by Justin Rosario

It's been over a week since the corrupt Trump regime tried to bury a whistleblower report and botched the cover up so badly it revealed not only over two years of cover ups, but how widespread the corruption has spread. It's been a week since House Democrats, lead by Nancy Pelosi, looked at what Trump had done, specifically, that he attempted to get another country to fabricate dirt on a political rival, and, quite correctly, threw down the impeachment gauntlet.

During all of this, the loudest "progressive" voices who just spent three years insisting Russiagate, you know, the last time Trump had another country interfere in our election, was 100% bullshit, haven't said a goddamn word. Except for Michael Tracey, the raving lunatic TYT fired for being, well, a raving lunatic. But we'll get back to him in a bit.

Let's put this in a bit of context so you'll understand why I'm so goddamn smug right now.

Writers and talking heads like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Michael Tracey, and David Sirota spent most of 2016 openly dumping on Hillary Clinton, including during the general election. This was despite knowing that Donald Trump was the alternative and any rational human being knowing that he would be a catastrophe that would dwarf the Bush years.

But this is a group of people that hate the Democratic Party more than they care about furthering any kind of progressive agenda (or psuedo-libertarian agenda in Greenwald's case) so Hillary was the greatest evil of all time. Let's not kid ourselves. When Trump won, every last one of them was delighted that the Democrats had taken a black eye and if that meant millions of people would suffer unimaginable pain for the next 4-8 years? Eh. It was worth it.

There's a reason I put "progressive" in air quotes when discussing these frauds.

Russia? I see no Russia!

After the election, it was of paramount importance to this cohort of weasels that absolutely nothing get in the way of the narrative that Hillary lost the election solely because of Hillary. Massive voter suppression? We don't talk about that. Easily manipulated voting machines? We don't talk about that. The FBI interfering? We don't talk about that. The press foaming at the mouth over a fake email story? It wasn't fake! The emails totally show someone doing something to rig the primaries! What did they do? Something something something, you're a neoliberal sellout read it yourself! #Rigged!

But above all, The idea that Donald Trump worked with Russia to steal the election had to be debunked at all costs as neoliberal centrist lies. The Muller investigation had to be a plot to absolve Hillary of running the worst campaign in the history of campaigns (which somehow still had the second most votes cast in her favor during a 20 year low election turnout).

They were quite confident about how wrong we all were:

These are the people who have spent three years telling us that we were all morons for investigating an attack on our elections aided by a man and his flunkies that have no loyalty to this country. The same man and flunkies that now run it.

But Greenwald, Halper, Tracey, etc. are so consumed by their hatred of Democrats that they will eagerly ignore the mountain of evidence in front of them. This is like denying Donald Trump ate all the cookies in the cookie jar when he's the only person in the room, there's a trail of crumbs leading to where he's sitting, the crumbs are all around him on the floor and on his clothes and on his face, and his breath smells like cookies.

"But you didn't see him with his hand in the cookie jar so it's clearly Hillary's fault!"

And that worked for them. They got away with such a ludicrous stance because Trump got away with it. There is such a level of antipathy for Hillary Clinton among the media and the fringe "left" and so much deference paid to the office of the President of the United States (as opposed to the occupant), that even though millions of us were screaming, "What the fuck are you talking about?! It's all right there!", that all the crumbs and all evidence just weren't enough.

The burden of proof was set so high that short of catching Trump's hand in the cookie jar, we would continue to be the morons and the Russiagate deniers could stand next to Trump and thumb their noses at us.

But Trump has now, in fact, been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

You backed the wrong horse, assholes

In their eagerness to spit in the eye of Democrats, Russiagate deniers made a fatal error and, by all rights, they should be stripped of all credibility and banished to the hinterlands forever. They won't, but we'll circle back to that in a bit.

Dying on this particular hill was predicated on the idea that there would never be direct evidence of Trump explicitly engaging with another country to have them interfere with our election. That might have been a good idea before it became patently obvious that Trump is not only comically corrupt, but comically bad at concealing it. Turns out that this was like staking your reputation on a murdering psychopath with a mountain of tortured animal carcasses in their backyard.

To be fair, Trump has gotten away with corruption his entire adult life but the way he's always gotten away with it — bribes, lawsuits, manipulating the media, and being a pathological liar — doesn't translate well from the private sector to the most scrutinized public seat of power in the world. But the Russiagate deniers from the left had tunnel vision and the light at the end of that tunnel was going to be the the fall of the Democratic Party.

