers ever believe us?"

Some pushback? Some nuance? The Muller team took the highly unusual step of saying that the Buzzfeed allegations were "inaccurate?" Right: don't go "backpedaling" just because your story has been destroyed by the authoritative source! Instead, keep your "eyes on the prize": destroy Donald Trump, the truth be damned!

Note: Wiley disclosed that Buzzfeed editor Ben Smith is a "personal friend," and a "person of the highest integrity." Highest integrity? Smith is also the guy who published the Steele dossier "which major news organizations, including the New York Times and NBC News, refused to publish due to lack of credible evidence."

Note segundo: Wiley has the ultimate liberal resume: former chair of the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board; counsel to NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio; Senior VP for Social Justice at The New School. Worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the ACLU, and the [Soros] Open Society Institute; founder and past president of the Center for Social Inclusion, a national policy strategy organization dedicated to dismantling structural racism.