Unfortunately for them, it was the Trump Train running at full speed on its way over a cliff.

Now that there is direct evidence of Trump doing exactly what Russiagate deniers have spent three years saying he could not possibly have done, almost all of them have nothing to say about it. The biggest story of the decade, the impeachment of a president (and he will be impeached), and all these political talking heads are silent. Just five minutes ago, they couldn't shut up about how stupid we all were for insisting that Trump was a traitor and Russian asset. Now? Go take a look at their twitter feeds.

It's a been a week and Katie Halper can't bring herself to admit that Trump openly admitted he pressured Ukraine to fabricate charges against Joe Biden's son.

Glenn Greenwald? It took him a few days but he finally picked up on the growing talking points of the fringe "left:" Attack Democrats over alleged hypocrisy over whistleblowers.

David Sirota isn't saying anything, either, although he gets a bit of a pass. He's working for Bernie Sanders and Bernie is on board with impeaching Trump:

I am not a Bernie fan but that is pretty goddamn funny. If Sirota wasn't working for Bernie? He would either be aping Greenwald in attacking Democrats or just pretending nothing is happening. Guaranteed.

Matt Taibbi literally took a week off from twitter. Again, famous journalist had nothing at all to say about the single biggest story in America right now. Nothing at all.

Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper did however, have time to do a podcast and compare Hillary Clinton and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tweets. Because on the fringe "left," Hillary Clinton will always be the devil and bashing her will always be a crowd pleaser. It's like watching a TV station bust out tired old reruns because they don't have anything new to show.

It's worth pointing out that this is also true for the right who still whine about Hillary on an hourly basis. But Horseshoe Theory is just neoliberal propaganda, right? Ahem.

But then there's Michael Tracey. Tracey has been having a full-blown meltdown since the whistleblower story first went public. Once we had an idea what was in the whistleblower's complaint, he swung into action. The Democrats are bad!

Curiously, at no point did it occur to Tracey that the fact the Trump regime was trying to hide the complaint that they were legally obligated to hand over to Congress might be an indication they had done something that violated the law.

A few days later, when we learned a few more details, specifically that Trump had spoken to the president of Ukraine about Joe Biden and his son, Michael Tracey was one of the first to use what is now standard right wing talking points:

Actually, it has been debunked. Several times. The prosecutor Biden pushed to have fired in Ukraine was fired because he wasn't prosecuting corruption. And it wasn't something Biden did on his own initiative. He was the front man for an international group that included the IMF and the E.U.. Tracey has to know this because he is not stupid. He is, however, a pathological liar.

Even after Trump inexplicably released the transcript and it showed Trump, in black and white, committing exactly the crime he was accused of, pressuring Ukraine to manufacture evidence against Biden, Tracey doubled down again and again. Don't believe your lyin' eyes. Democrats are the problem!

If you can tell the difference between these tweets and those of a Republican, I'll give you a nickel. They're indistinguishable. Same talking points. Same sneering disdain for Democrats and the media. Same gaslighting.

Tracey has been tweeting almost as much as Trump himself and with the same level of mounting hysteria. There are multiple tweets conflating this story with Russiagate. Specifically, that the Democrats couldn't get rid of Trump over Russia so they're exaggerating his actions in Ukraine into a massive fake scandal to finish the job. He leaps on the fact that the whistleblower is in the CIA like a starving dog on a bone. You see, the CIA is BAD, therefore everyone in the CIA is Evil and Cannot Be Trusted. Why, this may even be a CIA plot!

I'm not kidding:

This is not a person arguing in good faith. His more recent tweets have taken an even more dishonest bent as he's begun to accuse Democrats of lying about Trump pressuring Ukraine to fabricate charges about Hunter Biden. But that's exactly what he did. Oh, he didn't say "make something up" but if there is nothing to investigate and Trump wants an investigation, the only option is to fabricate something. This isn't rocket science and, again, Tracey knows it because he is not stupid. He is still a pathological liar though. (continued below)

Go in depth with a Banter subscription:

Impeach The Bastard - Ben Cohen on why Nancy Pelosi is gambling big here, and she might win even bigger.

The Most Staggering, Confounding Days In My 30 Years Covering Politics - Bob Cescaon the truly breathtaking reality of this news cycle and the impending impeachment of the president.

Why so seriously silent?

Most of the other "progressive" Russiagate deniers continue to run silent other than halfhearted attempts to throw shade about whistleblowers. The idea here is that the Democrats are hypocrites for celebrating this whistleblower while demonizing the heroic Edward Snowden. A subtle difference between the two, of course, is that one went through legal channels to report on the wrongdoings of the president, while the other disappeared to Russia and handed over a treasure trove of sensitive material to an authoritarian fascist. Snowden has much to say about the evils of the American security state, but apparently thinks a murdering tyrant who assassinates journalists, rivals and whistleblowers is just fine.

But putting aside these lame attempts to jab at Democrats, why are they so silent on this story? It’s quite simple: their entire business model is based on stoking resentment against Democrats and undermining anything they do. They feed their followers hate as a matter of course in order to keep them in a constant state of rage against "the establishment." Sure, it doesn't actually further the progressive agenda or provide the public with objective reporting, but it certainly keeps Glenn Greenwald and Katie Halper and Matt Taibbi employed.

My guess is that this rogue's gallery of far left propagandists are stumped by Trump admitting his crimes right out in the open. It's not clear why Trump's clown car regime did this but they released notes on the transcript without realizing that it flat out reveals indisputable criminal activity. Rudy Guiliani is running all over TV screaming that, yes, yes he did it! And here's proof he was working with the State Department while he was committing a crime!

Republican talking heads, of course, are going to stare straight at the facts and lie. Their base has been conditioned for decades to believe anything as long as you preface it with "the other side is lying to you." The left, even the fringe, tends not be that mindless. On top of that, while the people that follow Greenwald, Tracey, Sirota and so on, hate Democrats, they also hate Donald Trump. A lot.

Even worse for professional shit-stirrers like Tracey, the Democrats didn't actually do anything here. Trump abused his power, his regime tried to cover it up, and then, still inexplicably, confessed everything. Now they're trying walk it all back and doing a spectacularly bad job of it. No matter what Tracey says and how loudly he screeches it while flinging poop like a rabid monkey, Democrats really didn't have any choice but to impeach.

All of this means that the left is mostly on board with impeachment, leaving all of the fake "progressives" in a bit of a bind. If the only thing you know how to do is attack Democrats, and the Democrats are doing something very few people in your audience object to, how do you talk about it? The answer, so far, seems to be: You don't. You just pretend the biggest news story in the country simply doesn't exist.

Tracey is trying super hard to make Trump's impeachment about Russia but it really isn't. Sure, Trump felt emboldened to do this crime because he got away with the last one but that's really the only connection. The desperation to conflate the two is showing and looking at the comments, you can see that not all of his followers are buying into his increasingly frantic conspiracies.

This, too, shall pass. But it shouldn't

The wonderful thing about being an asshole is that you never have to apologize for being wrong. Glenn Greenwald's entire career is a case study in failing upwards on the strength of just being an asshole at all times. You are never wrong and cover it up by constantly attacking anyone who criticizes you. You'll recognize the pattern. Donald Trump perfected it long before Greenwald came along.

Once impeachment is underway, Halper, Greenwald and Taibbi and the rest of their odious clique will surely find something that Democrats are doing that offend the moral perfection of the fringe. Then they'll be right back to their bread and butter of bashing Democrats while occasionally casting shade at Republicans. After Senate Republicans refuse to convict Trump, perhaps the Taibbis and Traceys will convince their followers that it was all a waste of time (at least until the public's outrage results in a crushing 2020 defeat and a flipped Senate).

But the fact that the loudest anti-Democratic voices on the left are all but speechless on a story with this level of historical significance is extremely damning. If you cannot support the impeachment of the single most corrupt and criminal president in American history because it would align you with the Democratic Party, you are not an honest broker of information. You are a demagogue.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE: Become a Banter Subscriber and get access to our premium articles! We need your help to hold the Trump administration to account and your membership contributes directly to our in depth coverage of the impeachment process. Try it free for 14 days at no risk!:

Go in depth with a Banter subscription:

Impeach The Bastard - Ben Cohen on why Nancy Pelosi is gambling big here, and she might win even bigger.

The Most Staggering, Confounding Days In My 30 Years Covering Politics - Bob Cesca on the truly breathtaking reality of this news cycle and the impending impeachment of the president.